Namesake

At the end of last year my parents moved out of the house that I grew up in. We came to Los Angeles from Chicago in 1975. For a little while we stayed with my Grandma Serelle, my Mom’s Mom, in Sherman Oaks and then in October we settled into the house in Granada Hills. It was a great house to grow up in. Lots of kids in the neighborhood and virtually every street were hills for us to ride bikes and skateboard on.

I have some mixed feelings about that house no longer being in our family. Even though I live three thousand miles away now, I know I can never go “home” again. But it’s good too. While unpacking in their new place and doing the inevitable search for things you know you packed but can’t remember where you put them, my Dad found some photographs of his Father, Alex Kimmell

I never got the chance to meet Grandpa Al. He died of a heart attack when my Dad was around eighteen or so. Everyone in the family who knew him always tells me what a vibrant person he was. How he was always ready with a joke or another creative way to make people smile when they were down. He was a wonderful cartoonist, a talent which landed squarely in my Dad’s hands, but skipped me altogether. He also sold plastic furniture coverings. For those too young to remember that stuff, it was clear plastic sheets that you draped over your couches and chairs so as to not get them dirty. One might say that they were tacky, yet functional and very sticky on your legs if you sat on them wearing shorts on a hot summer day.

The pictures have been fascinating me all night long. I have only seen a few shots of Grandpa Al, and most of them have been worn by time or unfocussed and blurry. These new ones are crystal clear and beautiful. For the first time I can tell that I actually kind of look like him. It’s a nice feeling. This is where I come from and where I got my name.

The first picture is from 1937. Al leans slightly to the left in an all white suit with one hand tucked in the pocket of his pants. His hair is short and flat very much in the style of the day. He has a relaxed and confident smile that is friendly without being put on and there is a very slight cleft in his chin which has not been passed down to any of his progeny. He looks quite a bit slimmer than I have been since high school too.

In another photo Grandpa Al is standing next to his best friend Sammy Kaye. I hear tell from my Dad that they were quite the pair. “These were the guys who would crash country clubs where Jews were not welcome, join a couple of foursomes and clean the members out! Then they would scamper without taking a shower. They were ‘scratch’ golfers, but it wouldn't do to be spotted without a foreskin in that situation!” I guess that’s where the genesis of the Kimmell rebellious streak comes from.

I used to break into the neighborhood country club with my friends back in High school, though we didn’t go to play golf. We went “ice blocking”. The liquor store at the bottom of the hill sold big blocks of ice that were about a foot or two square. We’d buy a couple of those and hop the fence at the top of the hill. Then we would cover the top of the block with a towel, one of us would sit on it and get a push off down the hill. It was a fun ride, but ended up painfully falling off into the bushes or on to the concrete drain more often than not. We tore the hell out of the grass too but they never even looked for us as far as I knew anyway.

I think the craziest thing we used to do was play car tag. You needed at least two guys per car, one driver and one lookout in the passenger seat with a bunch of water balloons. Headlights turned off cruising around the neighborhood looking for the other cars that were playing trying to “tag” each other with the balloons. It was stupid, but it sure was fun. Until one time when I was the lookout and we tagged a car that wasn’t in the game!

We pulled up to a stop sign, leaned out the windows and threw our balloons as hard as we could. It was beautiful actually. Both balloons hit dead center at the exact same time on the cars windshield. Then we noticed the headlights were on. The driver screamed out at us as we squealed away from the intersection as fast as the little hatchback could go. Smoke plumed up from the tires screeching around corners. It felt like he chased us for hours. But this was our neighborhood. We knew it like the backs of our hands.

Turn left here and a sharp right immediately after. The next street would lead us between two cul-de-sacs but if we timed it right, he might keep going straight. We made a quick slip to the right and pulled into the second driveway. Instantly we leaned our seats back as far as they could go and turned off the car. Hearts beating so loud we were sure he could hear us as he drove right past and kept going down to the main road down the way. We stayed there breathing heavily for a few minutes just to be safe, and then had the best laugh of my life. Grandpa Al might not have approved of that night’s events, but I guess it was kind of in the same spirit.

I unfortunately learned that I also share one bad tradition with my namesake that I would rather not. Back when my Dad was a kid, Al bought his very first car. He came home and took the entire family for a drive around the neighborhood. Everyone was gushing and fawning over how beautiful it was and how proud they were to have their very own automobile! It was almost unheard of in those days to be able to afford such a luxury. After dropping the family off, Grandpa Al decided to go for one more loop around the block. Apparently he lost control at the end of the street, knocked out a fire hydrant, slammed right through the wall of the local Abbey and crash landed on top of the Mother Superior’s birdbath.

When I turned sixteen I got my first car. It was a cream colored 1976 Chevrolet Camaro. It was beautifully cherry and in pristine condition. My friends called it a “chick” car because they were sure it would help us score some chicks! We all went out to celebrate and stopped off at the Vons to get some drinks. I decided to show off and tried to whip a donut around my friend’s car, pulling a little bit too close and ended up crashing my passenger door right into his front bumper.

So thanks for that one Gramps! I spent the rest of that summer in my Uncle’s garage learning how to hammer out dents and bondo to bodywork. Needless to say, I didn’t have too much fun for a while.

I have a few advertising cartoons that Al drew hanging on the wall of our living room. I look at them from time to time and they always make me smile. He even created his own signature logo with our initials AK. The right arm of the A extends down to become the backbone of the K and they are joined into one continuous symbol. I remember being a kid and attempting to design a logo for the front head of my bass drum. I could never get it just right. I really wanted it to be in the style of the old Ludwig and Slingerland logos. Like the BR for Buddy Rich or LB for Louie Bellson. If I had seen Al’s drawing back then, I would have definitely used it and I would probably still have it on my kick drum today.

I know there’s a lot of people out there named after their Fathers or their Grandfathers. Many of them have the pleasure of getting to know them and maybe find out why they share the name together. In the Jewish tradition, we don’t name children after anyone who is still living. I like my name and I am proud of where it comes from. But there are times when I would have been just as happy to be called anything else so that I could have shared a few moments in time with the first Alex.

/>