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All About Cherry Capri
Autobiography
Chapter 2) Life's a Beach at the Malibu Hamlet
Freddie and Babette lived with a bunch of other wild surfers and those days were pretty carefree and happy for all of them. The guys dumpster dived at Malibu Colony. It was easy to get past the guards by surfing in from the north. They all learned how to be resourceful and how to adopt and refinish second hand items. I actually attribute my ability to craft and refinish to those very early impressionable days.
One of my earliest memories is right before the commune disbanded. Deadhead showed me how to turn a hollowed out coconut into a monkey piggy bank. It felt so empowering to be able to make something out of nothing: to turn trash into treasures.
As modern times set in and made communes unfashionable, the group fell apart and disbanded in 1971. But mom and dad had socked enough money away literally in an old surf sock to buy a mobile home on the bluffs overlooking Will Rogers State Beach.
The Malibu Hamlet Mobile Home Park sits about halfway up the hill overlooking the Pacific ocean. It’s about the closest to heaven a trailer park can be; filled with near new 1960s trailers in bright colors and shiny white. Trailer living was still considered pretty hip back in those days. The term trailer trash had not yet been invented. Mobile living was considered a luxury form of suburban living without a lifetime of debt.
Freddie called it Hale A’kahele meaning the “house that travels” in Hawaiian and a friend carved a tiki god to stand watch by the front door.
I was home schooled on the beach, but things were never the same as in the commune. Surfing went out of fashion as the disco era was born. Life at the beach was comfortable, but bohemian at best.
Our neighbors included several failed TV sitcom star families. Those who couldn’t afford the Colony or nearby Palisades ended up at the Malibu Hamlet Mobile Home park. Of course for us it was a step up, but for the others it was a reminder of what used to be and what they didn’t have anymore.
I played with the brats from “Please Don’t Eat the Roses.” And right next door was the Parakeet Family. We heard that they had been approached by some big TV production firm back in 1970 to do the story of their lives, but the whole deal had fallen through. Nevertheless, they never lost their happy ability to sing all the time.
I would love to sit on the porch and listen to them rehearse. I would sing along with them and memorized every vocal part. I practiced their dance steps when no one else was around and imagined I was the star of the show and queen for a day.
Sometimes I would thumb through mom and dad’s old scrapbooks and look at the pictures of Annette and fantasize about her glamorous life. She was so pretty and sweet and I loved to listen to her records over and over. I learned all I could about this magical place called Disneyland and longed to live there. At this point I didn’t know who my true parentage was, so I didn’t know that my real mother was a delightful singer and movie star herself.
Mom was a good cook. It was the only thing we really ever talked about. Just like Martha Stewart and her mom, the kitchen was always a place where we bonded.
She didn’t like to talk about work much. I think that’s because dad flirted with the other bikinis girls. Anyway, she was just as popular with the guys because she really knew how to whip up a mean franks and beans. She was a pretty strict health nut even in those days and she would always switch out veggie hot dogs for the real ones. But the guys would never be the wiser, because her sauce was so wonderful. You would just want to lick your paper plate clean.
Her best dish however was a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. Annette may have become famous for pushing Skippy Peanut Butter, but it was my mom who made Annette her first sandwich.
