August 20, 2007

Buzz Anderson

Poet

For one night in August, Buzz Anderson took a room full of people back to a time when you could go to the Capitola Theater and catch a double feature and two cartoons for $1.05 and “still have a dime apiece left over for candy.” Back then, Russ Hodge’s voice announcing Giants baseball games and the marching music of John Philip Souza from the nearby merry-go-round blended together as you sat at the counter of Babe’s burger joint waiting for Babe to make you one of his famous mustard-drenched burgers and crispy french-fries on his greasy grill. After lunch you could walk along the esplanade to Soquel Creek where, if you looked down, you would see “dozens of steelhead and salmon bodies cruising their way upstream through the semi-transparent murky green shallows.” They might be making their way through the plastic french-fry boats a young Buzz and his buddies were floating, armada style, across the pond.   Encouraged by his Aunt Dottie to put poetry to her paintings, Buzz has been writing since childhood. The more he wrote, the more she wanted. And at the monthly Pizza & Prose gathering that night in August, Buzz opened up his secret shoebox of writings to do his first-ever public reading.

 Buzz described growing up in the “ Valley of Hearts Delight ” long before it was known as Silicon Valley . In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Santa Clara County was “the prune capital of the world.” The Anderson family lived on a walnut farm where Buzz, his brother Bill and sister Marta picked prunes and lived in a farmhouse built in the 1880’s. The family vacationed over the hill in the sleepy little seaside town of Capitola , where his grandfather built a house in 1922.With a childhood Opie Taylor would envy, Buzz, his siblings, their cousins and friends would explore the fishing holes and local hangouts, such as the bowling alley (now the Capitola Mercantile) and the pokerino. 

 In 1962, his dad built The Shoreline Motel at the end of the esplanade next to the Capitola Theater. Buzz was eight years old. His first job was renting out and cleaning the $10-$18 per night motel rooms. After two and a half years, Buzz’s mom had enough of motel living, “especially after being robbed and held hostage at gunpoint by three drugged out criminals who made off with $19.”After surviving a jump out a three story window with hands and feet bound, his dad scared the robbers away. They were eventually arrested with one being shot and killed trying to escape. 

 Back then, the police department consisted of Marty Bergholdt and Lt. Espey, the Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney of Capitola, as Buzz’s dad called them. This was a time when local liquor store owner Karl would take off to the Edgewater Bar across the street from his store and leave a note that read “leave money, take booze.”  

 The audience got to meet Herman, the “rotund, bowlegged” sixty-something-year-old lifeguard, walking through town with his “towel, bag, and pith helmet,” who swam like a fish and “saved many a child.” They met local fisherman Clyde Lawson by the Capitola Wharf , with his “slow southern drawl…unruly salt and pepper eye-brows arching in a cartoonish grin. Half a cigar (rolling) about in his mouth.” At Tom’s Bait and Tackle Shop they met Red Adams, the “rosy-cheeked, big-jowled, grey-haired seafarer” who had tall tales to tell us, and fast talking Jojo, “the pied-piper of Capitola…barefoot and cow licked, tanned and poxed.”

 As it got late in the evening, the audience, which included Buzz’s brother, wife and his three grown sons, as well as childhood friends and complete strangers, urged Buzz to read some of his poems. Shyly, he pulled out two short and sweet favorites he had written for his wife Jenny. Butterfly Hunt was written while they were still dating and spoke of his love for her adventurous and creative spirit. No Red Roses? was from last Valentine’s Day, when Buzz decided to save some money and buy violet roses at 1/3 the cost of the $40 and up red ones.

 Buzz was inspired to be a part of the Pizza & Prose series by friend and mentor Ed Larson, another local writer and artist who has previously done a Pizza & Prose reading. Plans are already in the works to invite Aunt Dottie to Buzz’s next Pizza & Prose presentation, where he will display her art as he reads his poems.