Fif­teen years ago Cindy and I were hav­ing break­fast at The Colo­nial Kitchen in San Mari­no when a short bone-thin old­er man with curly brown hair that fell to his shoul­ders and a pasty face stretched tight by too much plas­tic surgery led a stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful young Asian woman wear­ing skin-tight black leather pants and high-heeled boots across the din­ing room to a booth direct­ly across from us. He sat down and scoot­ed over against the wall. She sat beside him, put her arm around him, nib­bled his ear, and rubbed his sunken chest while he ignored her and looked over the menu.

“Phil Spec­tor just walked in,” I said to Cindy.

Cindy’s pret­ty hazel eyes widened. She turned to look and we both stared at him. 

When you live in LA, you see a lot of celebri­ties. We stood on the side­walk with Jack Palance one night in Han­cock Park and watched a duplex burn to the ground. Lee Mar­vin shopped beside us in a depart­ment store on Wilshire Boule­vard. Elton John sat three tables away at L’Orangerie. The nov­el­ty wears off after a while, and you learn to respect their pri­va­cy. You take a quick look and move on. You nev­er stare. 

That sight­ing of Phil Spec­tor was dif­fer­ent, though. He was a glob­al­ly famous mul­ti-mil­lion­aire music pro­duc­er fac­ing a mur­der tri­al. The indict­ment alleged he shot a young woman late at night at his home, The Pyre­nees Cas­tle, a sprawl­ing man­sion locat­ed on a hill just a stone’s throw from The Colo­nial Kitchen, where we sat that morning.

The news reports said his behav­ior became unpre­dictable and vio­lent decades ear­li­er when his career began to fal­ter. His first song was a mega-hit way back in 1958 when he was only 19. He wrote, arranged, played gui­tar, sang, and pro­duced To Know Him is to Love Him with the group, The Ted­dy Bears. It soared to num­ber one on the charts and remained a top hit for six months, sell­ing over two and a half mil­lion copies. The Ted­dy Bears broke up. Spec­tor moved behind the scenes as a pro­duc­er and released a daz­zling string of hits in the ear­ly 1960’s. Dream Lover, Da Doo Ron Ron, Then He Kissed Me, Be My Baby, I Love the Way You Love Me. By the time he was 26, he had pro­duced more than two dozen songs that made the Bill­board Top 40, most of them char­ac­ter­ized by his sig­na­ture “wall of sound,” legions of musi­cal instru­ments and back­up singers that came togeth­er in a dynam­ic son­ic mass, prob­a­bly best exem­pli­fied by The Right­eous Broth­ers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feel­in’.

But in the late 1960’s his red-hot career sud­den­ly cooled off, and his per­son­al life fell apart. His first mar­riage blew up. His sec­ond wife, Veron­i­ca Ben­nett, lead singer of The Ronettes, said he impris­oned her in The Pyre­nees Cas­tle and abused her. After she divorced him in 1974, he hit the bot­tle hard and devel­oped a fond­ness for firearms. He spec­tac­u­lar­ly crashed his car, fly­ing through the wind­shield and almost dying from the head injuries. Even amidst the tur­moil, he man­aged to pro­duce sev­er­al albums in the 1970’s with John Lennon and George Har­ri­son, but his pro­fes­sion­al behav­ior became errat­ic and volatile. He famous­ly shot up the stu­dio ceil­ing while work­ing on a Lennon album and put a loaded revolver to singer Leonard Cohen’s head dur­ing a taping. 

In the 1980’s and 90’s, he pro­duced almost no music as his life tum­bled steadi­ly down­hill. On the night of Feb­ru­ary 2, 2003, about a month before Cindy and I saw him at The Colo­nial Kitchen, he hit rock bot­tom. He drank his way through Bev­er­ly Hills and Hol­ly­wood, fin­ish­ing up at the House of Blues on Sun­set Strip where he talked Lana Clark­son, a B‑movie actress less than half his age, into going back to the Cas­tle with him. Spector’s chauf­feur, Adri­ano de Souza, drove them there and watched them go inside the house. Sit­ting in the dri­ve­way, he heard a gun­shot, and Spec­tor came out the front door bran­dish­ing a revolver. “I think I killed some­body,” he said. De Souza found Clarkson’s corpse slumped in a chair, a gun­shot wound to the mouth, blood splat­tered on the chair and wall, bits of her teeth on the floor. When the police came, they had to taser Spec­tor to dis­arm him.

The LA Dis­trict Attor­ney charged him with sec­ond-degree mur­der, and he was out of jail on a one mil­lion dol­lar bail bond when Cindy and I saw him that morn­ing in The Colo­nial Kitchen.

So we couldn’t resist star­ing at Phil Spec­tor, but we gawked at him for too long. He looked up and caught us. A hard look came across his face. We turned away and resumed eat­ing break­fast, but he didn’t let it go. Every time I glanced at him, he was still glar­ing at us. This went on for five or ten min­utes. Spec­tor was a lit­tle guy, about five feet five, a hun­dred forty pounds, but he packed more malev­o­lence into his dark scowl than most any­one I’d encoun­tered. I don’t want to make too much of this. He didn’t move toward us or threat­en us in any way, but his men­ac­ing glow­er was unset­tling. We cut our break­fast short and he stared us down all the way out the door.

Years lat­er, his first tri­al end­ed in a hung jury, but the jury in the sec­ond tri­al found him guilty and the judge gave him 19 to life. I hadn’t thought much about him after that until two weeks ago when I learned he died on Jan­u­ary 14 of com­pli­ca­tions from Covid19 while serv­ing out his prison sentence.

When Cindy and I were watch­ing a tele­vi­sion show recap­ping his trou­bled life, I asked her if she remem­bered that day we saw him. “I’ll nev­er for­get it,” she said. She recalled his angry stare as vivid­ly as I did. “The face of evil,” she said.

Spec­tor lament­ed that he strug­gled with the “dev­ils inside me.” Men­tal ill­ness ran in his fam­i­ly. His father com­mit­ted sui­cide when Spec­tor was nine. Telling­ly, the inscrip­tion on his father’s grave­stone reads, “To know him was to love him.” Spec­tor, his moth­er, and sis­ter fought con­stant­ly, blam­ing one anoth­er for the sui­cide. His sis­ter was even­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted to a men­tal insti­tu­tion. In an inter­view a few months before he shot Lana Clark­son, Spec­tor said he was bi-polar and tak­ing med­ica­tion for schiz­o­phre­nia. “I’ve been a very tor­tured soul,” he said. “I have not been at peace. I have not been happy.”

In prepar­ing this post, I pulled up his top hits on the inter­net and lis­tened to them all in one sit­ting. It was an emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. They take you back to your first slow dance, those sock-hops in the gym, the first big crush, the breakup that felt like the end of the world. Each song is a mag­i­cal mas­ter­piece, the pop music touch­stones of my generation’s ado­les­cence, “lit­tle sym­phonies for the kids,” Spec­tor called them, dec­la­ra­tions of teen love and heartache set to orches­tral explo­sions, drums pound­ing like heart­beats, strings swelling and reced­ing, thun­der­ous hand­claps, clat­ter­ing cas­tanets, blar­ing horns, and boom­ing cho­rus­es. They’re bril­liant and wonderful.

He want­ed this music to be his lega­cy. “I don’t want to be Elvis or Lenny Bruce,” he once said. “Do you think peo­ple will remem­ber their genius or the way they died on the bath­room floor?”

Spec­tor was a boy genius who rose above the mis­ery of his child­hood and shot the moon, but when he lost the mag­ic and couldn’t get it back, dev­ils breached his wall of sound and reclaimed their place inside him. His music will live on, as he hoped, but sad­ly for Spec­tor, most peo­ple will remem­ber the man he became. 

The tor­tured soul. 

The mur­der­er.

The face of evil.

2020 Pan­dem­ic – Day 339

The grand­fa­ther clock in the entry hall sounds West­min­ster chimes fol­lowed by six gongs. I roll over and sit up on the edge of the bed in the dark, scratch my head, and yawn. I turn on the light, stum­ble into the bath­room, and look in the mir­ror at an old guy. Mussed-up sil­ver hair, puffy eyes, sag­ging jowls. He is my grandchildren’s Papaw, and he looks the part. 

I take my blood pres­sure pill, shave, brush my teeth, floss, gar­gle, show­er, tow­el off, and step on the scales. Up anoth­er pound. I heave a sigh. 

I dress, go down­stairs, and open a can of dog food. When I set the bowls on the floor, Zoey and P.D. jump around, whip­ping my shins with their ropey tails, hap­py out of their minds about the same meal I’ve fed them twice a day for a decade. 

Cindy and I watch the Chan­nel 7 morn­ing news. Gov­er­nor New­som, his pale face smil­ing like it hurts, begs Cal­i­for­ni­ans to stay at home, then apol­o­gizes yet again for the pho­tos that caught him din­ing indoors at a pricey restau­rant with a dozen peo­ple, none of them masked. “I made a mis­take,” he says, just before he extends California’s stay-at-home order into late January. 

The news anchor reports that yesterday’s death toll in Los Ange­les broke the pre­vi­ous one-day record. She cuts to a clip of May­or Garcetti’s press con­fer­ence, broad­cast last night from his home where he is quar­an­tined because his daugh­ter test­ed pos­i­tive. “Our hos­pi­tals are over­run,” the may­or says with tears in his eyes. I feel sor­ry for him. The lock­down isn’t help­ing, but he doesn’t know what else to do so he dou­bles down. “Can­cel every­thing,” he tells us. 

We fin­ish break­fast. Cindy heads into the fam­i­ly room to work on her needle­point­ing project, a mul­ti­col­ored ele­phant for one of our grandsons. 

I read the news­pa­per. A front page arti­cle describes chaos at an east-side hos­pi­tal. With twelve patients in cri­sis mode, over­head speak­ers sound Code Blues con­tin­u­ous­ly. Sev­en die with­in a six hour shift, two in a hall­way because there was no ICU bed avail­able. Anoth­er arti­cle says 442 peo­ple died state-wide yes­ter­day, one every three and a half min­utes. Hos­pi­tal morgues are over­flow­ing; funer­al homes are turn­ing away corpses. I toss the news­pa­per in the trash and try to purge its dark images from my thoughts.

At eight, I put on my coat and boots for the main event of the day. “I’m leav­ing,” I shout to Cindy. 

“Have a good time.”

I dri­ve to the barn. When I come through the gate, Lily and Jack­son nick­er a greet­ing. I brush Lily’s mane and tail and groom her coat. My daugh­ter and six-year-old grand­daugh­ter lead Marge into the cor­ral from our oth­er barn, tie her up, and tack up Jack­son while I sad­dle Lily. The horse whis­per­er arrives on her geld­ing, Jesse. We’re masked and six feet apart as we mount up and ride out. My daugh­ter leads on Jack­son; I fol­low on Lily; the horse whis­per­er trails on Jesse, pony­ing Marge with my grand­daugh­ter up. 

“Hey, Papaw, what’s the ghost’s favorite plant?” she says. 

“I don’t know.”

“Bam­boooo!”

Our masks muf­fle our laughter. 

It’s a beau­ti­ful day, clear sky, fifty degrees, the air crisp and clean. We crest a hill. Below us, the val­ley floor stretch­es out to pur­ple moun­tains in the east. Lat­er, on flat­land, the horse whis­per­er schools my grand­daugh­ter on trot­ting. Her back is straight; her hands qui­et; her form per­fect. We end the ride with an easy walk down Long Val­ley Road to the barn. 

When the oth­ers leave, I fetch car­rots from the tack room and give one to Lily. She rif­fles my arm with her lips and rests her head on my shoul­der. Jack­son bangs around in the next stall, jeal­ous. I give him a car­rot, pet him, then dri­ve back home. 

Before the stay-at-home order I would meet my train­er at the gym for an hour’s work­out three days a week. Now I exer­cise at home with weights and an ath­let­ic ball. With­out the trainer’s encour­age­ment I give up after thir­ty minutes. 

Back in the house, Cindy shows me the morning’s hand­i­work. The vivid col­ors and intri­cate stitch­ing on a flat can­vass resem­ble an ana­con­da instead of an ele­phant, but when she con­verts her projects to three dimen­sions, they always mag­i­cal­ly trans­form into a stun­ning work of art. 

After lunch, I sit in my home office and work on my nov­el. Jer­ry Dade is 73, a life-long bank rob­ber who suf­fers from symp­toms of demen­tia. He’s ter­ri­fied, and I want to save him. All the main char­ac­ters in my nov­els came through dark caves into the light, but I can’t seem to find a cred­i­ble way out for Jerry. 

After a cou­ple hours of frus­tra­tion, I take a break, dri­ve to the oth­er barn, and hang out with Marge and Wil­son. Wilson’s a big old boy with a gen­tle dis­po­si­tion. Feel­ing bad that we left him behind today, I promise him I’ll ride him tomor­row. The break helps. I come up with an idea, go back home, and write it out. 

You can set your watch by the dogs’ inter­nal clocks. At four sharp they start danc­ing around my desk. There’s no deny­ing them. I grab their leash­es and dri­ve them to a trail head. We walk less than a mile in an hour as they pause over every scent. 

Back at home, the dogs’ evening meal pro­duces anoth­er fren­zied eupho­ria. Cindy and I grill chick­en and make a sal­ad. After din­ner we watch tele­vi­sion, then go to bed. Cindy falls asleep while I read. I’m in the mid­dle of Paris Trout by Pete Dex­ter. When the page blurs, I turn off the bed­side lamp. I brood about the spread of Covid and the stay-at-home order as I drift off to sleep.

Day 340

The grand­fa­ther clock in the entry hall sounds West­min­ster chimes fol­lowed by six gongs. I roll over and sit up on the edge of the bed in the dark, scratch my head, and yawn. I turn on the light, stum­ble into the bath­room, and look in the mir­ror at an old guy. 

Lat­er, stand­ing at the kitchen counter, I’m open­ing a can of dog food when a descrip­tion of a med­ical cri­sis in yesterday’s news­pa­per comes back to haunt me. A hos­pi­tal bed in an ICU. An endo­tra­cheal tube extends from a patient’s mouth to a gas­ket con­nect­ed to a ven­ti­la­tor. Exhaust­ed health care work­ers in haz­mat suits hov­er over him. His eyes widen with pan­ic. He gasps for breath. 

As I look out the win­dow at the amber glow of anoth­er pic­turesque sun­rise at the top of anoth­er per­fect day a sense of guilt wash­es over me. I’m quar­an­tined in a Gar­den of Eden with Cindy, the hors­es, and the dogs. As long as I keep my dis­tance, I can still see my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. The rate of infec­tion in Hid­den Hills is among the low­est in the coun­ty, but in the unlike­ly event the virus finds us here, Cindy and I are healthy and we’ll beat it. I’ve got it made, but while oth­ers strug­gle just to sur­vive, I sulk about being locked down in Par­adise. My malaise is self­ish and friv­o­lous, and I’m ashamed of it. 

“You’d bet­ter feed them before they break your legs,” Cindy says, stand­ing beside me. 

I come out of my trance to the sting of ropey dog tails lash­ing my shins. I set the bowls on the floor, and Zoey and P.D. gob­ble up their stan­dard chow like it’s filet mignon. Cindy smiles. I do, too. 

In bed that night, I read Paris Trout. The page blurs. I turn off the light. The day has fol­lowed the pat­tern of all the pre­vi­ous days of the stay-at-home order, but this time as I drift off to sleep, instead of wor­ry­ing about Covid, I think about Cindy’s smile, Lily’s soul­ful eyes, and my grand­daugh­ter rid­ing Marge. 

Post Script: Appar­ent­ly, my sense of guilt is not unique. See The Para­dox of Priv­i­lege: Guilt Dur­ing Covid-19 at https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-paradox-of-privilege-guilt-during-covid19-65509/ 

Bob­bye Marrs, a world-class pub­lish­ing assis­tant, talked me into writ­ing a month­ly blog five years ago. She pitched the idea while we sat in a cor­ner of Eric and Pamela Hutchins’ home in Texas at a writ­ers’ con­fer­ence. “It sounds like a lot of work,” I said. “What pur­pose does it serve?”

She said a peri­od­ic newslet­ter with a blog post could help build the read­er­ship for my nov­els. I didn’t want to do it, but she per­sist­ed, drag­ging ideas out of me while I did my best to remain stuck in the mud.

When Pamela joined our table and asked how we were pro­gress­ing, I intend­ed to say, “No way I’m going to waste time and ener­gy on a blog,” but Bob­bye beat me to the punch. “He’s got plen­ty of mate­r­i­al. Thoughts about writ­ing. Sto­ries about his fam­i­ly. Fun­ny times with his dogs. He should def­i­nite­ly give it a try.”

“It’ll take too much time,” I grumped. “I can’t write nov­els if I have to churn out an essay every week.”

“So don’t write every week,” Bob­bye said. “Write one post a month or when­ev­er you feel like it. Why not give it a try? See how it goes?”

I con­tin­ued to resist, but Pamela and Bob­bye kept at it until I agreed to write a few draft blog posts. An exper­i­ment in futil­i­ty, I told myself while I sat at the com­put­er bang­ing out three short works. I wasn’t impressed with what I wrote. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this,” I said in an email to Bob­bye, attach­ing Swanie, Dog Days, and What’s in a Name. “These seem corny to me.”

Know­ing she need­ed rein­force­ments to break open my closed mind, Bob­bye sent my drafts to SkipJack’s social media guru, Abbey Road. “She’s not afraid to say what’s on her mind,” Bob­bye told me, “and she’s been doing this kind of thing suc­cess­ful­ly for a long time so I know we’ll get an hon­est eval­u­a­tion from her.”

My expec­ta­tions were low, so as Bob­bye had planned, I was bowled over when I got Abbey’s feed­back. “Bob­bye, these are WONDERFUL blogs. I could read these all day. They are per­fect. Please tell Ken not to feel ‘corny.’ Tell him to run free. This is what blogs are sup­posed to be. Good short sto­ries. Real life hap­pen­ings and rec­ol­lec­tions. Pub­lish these. Just put it out there and keep going.”

They say flat­tery goes a long way with those who have small minds and big egos. I don’t know any­thing about that, but all of a sud­den, this blog­ging busi­ness seemed like a great idea. We put those first three works out there and kept going, rolling out one a month for the next four years.

The orig­i­nal con­cept was that I would write about the craft of cre­at­ing a nov­el, but I soon dis­cov­ered I don’t have much to offer on that sub­ject. My “process” is mad­den­ing­ly chaot­ic. I write a huge vol­ume of unpub­lish­able blath­er, cull out the few coher­ent pas­sages, revise them end­less­ly, and throw away most of the rewrites. When I’m on the verge of jump­ing off a tall build­ing in frus­tra­tion, a sto­ry some­times steps out of the fog of con­fu­sion and grabs me by the throat and the writ­ing begins to flow. I don’t under­stand it; I wouldn’t wish it on any­one; and I sure as hell don’t want to write about it.

Cast­ing around for a dif­fer­ent approach, I exper­i­ment­ed with short non­fic­tion pieces about my past. They were fun to write and they received a pos­i­tive reac­tion from read­ers. So I stayed with that. Hit­ting my stride after a few months, I found myself revis­it­ing events in my life going all the way back to my ear­li­est mem­o­ries, turn­ing them over in my mind, weigh­ing their mean­ing, and under­stand­ing them much more deeply than I did when I lived through them. From encoun­ters with inter­est­ing peo­ple like Muham­mad Ali, Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, Anna Ander­son, who claimed to be the daugh­ter of the Tsar of Rus­sia, and Harold Swan­son, Hollywood’s first lit­er­ary agent, to com­ing to grips with life and death deci­sions, the trau­ma of aging, the heart­break of demen­tia, sur­vival dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, and rep­re­sent­ing a death row defen­dant, my month­ly writ­ing jour­ney spanned the emo­tion­al spec­trum and became enor­mous­ly impor­tant to me.

Mean­while, Bob­bye made it easy to pub­lish my sto­ries. She set up my web­site in its cur­rent form and main­tains it. She rides herd on the weird dudes in Lon­don, who fight off the Russ­ian bots, spam jock­eys, and ubiq­ui­tous hack­ers deter­mined to sad­dle my posts with links to porn, pay­day loans, bit­coin traders, Via­gra ven­dors, pho­ny casi­nos, a young woman named Kristi­na who’s search­ing for a sug­ar dad­dy, and a host of oth­er scam artists. She proof­reads the Word doc­u­ment I send her every month for typos and con­tent, syn­the­sizes it with pho­tos, and cre­ates the pre­sen­ta­tion you find on my website’s blog page. She pre­pares the for­mat and pro­mo­tion­al pitch­es for my newslet­ter, main­tains its mail­ing list, dis­trib­utes it, and for­wards all the read­ers’ com­ments to me. I’m tech­no­log­i­cal­ly incom­pe­tent, so when I do some­thing that fouls up the entire web­site, she some­how straight­ens it out, cre­at­ing order out of ram­pant chaos.

Keep­ing the Promise is the result of our part­ner­ship, a col­lec­tion of my first fifty blog posts, a series of non-fic­tion short sto­ries in the nature of an episod­ic mem­oir pre­sent­ed out of chrono­log­i­cal order and grouped under the head­ings Mile­stones, Inter­est­ing Peo­ple I’ve Met Along the Way, Growth From Adver­si­ty, Mur­der Most Foul, Faith­ful Com­pan­ions, and On Writ­ing. The book’s title is tak­en from a post about my grand­fa­ther pub­lished in May 2020, in the ear­ly days of the cur­rent pan­dem­ic. A short time before he passed away, he asked me to promise him I’d always try hard at every­thing I did. I made the promise, although I wasn’t sure I would keep it, and I haven’t always lived up to it in the fifty years that fol­lowed. These posts recall events on both sides of that ledger. The blog post, Keep­ing the Promise, leads them off because it gives you a good sense of the posts that fol­low and because I kept my promise with each essay and tried my best.

Since we orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished the sto­ries on my blog for free, I hoped to offer this col­lec­tion for free as well. Cur­rent­ly, the ebook is avail­able for free on Ama­zon, Nook, Apple, Kobo, and Google Play. Although I’ve waived the roy­al­ties, at some point these sites will like­ly insist on charg­ing a trans­fer­ence fee, so if you want a free ebook, down­load it soon. With the paper­back, the $6.99 charge is the low­est price we could nego­ti­ate with the printer.

Writ­ing these sto­ries took me back in time and gave me new per­spec­tives on the art of liv­ing a long life. They made me laugh and they made me cry, some­times in the same breath. If you read Keep­ing The Promise all the way through, you’ll know me bet­ter when you fin­ish than I knew myself when I start­ed writ­ing it. No guar­an­tee that’s a good thing for either one of us, but hey, in your case at least you get a free book.