Stories From Westlake Village

Windy Mullins is eighty-seven years old. His son, Frank, is close to seventy. They are a hot-tempered and reclusive pair, but in spite of their irascibility, they manage to take care of themselves in a little run-down frame house on Westwood Avenue.

If you're new in town and run into Windy and Frank in the Hollow Leg Saloon, you'd never guess who was the father and who was the son. They're just two cranky old men who mow lawns in the summer and plow driveways in the winter. They've lived together so long, they've come to look alike and talk alike. They even wear each other's clothes. If there was ever a father/son relationship, I'm sure it disappeared about the time Windy's wife, Faye, threw up her hands and walked out on the two of them.

The house they live in is obviously rotting from the inside out. The windows are dirty, and the shades are pulled down at different levels. Upon closer observation, you can see the curtains are torn, the snowplow sits on the front lawn and the mailbox hangs askew by the front door. In the Westlake Village Deli across the street, they have breakfast every morning when it opens at six. Their breakfast consists of pale coffee in a plastic cup and a buttered bagel wrapped in waxed paper. In summer, the two of them sit outdoors on the bench by the bus stop and wait for the two Central American handy-men to help them with their lawn-mowing business. In the late fall, the landscaping business drops off and the Central Americans are sent back home. Then, when winter settles in, they plow driveways alone.

Old Windy was a tank driver in World War II. He and his crew arrived at Normandy in June of '44, and in the chaos of that memorable morning, Windy couldn't get the motor in his tank to kick over. He and his crew had to wade ashore without rations or equipment, and the tank was unceremoniously dumped into deep water where it probably rests to this day. It is a story Windy has told again and again with increasing elaboration. His son, Frank, was too young for World War II, but the perfect age for the Korean conflict. Frank's adventures in battle were hampered by the fact that Korea was a war of lesser magnitude. When Frank begins to tell the story of his artillery unit shelling the nurses' barracks in Seoul by mistake, Windy will break in with the botched landing on Omaha Beach. As each of them fence for audience attention, their faces will redden and their voices will rise in pitch and volume.

The oft-told tales of war are the personal triumphs of these two old men. As other men might display their college diplomas and professional licenses, Windy and Frank carry pictures of themselves in uniform. War is their centennial highlight, and nothing that came before or after means as much to them. Mrs. Mullins, wife and mother, plays little part in their memories.

Most of us in Westlake Village are veterans of one war or another. Had it not been for wars, potatoes would still be growing here. Like many Johnny-come-lately towns in the U.S.A., we are the result of an influx of newly married veterans of foreign wars in the defense of freedom, or democracy, or the right to do this or that.

I no longer concern myself with freedom. It is a word to me — a word like any other. It doesn't mean today what it used to mean. As a member of the press, (how presumptuous of me; the Guardian publishes biweekly), I see very few examples of freedom. There is Mr. and Mrs. Hungerford across the street — both in their seventies — both of them were eager to enjoy the fruits of senior citizenship, such as they may be. Their son and daughter-in-law, (both in their fifties), have recently divorced and left their children, (both in their teens) with the elder Hungerfords — in escrow, so to speak. To put it bluntly, I think 'freedom' is a subjective illusion. It means something to Mr. and Mrs. Hungerford, something else to me, and most likely something else to you.

Freedom, to Windy and Frank, is nothing more than the time and space to spin their tiresome tales of army life. As time goes by, their audience dwindles, much as the audience found better things to do when Henry's troops returned from Agincourt and Jason and his Argonauts returned from the quest. Nothing is more tiresome than an old hero, unless it is two old heroes.

Last Independence Day, Windy and Frank got to ride together in the back seat of Mady Bergen's convertible. Windy is the oldest member of the American Legion Post 278, and Frank is the present Commander. Of all the places one may sit in the Independence Day Parade, the back seat of Mady Bergen's convertible is the most comfortable place to be. It is, after all, a white Eldorado with beige leather upholstery, and it rolls along at a stately two and a half miles per hour between the Fire Department band and those few veterans of the American Legion Post 278 still able to walk.

This Independence Day is different, however, for Windy and Frank have won the Power Ball Lottery!

We post the winning numbers as a public service in the front window of the Guardian, and that's where Frank first got the news of his windfall. Our fly-specked window faces Westwood Avenue, and we can watch people stop by to check their numbers. They will stand there, mouths open, and carefully compare the numbers posted with the numbers on their tickets.

On the Friday before Independence Day, the jackpot was 8.3 million dollars, (pretty small potatoes in the history of jackpots), and though we heard someone had won, no one had, as yet, come forth with the winning number. Clancy walked up, checked his number, shook his head sadly and walked on. So did Mae Pfieffer, Julie Slansky, and Don Javits.

Along came Frank Mullins. He pulled up to the curb in his truck and trailer. Old Windy was asleep in the passenger seat and the two Central Americans were sitting in the trailer with the lawn mowers and the grass clippings. Frank checked his numbers in the window and seemed to fidget, shifting his weight from foot to foot, like the last man in a crowded lavatory. He walked back to the truck, took a look at his father, asleep in the passenger seat, then walked back and pulled one of the Central Americans out of the trailer. He handed him a piece of paper and walked him up to our front window. The two of them carefully compared the piece of paper with the Power Ball numbers in our window.

They stood there. Frank seemed confused, and the Central American seemed anxious to get back in the trailer. It appeared to me that something was afoot so I went to the front door and opened it.

"Good news, Frank? Are you a millionaire?" He eyed me warily and shooed the Central American back to the trailer. His voice was an octave higher than it should have been.

"Them numbers in yer winda — the ones fer the Power Ball — y'sure they're right?"

"Right as rain, Frank, why?"

I've only run across one other millionaire in my time. That was Nelson Rockefeller when he rode up Fifth Avenue in his black Cadillac in a St. Patrick's Day Parade. Nelson looked at me just as Frank Mullins did on that Friday before Independence Day — skeptically, as you would a six-legged creature in the kitchen sink.

Frank turned his back on me and walked back to the truck. He rapped on the window to wake his father, then opened the door and shook him. They talked a bit, and then Windy climbed stiffly out of the truck and the two of them went back to the trailer and had a chat with the Central Americans. They were apparently through for the day, for they gathered up their lunch pails and undershirts. I was left with no other alternative than to assume that Frank and Windy had hit it big. I hoped they would accept their new-found wealth wisely and with Christian generosity. But, knowing them, it didn't seem likely.

If they were reclusive before, they were now antisocial. Little could be seen of them. I prowled the aisles of the supermarket hoping to catch a glimpse of one of them, but apparently someone was doing their shopping for them, or perhaps they were dining out — but that seemed unlikely. They were not epicures. Their preference in cuisine did not extend further than IHOP and Chicken Delight, and if they had eaten in such places, everyone would have seen them. The widow Clare Hardy stopped by their house one afternoon and brought them a cheesecake. She stood knocking at their front door for nearly fifteen minutes. There was no answer, although she could see the flickering of a black and white television set through the torn curtains of the living room window. She finally gave up and went home.

Then there was the town lawyer Wally Venturi; Wally is not as discreet as a lawyer should be. As we stood shoulder to shoulder at the Hollow Leg Saloon, he disclosed that Windy and Frank had opted to claim the lump sum payment rather than the monthly allotment. Because of that, the 8.3 million was immediately whittled down to 3.7 million. "Then," he said, "the IRS jumped in and claimed 1.8 million, and the state took another million for themselves."

"Holy Smokes, Wally! Was there anything left?"

"Well, I guess five hundred thousand or so. About two fifty each I'd say. Then there was my fee, of course, and the settlement with the two Central Americans."

"The two guys in the trailer?"

"Yeah. Them . . . see, Frank signed for them down at immigration for the season. Then he left them hangin' — so they sued."

"What I think you're tellin' me, Wally, is that there may not be any money left at all — right?" The specter of Windy and Frank, our two Power Ball winners applying for food stamps flashed across my mind.

"Lemme' put it this way. By the time they pay off court costs and lawyer's fees, even if they settle out of court with the lawn mowers' lawyers, they might break even, except . . . " Wally finished his beer, took a deep breath and shuddered.

"Except what?" I asked.

"Well, there's old Faye Mullins, y'see. She got wind of it — read it in the paper or something. She wants her third."

"But a third of nothing is nothing, right?"

"That's where you're wrong. It's a third off the top, not a third off the bottom."