Father's Day

My dad Orrin in 1938

My dad was quite a man. Full of dreams, many unfulfilled because he died so young -- only 47 years old. We were not alike and were not very close when I was growing up. But we have bond that seems only to have grown stronger in the 45 years since he died.

He always had too many projects going at the same time. He always looked for a bargain, almost never bought new or full-price. And he always wanted to do things himself, whether it was hand-digging a well, installing a furnace or building new kitchen cabinets. If he didn't know how to do it, he'd find somebody who did and learn from them. For many of his projects, I was his not-so-willing laborer. But now I'm happy with the memories.

When I was eight years old, my dad gave my sister and me "new" bicycles for Christmas. Actually, he put them together from junkyard parts that he hand-welded. They looked great to me, even if I had a hard time to learning to ride mine. He was impatient when it came to teaching me how to do things. If I didn't get it right away, he'd get angry or bored. I eventually mastered bicycle-riding on my own, after he gave up teaching me. The same was true of driving a car and any number of other things.

I was a bookish, awkward kid. Growing up, it seemed as if he knew how to do everything and I would never be as good or smart or clever as he was. It wasn't until I was middle-aged that it dawned on me that I had spent so much of my life trying to show my dad that was I worthy of his affection. Several years of therapy also helped me understand that such yearning isn't unique. Many boys feel inadequate compared to their dads and in striving to be like them or even better they build healthy self-esteem.

Today, I admit that I've become quite a bit like my dad. And, like Al Franken's character Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me. And Happy Father's Day, dad.

Lookin' Back, Texas

Luckenbach, Texas -- Home of Willie Nelson's July 4 Picnic

We didn't quite know what to expect when we arrived in Texas nearly five years ago. Being West Coasters by birth and disposition, we were intimidated by some stereotypes we had heard about. For instance, I expressed some fear that Southern Baptists might abduct us and send us off to a reeducation camp for recalcitrant Biblical relativists. We worried that, if word leaked we had voted for John Kerry, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (funded by a Houston gazillionaire) would torpedo our moving van. Dallas is Laura and Dubya's hometown, after all, and Dick Cheney lived here when he ran Halliburton.

Now, as we prepare to move to our new home in Washington State, I laugh when I think about the misconceptions and misplaced anxiety which afflicted us. Texas doesn't come close to living up to the stereotypes that smug Coasters assign to it. We've made lots of great friends here, found it easy to fit right in, and quickly came to adore Tex-Mex food. (I am fearful of serious withdrawals when we hit Puget Sound, where taco shells are sold in a box and salsa is canned.)

I remember the day we moved into our house. The movers took all day to unpack our stuff, and in the process the giant van blocked our neighbor's driveway for several hours. We rang her door bell to apologize for the inconvenience, not quite sure what to expect. Imagine our surprise to find that we had parked ourselves next to a native Texan who had spent 18 years working in Southern California. She had returned to Texas just a few years before. Even more surprising, she was an Episcopalian just like we are! And when we told her we were a gay couple, she didn't bat an eyelash and immediately told us she had friends she wanted us to meet. I saw the stereotypes evaporating before my eyes.

Later, I learned that Dallas had changed dramatically in the past couple decades, as more people moved here from all over the country. During our time here, the city has had a Jewish woman mayor, an African-American district attorney and a Latina sheriff who is also a lesbian. The city can sometimes seem more progressive than our old hometown of Los Angeles, that bastion of Hollywood liberals. Of course there are ignorant, intolerant, stupid people here, but they are as easy to tune out in Dallas as they are in California.

Throughout our years in Dallas, we have continually been surprised by the diversity of people, culture and geography here. It's been impressive to see how seriously this city works on improving its quality of life. The Meyerson Symphony Hall, designed by I.M. Pei, compares well with any in the world. The art museums house some of the finest collections anywhere. And the city is about to complete its downtown Arts Center by opening a new opera house and theater center.

So, dear Texas, please accept my sincere apology for underestimating how friendly, diverse and open-hearted you really are. Sure, you sometimes have swagger and attitude, but I finally figured out that you do it mostly with a wink to impress or scare non-Texans. I will miss your affection and hospitality. Thanks, y'all. And come on up and see us in Washington State.

The Long, Long Goodbye of General Motors

The 1977 Chevette

In the fall of 1975, I had recently become the auto writer in the Business section of the Los Angeles Times. I must confess I knew very little -- and cared very little -- about cars in those days. I had just ended my fling with a red sports car, a 1969 MGB that died a slow, painful death in 1974. I replaced it with a sensible yellow Chevy Nova. My Spanish-speaking friends later reminded me that "no va" in Spanish means "doesn't go." Appropriate, as a I think back on that car.

The newspaper had assigned me the auto beat because they thought a fresh eye from somebody who wasn't a "car nut" would bring a new perspective to coverage of that industry. Too often in the past, auto writers had been uncritical industry cheerleaders. In the mid-1970s, The Times decided to change that.

Among the first things I had to get used to as a newly minted auto writer were the extravagant junkets that auto companies sponsored to introduce new models. I was of the Watergate generation of reporters who didn't like taking even a free lunch from a news source. So imagine my conflict when I was told to cover the introduction of GM's Chevette, it's third attempt to compete with tiny cars from Europe and Japan. The first attempt was the Corvair. No need to say more about that. The second was the Vega, a genuinely innovative little car with an aluminum block engine and a European design. It failed miserably, however, so GM tried again by modifying a boxy little Chevy it had been building in Brazil for a few years.

To trumpet the arrival of the Chevette, GM invited the nation's auto writers to a junket in the Napa Valley. We stayed at the Silverado Country Club, and the splashy introduction itself took place during a wine-soaked five-course gourmet meal served at the beautiful Sterling Vineyards, overlooking the entire Napa Valley. The next day we drove the little cars on a "concours" through the wine country. I enjoyed the scenery, but I wasn't impressed with the car.

General Motors never quite understood the small car market, particularly in the 1970s. The negative attitude of GM executives toward Volkswagen, Renault, Toyota and Datsun (as Nissan was known then) was palpable: Little cars aren't sexy. They have no power. They're designed for poor people. And, worst of all, GM thought they weren't very profitable. GM's tradition was producing cars "for every purse and purpose," in the words of Alfred P. Sloan Jr., its visionary chief executive in the 1920s. The culture at GM was about moving people from cheaper cars to more expensive cars as they grew older and wealthier. You start in a Chevy and die in a Cadillac, they used to brag. GM's corporate structure and profitability were entirely dependent on that philosophy for more than 70 years.

So, given that attitude, it was no surprise that GM thought the Chevette was a car only for young and/or poor people. And it showed. The stripped-down Chevette Scooter model the company promoted as a "starter car" for the 1976 model year had no backseat as standard equipment. It had no carpet on the floor -- just black mats. It had a flimsy, floor mounted stick shift. It had painted bumpers -- no chrome unless you paid extra. And it had a rear-wheel-drive transmission. Is it any wonder that the Chevette compared badly against the spiffy, front-wheel-drive Volkswagen Rabbit that VW had just introduced to replace the original Beatle? Or that VW was opening an assembly plant in western Pennsylvania to produce the high demand for Rabbits it expected (and got) in the United States? (I remember a GM executive telling me that he thought VW's plant would fail within three years. It didn't.)

Today's bankruptcy filing by GM is the culmination of more than 40 years of myopic thinking at what was once the world's most successful company. GM's culture was so insular, so defensive and so smug that it let the rest of world walk away with its market. While GM was figuring ways to sell more Chevy Impalas and Cadillac Sedan de Villes, Honda was introducing the Civic and Toyota was selling the Corolla. Small cars that didn't feel cheap or poorly built -- and which became the best selling cars in America.

Let's hope that the keelhauling of GM in bankruptcy court will do what the marketplace has been unable to do for 40 years: get its head out of the sand.