ALTHOUGH WE WERE ALREADY ON A FEVERISH SCHEDULE THAT left us only a few hours a night for sleep, Maurice and I discovered still another hobby that soon became a passion: racing pigeons.
Mr. Nettles, the pigeon man, sold us our first pair of Belgian thoroughbreds, the original king and queen of our racing stable. Eddie and Peggy came from a noble line. Mr. Nettles had shown us how to differentiate them from their plebeian cousins, the culls in city parks. Our pair had broader chests and stronger wings, stood more erect, had a thick wattle (or white fleshy tissue) circling the eyes and over the beak. Once you had a close look at a thoroughbred racing pigeon, you could no more mistake it for a park pigeon than you would a racehorse for the lead pony that accompanies it to the starting gate. With Eddie and Peggy, Maurice and I were launching on a great adventure into the world of “serious birds.”
To build a pigeon house at the far end of our backyard, although we could have “borrowed” the materials from the studio, we preferred the bolder crime of filching the tar paper, wire screening, and wood; with so many houses still being built around us, it was irresistible to creep at night into construction sites. Our rationale was primitive socialism. The mansions going up on or near Wilshire Boulevard were larger than ours. A banker was building one with twenty rooms in an architectural style best described as Southern California Moorish. These new arrivals at Windsor Square could obviously afford whatever we needed for Eddie and Peggy’s dream house.
Following the instructions in our “pigeon bible” (by Elmer C. Rice), my dependable Uncle Joe built us a model loft that would last for years. Near the roof was an entranceway, with bars that moved in but not out so our birds could “home” into the loft but would not be able to fly out again until we released them.
Maurice and I were proud voyeurs as Eddie and Peggy began their elaborate mating ceremony, he puffing out his chest, spreading his tail and strutting while she coquettishly turned her head away. We could almost see her flouncing her crinoline petticoats. Finally, they held each others’ beaks, their necks throbbing in a pigeon soul kiss. Then she hunched down on the floor of the loft; he mounted her with a flashing of wings. In a few seconds it was over. He strutted off like a matador accepting the olé’s! of the crowd while she sauntered away with a practical “Well, at least that’s taken care of.”
In due course, two small white eggs arrived. For weeks we waited while Eddie and Peggy sat their eight-hour shifts. There was no protest from this husband that a woman’s place is in the home. We learned that the male accepts an equal share of the domestic responsibilities and that thoroughbred pigeons are mated for life. The philandering that flourished among homo sapiens Hollywoodiensis was practically unknown to homing pigeons.
On schedule our first two squabs were born. We noticed the activity in the nest and hurried into the loft to welcome the first entries in our racing stable. (Since Eddie and Peggy were from Mr. Nettles’s loft, they would always “home” there and so had to remain caged. But now we would have our own sleek thoroughbreds homing to 525 Lorraine.) Not that those featherless little bodies with oversized heads and feet bore anything but the most ludicrous resemblance to mature homing pigeons. Their heads wobbled like mechanical toys as we inspected them like proud parents. We slipped metal bands identifying our loft over their rubbery toes and onto their tiny legs, where they would remain until death.
We watched the first of our Lorraine homers enjoying their frequent daily meals as the parents flew from the feeder to the nest to regurgitate the “milk” of cracked corn and other grain into the eager, celluloid-like beaks of their young. In a week the squabs had doubled their size; in two weeks the nest was too small for them and their parents. Eddie and Peggy used the adjoining nest box. Every mated pair needed two nest boxes, since they often laid a second pair of eggs while the first set of squabs was still fattening in the other nest.
One morning we noticed an unusual commotion in the nest. Our squabs were screeching as if they were being killed. Eddie and Peggy were also in the nest and seemed to be attacking them. What they were actually doing was driving them out. The parents had a new nest to attend to now. The moment had come for the month-old children to go out on their own. But the children had other ideas. In terror and confusion, they protested through wide-open beaks, and flopped their unused wings so as not to lose their balance on the ledge of the nesting box. But they were no match for their parents. With a sickening thud (for they had yet to learn they could fly), they tumbled out onto the floor of the coop.
Hungry, frantic, abandoned, they ignored the feeder and fluttered their immature wings to beg their parents’ attention. Whenever Eddie and Peggy flew down to the feeder, the squabs hurried over to them with beaks wide open. But Eddie and Peggy pecked at them and drove them away. Their cries were piteous; at night they would huddle together in a corner of the coop. On the third day, prolonged hunger drew them to the feeder.
We were learning along with them. We bought another pair so as not to inbreed. We (or rather Uncle Joe) built a second coop so we could separate the homebred birds from their parents. We set up books to trace the bloodlines and to record their individual homing and racing performances. For homing pigeons must be bred, trained, and raced as carefully as four-footed sons of Man o’War and Seabiscuit.
Soon pigeon racing began to crowd out our other intense hobbies. Still tuning into the early-morning radio stations in Australia or Japan, we managed to meet at our loft at dawn to release our fledglings first one block away, then four blocks, then up to Melrose near the studio, a mile away. We watched as our young birds circled over our heads, round and round until the little compass in their heads clicked there; then they winged straight home, pushing the movable bars and flying into their loft. Occasionally a backslider would land in a tree or on a rooftop. If he or she persisted in this dereliction, we would try to trade or sell the sluggard. Other birds would “home” but, instead of flying right in and going to the feeder, would dawdle on the convenient roof of our teahouse. As we lengthened the training flights to five miles, ten—rising ever earlier to drive that distance—some birds would never make it back at all. Although homing was an instinct, it had to be developed with care.
Soon we were driving 25 miles out of provincial Los Angeles, fragrant with orange groves. We watched our birds circle under an impeccable blue sky and then aim themselves like arrows flying at sixty miles an hour. Then we raced them home. Joy it was to see them swoop down through the movable entranceway for a well-earned breakfast: cracked corn and fresh water. A homing pigeon will starve to death before giving up the homeward flight, even five hundred miles. Legendary homer heroes used for messenger service in the Great War managed to complete their missions even when fatally wounded.
As our young racers matured, their range outdistanced our ability to drive them 50 to 75 miles and still get back in time for school. We began to impose on friends motoring up to Santa Barbara, or down to Tijuana on weekend forays. Would they mind pulling off the road a moment to release our birds? We’d pick up the empty cages at their homes when they returned. As we grew more professional, entering our best in the formal races of the Sierra Racing Pigeon Club, we’d entrust our sleek champions to a railroad conductor on the old Santa Fe, who—for a modest fee—would release them from the baggage car when the train stopped at Victorville a hundred miles away.
When our homers streaked in from their first long flight, we were as proud as the owners of a winning three-year-old Kentucky colt headed for Churchill Downs. We learned how to breed our own thoroughbreds, selecting the superior young males and females and confining them in a mating box. There they would stare at each other through a partition. When they were ready for the next act of Boy Meets Girl, we removed the partition. Nature prevailed.
One day a strange white pigeon followed our birds into their coop. It was almost a third larger than any of our thoroughbreds and looked more like a sea gull than a homing pigeon. We released him with a new class of young birds we were training. To our surprise Whitey returned, first from a mile, then five. Had we discovered a new species of homing pigeon, even bigger and stronger than our Belgian blue bloods? As we increased the distance to 25 and 50 miles, he continued to lead the new trainees back. He had only one bad habit. Instead of flying directly into the coop through the movable bars, he would land on the slanting roof of the nearby teahouse and preen himself. In pigeon races each entry has a rubber racing band on his leg which must be inserted into the official racing-pigeon clock as soon as he returns to his coop. Like horse and foot races, it is a sport of precious seconds; and we had learned to work with quick-fingered efficiency to grab our birds and stop the clock. So we tried to train the powerful but erratic Whitey by not feeding him the night before a long flight and by scattering cracked corn on the landing platform leading to the loft entrance.
When we thought Whitey was ready, we entered him in one of the major races in southern California. Two hundred miles over the rugged San Bernardino mountains. Depending on weather conditions, a fast bird would make it home in about four hours.
Half an hour before E.T.A., Maurice and I set up our vigil, our eyes trained on a sea-blue sky. In those smogless years, we could see the rim of the yellow-brown mountain range rising behind Hollywood, dividing us from the rolling country of Ventura Valley.
Flying over those hills and down into Windsor Square a fluttering speck appeared—Whitey! Home in less than four hours—record time over those mountains. We crouched near the door to the coop, ready to punch the racing band into our racing clock the moment we could slip it off his leg. But there we waited, and waited, while a self-satisfied Whitey preened himself on the teahouse roof. While the winning seconds ticked away on our racing clock, he refused all our blandishments. Fifteen minutes later, when our first group of entries appeared, Whitey condescended to follow them into the coop.
When we rushed our clock to the club headquarters, our fears were confirmed. If Whitey could have been timed from the second he landed on the teahouse roof, we would have won! Less tenderhearted or more professional pigeon-trainers would have consigned Whitey to the nearest butcher shop. Hard-nosed breeders, like Mr. Nettles, told us it was a waste of valuable grain to maintain a homer who wasn’t literally up to scratch. A quick twist of the neck and a one-way trip to the stew pot was the common fate of the reluctant racer. But our birds were pets with names and personalities. Losing them in races and long training flights was painful enough. How could we sentence them to cold-blooded execution? Handy Uncle Joe built us more coops as our flock expanded.
There was a reassuring sense of order to our racing-pigeon world, so different from the movie world that was our larger nest. There we knew of the fractured if not broken marriages, and the flashy studio pimps—the casting directors and the favored agents who served up pretty hopefuls to the studio bosses like squabs on toast. Again and again we saw last year’s stars transformed into this year’s flops; careers hung by a golden but flimsy thread. While everybody wanted to get close to L. B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, Jesse Lasky, and B. P. Schulberg, those moguls lived in daily anxiety. L. B. was wary of Irving, and Father woke up each morning with new fears about the machinations of “New York.” Clara Bow was worried about gaining weight and Gloria Swanson was worried about losing box-office appeal. Margaret Mayer was worried about losing her self-righteous L.B. to studio starlets. Harry Rapf was worried that his position as the Number Three man in the MGM hierarchy was being undermined by the Thalberg henchmen. Like rival principalities, each major studio intrigued against all the others, and at the same time was a house divided, a hive of enemy camps.
It seemed no accident that the studios were built along a major geological fault and that from time to time actual tremors cracked our windows and made the hanging lamps swing like pendulums. Had we built our magnificent castles of stucco on shifting sands? With our 16-cylinder cars, our liveried chauffeurs, and movie stars for dinner companions and tennis partners, we would seem to have nothing to worry about. Yet the smell of fear mingled with the scent of orange blossoms. Apart from the innate fascination of homing pigeons, our dedication to our loft stemmed from the stability we found in our thoroughbred family. Here we could play God to our growing flock, sending our prize birds off to fly great distances, and choosing the pairs to be mated for life.
But even in this well-ordered world there were aberrations. One of our hens, whom we called Mary, turned out to be a natural-born slut who refused to accept the prevailing marital arrangement and instead set up a little back-street nest in a rear corner of the pigeon house. There she would occasionally distract a roving male from his domestic duties. Mary came from a good family and we tried our best to imbue her with the morality of our feathered bourgeoisie. But she was a dedicated jezebel. We kept her as a curiosity and grew fond of her, though her behavior was more like Clara Bow’s than Bessie Lasky’s.
All through high school we would maintain our meticulously structured pigeon organization. Different bloodlines were separated as carefully as they are in Navajo clans. Each homer in our racing stable had its own page in our book of records. Our vigilance and enthusiasm never slacked until we moved on to college, when we had no choice but to turn the project over to little Stu and Maurice’s kid brother, Matty.
When we returned, order had turned to chaos. The partitions between the cages had been removed, and the separate groups were irrevocably mingled. Squabs had been born and raised without records of their bloodlines and flight performances. It was like the Fall of the Roman Empire: our carefully constructed civilization of homing pigeons in ruins. And finally, in our absence, the final blow: Unable to care for the growing and now chaotic flock, our younger brothers submitted to the advice of our parents that the pigeon population be liquidated; and, instead of a dignified sale to pigeon fanciers, they were sent off in a tumbril to the neighborhood butcher at fifty cents a head.
But in my mind those noble descendants of Eddie and Peggy are forever airborne, flying their great circles and homing hundreds of miles, unique among the creatures whose wings inspired the myth of angels.