Memories From Co-op Days

If you'd like to add a memory, please email it to Paula (monaco.paula@gmail.com), and she will add it here.

Someone was looking at the Fox Venice calendar and spotted a film called “Le Grande Bouffe”.  It’s described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Bouffe.  The novel idea was that we should get a group together and go down there for a picnic in front of the stage.  The management at the theater, in keeping with time and place (1970s, Venice), accommodated us.  And so we set up down front and had our picnic while the film unwound.  That’s one of many memories.  --Mike Jordan

In the summer of 1972 someone, I believe Walt Crowe, put up a badminton net in the yard behind Robison so we all started playing badminton together.  One afternoon Jeff Stone finished a game and was proceeding to climb up the stairs to the "wig hole."  [Note: What Jeff, Rocky, and someone else called their room.] The next round of players was getting ready and saw that Jeff still had the badminton bird in his hand. (It is likely that he had been doing a bit of "inhalation therapy" before his game and may not have realized that he still held it.)  I called to him, "Jeff, could you give us the bird?" and he replied with a great grin, "Sure, man" and flipped us the bird.  --Doug Bates

Melinda Wells Goffstein remembers:

…when George, the Chinese chef got hired, and all of a sudden, we had good food! He made the best egg foo young and because I liked it so much, sometimes he would give me an extra one. He also taught me how to roast a great turkey in the old kitchen (500° for 1-1/2 hrs. Never had the guts to try it.) Also, Steve Stoliar did a spot-on imitation of him.

…hearing about how Mac and Mike(?), 2 massive guys, hiked up Mt. Whitney with an ice chest on their backs.

…Mac slept on the roof one or two quarters because his right-wing space-bomb-advocating roommate slept with a rifle under his bed.

…when Diane Skolnick and I moved into A-1 and saw our first ever cockroach. We both jumped on the beds and screamed.

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And Melinda’s last memory triggered one of mine:

On my very first shift as a co-oper, I was assigned to the glamorous task of making omelets. I was just getting the hang of it when a giant black blur zipped across the grill. I shrieked and leapt about three feet into the air. Without missing a beat, my coworker calmly slid in, flattened the intruder with his spatula, and calmly said, “Don’t worry—it’s just a cockroach.”

Fast-forward to my next shift: I was the seasoned veteran now, spatula in hand, when a newbie shrieked as another cockroach sprinted across the grill. I whacked the bug, turned to her, and calmly said, “Don’t worry—it’s just a cockroach.” –-Paula Pietromonaco

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I came to the co-op in midyear, so I was somewhat uneasy on my first day until I happened to recognize a fellow student from high school, Ray Kaminsky. I approached Ray as he was working in the kitchen, and his response didn't indicate that he recognized me. Later, after his shift was over, he knocked on my door. He then proceeded to explain the ropes about living in the co-op. He told me the co-opers to avoid (all of them), and the jobs that were good (none of them). If that doesn't sound like Ray, it's probably because it's more akin to my dismal disposition than Ray's amiable one. I have forgotten most of my UCLA classroom

experience, but I remember Ray's welcoming gesture and the marvelous and delightful people I met at the co-op. I hope to see Ray and many others at the reunion in November. --Fred Siegel