The rain is hosing down and I let the dog (“Mr Lee” – named after Bruce) in through the sliding door as I write this and he dashes in through and under the curtains like a bull through a matador’s cape.
Shades of Bruce in the Colosseum and elsewhere with his waving ‘Don’t do it’ finger like a metronome. A rhythmic wiper blade drag smudging a car windscreen. The snap of his head and it’s curtains for Chuck Norris in the Way of the Dragon (1972). No bulls were harmed in the making of that movie. But there was a lot of bull and a cat.
Chuck had fur back then, like duck down. Chuck fur. Possibly more fur than even Mr Lee.
Like a curtained Confessional, Bruce gently covered Chuck’s face after he’d broken his neck.
Hand-made curtains on the Bernette sewing machine
Growing up we boys were outfitted exclusively, not by The Gap but by my grandmother wildly stomping on the accelerator pedal of a Bernette sewing machine while gesticulating wildly with her tongue as she concentrated. A tongue that to us was as prominent as an orca at Sea World being fed.
She rode that Bernette pedal better than Steve McQueen did his Mustang’s accelerator in Bullitt (1968).
For the big night out, to impress the ladies I had a pair of striped half shorts and a yellow t-shirt hand-made by my grandmother with “Go49ers !” emblazoned in black felt sewn into the front so that I looked like a smudged banana.

Gran’s Bernette
Big Night Out
I was sure I was going to get a girlfriend that night – the night of my first real party, with actual girls and everything.
I went with my friend John who was well put together for the evening. He had the same faded belt, extra long with holes he’d added himself with a fork, holding up a double wrapped pair of over-sized trousers around his wiry teenage frame. He’d gotten the belt from his brother who worked in the tannery and it always reminded me of the stories he’d tell of the workers huddled together eating old meat.
Chuck-like he had a cowlick of chest hair poking out of an unbuttoned denim shirt. Short of a Stetson hat, he looked a lot like Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy (1969). I told him as much and he looked well pleased with the comparison.
His brother Steve had tagged along too. He was decked out in an oil blackened boiler suit from working on his car that wasn’t a Ford Mustang. More like a Hillman Imp. Short of the bowler hat he inadvertently had a Malcolm McDowell vibe going on from A Clockwork Orange (1971).
Actual Girls
She was at the Bar with a group of friends. Flicking and playing with their hair and glancing over their shoulders.
I had no idea that was female for “Hey Go-49ers ! Get your hand-sewn shirt over here and come talk to me !” No-one ever told me about the displays and ways of women. I still have no idea.
Her finger beckoned. I talked…and talked…and then talked some more.
After a while, she politely told me her name was Natalie, not Bernette. Through the booze I in-turn politely disagreed and that her name was in fact, Bernette.
I had gotten her name confused with Grandma’s sewing machine !
Surely you mean Bernette ? I said. Possibly spelt Burnette. At least I didn’t call her Brunette, because she was a brunette. A temporary slip of the memory. Perfectly understandable on her part.
That wasn’t a good move. Instantly her eyes were gone and she was lost to me.
I’d see that look of detachment replayed many times afterwards as a woman quickly lost interest. Curiosity replaced with disappointment. Like a Hitchcock body silhouette falling off a rooftop and spiraling away from my desperate, grasping clutches. Not quite Munch’s The Scream from a girl but close enough. You get the picture.
I combed down the back of my wiry mullet with the sweating palm of my hand and in a single diagonal, lurching, stumbling movement was at the Bar and ordered a drink. Like a dodgem just bounced off another dodgem. She was already talking to someone else.
Chastened.
Oh well. Women would have to wait.
Anyway, Damn this chase was so cool !
POSTSCRIPT:
Grandma actually had a Bernina in the 1970s followed by her Bernette sewing machine. Which makes it worse as I must have been calling the actual girl, Bernina.
The advertising jingle for the machines back then was: Bernina, bernina so easy and so versatile.