For Those Who Can’t Find Their Way

“Say you’re invited to XYZ’s place for dinner,” says Danny Gould, “and she says, ‘I want you here at sharp 8. You know the way?’ ‘Sure,’ you say, ‘no problem.’ ‘Really?’ she says. ‘It’s usually very hard for people to find our place.’ ‘I’m unique,’ you tell her, and you arrive at the stroke of 8. . . .”

One of life’s less momentous triumphs, no doubt, but it sure beats getting lost and late. Assuming, of course, you use Gould’s invention--and follow your own directions.

Gould, director of music administration for Warner Bros. music department, has come up with a simple but clever little pad he calls “How Do I Get to Your Place?” It’s a “personalized fill-in file, designed to eliminate embarrassment and time wasted in repeatedly asking directions.” As you accumulate said directions, you write them down, permanently, and keep the pad in your glove compartment.

There are bugs, of course. Like, you usually take directions by phone, but if you keep the pad by your phone, you’re liable to forget it when you set out by car. “Or,” Gould says, “you keep little scraps of paper that you stuff into the pad. . . .” So who’s perfect?

The pad is copyrighted but not marketed, and stems from Gould’s subscription, in the ‘50s, to the Gadget-of-the-Month Club. “The founder was Don Davis,” Gould recalls. “What an effervescent, ebullient guy he was! Subscribers would be mailed a gadget every month: small, inexpensive, ingenious. His legacy, though, was his dictum, and it’s stuck to me like a stamp on an envelope. ‘The real mother of invention,’ Davis said, ‘is irritation.’ ”

Up a Lazy River of ‘Ancient Holes’

The river whorls through Manchuria. It’s called Ku-Tung, which means “ancient holes.” Nobody knows why it’s called that, except the Chinese who live along its banks, and they’re not saying. Jim Barker and his mates plan to find out firsthand.

Barker, a Santa Monica lawyer, has signed up with whitewater-raft expedition leader Richard Flasher and a dozen others to make an August run at the Ku-Tung. It will be only the third such river expedition permitted by the Chinese, and the first ever on the Ku-Tung.

“We have only an old map made in 1933 by the occupying Japanese, and more recent U-2 (spy-plane) photos,” Barker says, “but we don’t expect a Grade-5 or anything (Grade-6 meaning ‘unnavigable’).”

Not that the degree of difficulty would give Barker pause. A rafter since the ‘70s, Barker’s “great leap forward” came on an early trip down the Colorado River when his Alaskan guide lost her nerve and asked him to row. “I’ve been flipped and dunked and washed out and wrapped around rocks,” says Barker, “and every now and then, I’ve asked myself, ‘What am I doing this for?’ But rivers are basically forgiving, and this particular trip--well, it’s an adventure.” Besides, Barker’s legal specialty is personal-injury suits. . . .

Up in Sebastopol, Flasher says there are still two or three places left in the rafts (call (707) 823-6603), and opines that Barker, 39, is something of a “Walter Mitty: one foot in the raft, and one in the law.”

Barker agrees, but with a twist: “Rafting is real,” he says. “Being a lawyer is the Walter Mitty part.”

Carrying On a Trojan Tradition

Raymond M. Rodriguez, a high school dropout from East L.A. who went on to earn a master’s degree at USC at the age of 55, is the doyen of a Trojan dynasty that includes 10 members of his family spanning three generations.

“I’ve been a Trojan since 1935,” boasts Rodriguez, 64, recalling how he and his childhood friends “used to walk all the way from East L.A. through the campus to see if we could sneak into the Coliseum.”

After three years in the Navy, Rodriguez was graduated from East L.A. College and eventually parlayed that degree (in business) and a bartending job into ownership of six nightclubs, one of which, the Latin Lover, still stands on Whittier Boulevard. (He sold the business, but still owns the building.)

But the August, 1971, East L.A. riots turned his life around. He recalls, “I had two guns and a shotgun pointed in my face by the sheriffs while I was trying to maintain law and order” outside the club. He decided to run for office, “to make elected officials accessible” to people in East L.A. “From there, things could start happening,” Rodriguez said.

He enrolled at USC, told Larry Berg, the first professor he met, “I don’t have time to graduate, but I want you to teach me everything there is about political science.” Two years later, Rodriguez ran for the Assembly, coming in fourth in a race won by Art Torres.

Returning to USC, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science while working in his nightclub. “I was too old to get any scholarship,” he says. It had been a long road for Rodriguez, one of eight children, who remembers, “Up to the fourth grade, I went to school barefooted.”

Following in his footsteps have been daughter Isabel, a USC graduate; grandson Jeffrey Bramon, 21, who will be a senior at USC next year; a son-in-law, four nephews, two nieces and a cousin. Most have had scholarships.

Today, Rodriguez is administrator of the university’s political internship program--”preparing the youngsters to take over” and run for office--and his boss is former professor Larry Berg, now director of the Institute of Politics and Government.

And coming along is Rodriguez’s 14-year-old-son, Raymond Jr., who was graduated last week from junior high and has had a season ticket to Trojan football games since he was 2. “He’s going to come to SC too,” Rodriguez says without hesitation.