Another Nut Starts Yelling in Public and I Look for Cover

It was going to be a simple dinner in a simple fast-food joint, and then it happened. An unusual-looking man got up and for no apparent reason started yelling at everyone in the restaurant. I seriously thought about diving under the table, just to be on the safe side in case he had a gun. And if I had a gun . . . just my reflexes, I figure, reacting to the facts of life in Los Angeles in 1989. Of course, I didn’t have a gun, never would.

Living in Los Angeles can make you a little jumpy. It can make you a lot more than a little jumpy if you happen to have a job where you have to keep track of the bad things that must, unfortunately, go into a “good” newscast. For three hours, I’d been watching horrendous pictures of the plane crash that killed 111 people in Iowa. Right before that, the news was about a 19-year-old arrested in Tucson for wandering in and out of traffic. L.A. police had been looking for him. He was suspected of killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer, whose crime was to be all of 21 years old and successful and willing to innocently answer her front door. Long after she was gone and I was there, her blood was still spattered all over the doorway, and that, let me tell you, is a sight that stays with you.

That one insane minute of yet another sunny L.A. morning was perhaps enough to make you wonder if it’s time to call the movers, but the roller coaster of violent death was just beginning its ride in our neighborhood that day.

Cut to Lorimar Studios, and a man crashing through the entrance in his pickup truck looking for actor Ken Kercheval. He tried to blast his way into the “Dallas” set with a shotgun . . . he turned his truck into a bonfire . . . he threatened everybody with what he said was poison or a grenade. When he didn’t find his target, he turned the gun on himself. Apparently the man was upset over a business deal gone bad. So for him, for reasons that died on that lot with that man, the only answer was murder and suicide. It could have been--probably has been--a scene from a movie.

That same day in Anaheim, former Angel pitcher Donnie Moore chose a violent end to what reportedly was a long period of depression. He decided he had no choice but to kill his wife and himself. Fortunately for her, Moore wasn’t that good a shot; she was “only” seriously wounded. Moore had no trouble killing himself, though, with a shot to the head. People said he’d been on a downward career spiral ever since he threw one pitch that cost the Angels a trip to the World Series. Now his misery is over; for his three children who witnessed the carnage in their home, it has just begun.

For a day or so, there was a break in the top-of-the-news reports of people taking care of their problems by taking innocent lives. Then, just when your head was about to stop spinning, it happened again. A masked man burst into a church in Southeast Los Angeles and opened fire with a sawed-off shotgun. Two people were dead, others wounded. How could this happen in a church, a sanctuary? Is no place in this city safe from random death? But you have to realize there are people who place no value on human life, and hence would not stop to think abut the location of the killing ground they create.

Which brings me back to dinner. In 1989 Los Angeles, a man yelling for no apparent reason in a fast-food restaurant is cause for alarm. We hear about these rampages every day on the news, or so it seems. Everyone is a potential killer. Every location is a potential crime scene. We all have to walk around in a perpetual state of paranoia. We can’t be too careful.

We can’t talk to strangers, too many weirdos out there. We can’t leave home without double-locking the doors and windows, not to mention turning on the alarm system. We can’t look sideways at anyone while we’re driving--don’t want to start of another rash of freeway shootings. We see gang graffiti everywhere and wonder about the odds of getting caught in gang-war cross fire. We can’t let our kids walk down the street to a friend’s house--too many child molesters. And we certainly can’t sit still when people start yelling in restaurants. After all, didn’t a man in a McDonald’s wipe out dozens, including children, just a few short years ago a few short miles down the road in San Ysidro?

All this went through my mind like some programmed montage when the man in the restaurant started hollering. Then I caught on to what he was saying. He wanted everyone to know that there was going to be a Philharmonic concert in a local school. Everyone was invited.

People started asking him questions--What time? What school? How much did it cost? Then, amazing as this may seem, they were thanking this man who had so rudely interrupted their dinner.

So, rest assured, calm down, you can still find some semblance of normal behavior in Los Angeles. But you have to look hard. Much too hard.