When I was growing up, Muscle Beach was unique, in that friendships came before volleyball, thanks to Dad and Mom. Everybody knew everybody. It was a place where strong, emotional connections meant more than tough, competitive games. Back then, I don’t think the Muscle Beach regulars even considered beach volleyball a sport. It was a way of life. In those days, if you won an amateur tournament, you got a cooler or a case of beer. Basically, you got bragging rights. There was such a strong emotional connection with Muscle Beach, it got to the point where people raced to get there every weekend, just to see, and be with, one another. It had a strong pull, like a Pacific Ocean undertow.
From the outside looking in, the Muscle Beach group might have been an odd mix of people—beach rats, families, athletes, actors, business executives, millionaires, bodybuilders, and sun-worshippers—all enamored of the Santa Monica beach lifestyle. But they were all very nice to me. That had a lot to do with my parents, who were very down-to-earth people. They treated everybody the same, with dignity and respect, whether that person lived in a mansion or in a car. It was one of the most important life lessons my parents ever taught me. Being so open to others, accepting them for who they are, my parents had an incredible wisdom about people. Especially Dad. All of the colorful characters became a meaningful part of our Muscle Beach family, and Dad and I still maintain those relationships today.
Although it always felt as if we were rushing to Muscle Beach, because Dad’s heart was beating so fast at the anticipation of playing volleyball, we really didn’t have to. It took us all of two minutes by car to get there. We lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment on Eleventh Street, between Olympic and Arizona, several blocks from the Santa Monica Pier. Frankly, we should’ve just pitched a tent at the Pier for the amount of time we spent there. Now that I’m older, I realize I was destined to play beach volleyball, there was just no way around it.
When I was two and a half, Dad, Mom, and their Muscle Beach cronies would bump the ball to me. Dad says he used it to distract me. People would ask him to play a game, and he’d give in, without any arm-twisting, saying, “Okay, but just one game.”
“Just ones?” I’d ask, holding up one finger.
“Yes, just ones,” Dad would promise.
Later on, as I grew older and got wise to his little white lies, Dad realized I could count. Throughout the games, I’d ask, “What’s the score?” Dad would say, “10–6” or “12–4” or “13–8.”
Several points later, depending on what the scenario was, I knew the game was over, and I’d start pleading with Dad.
“Now it’s time to play with me!” I’d beg.
Dad always tried to hoodwink me by saying, “Oh, not that game, this game.”
Without even realizing it, I was absorbing volleyball by osmosis, just by being around it, every single waking minute. Even if my parents and I weren’t physically at the beach, volleyball was still the major focus of our conversations. From the time I was four, Dad had me bumping, passing, and setting balloons in our living room. He would also cut up old volleyballs, pull out the bladders, blow them up, and we would bat them back and forth over the coffee table.
“Don’t break anything!” Mom would yell from the kitchen, as she was cooking dinner.
At some point, there’d be a loud crash, and she’d holler, “What was that?”
In unison, Dad and I would innocently reply, “Nothing.”
You might be surprised to learn that dancing was my first organized activity. When I was five, Mom enrolled me in dance classes at the Santa Monica Dance Studio. Over the next six years, I participated in tap, ballet, jazz, and even baton twirling. I was the kind of little girl who loved all the frilly outfits that went with each and every style of dancing. (Now, I guess you could say I was destined to become a contestant on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, too.)
Mom wanted to expose me to dancing. She knew it was the thing for little girls to do back then, and she believed it would help me in the future, in whatever sport I chose to pursue. Plus, her parents, my grandparents, were ballroom dancing aficionados. They’d travel around, following certain ballroom dance bands, whether they were playing at Disneyland or on cruise ships. I loved watching my grandparents dance. It was spellbinding. I was captivated by my grandmother’s long, flowing dresses. I enjoyed putting on her jewelry and strutting around in her high heels. I was a very lucky little girl. By the time I was in the seventh grade, my grandparents had taken me on several cruises, and I’d watched them dance practically all the way around the world.
Mom also understood that dancing would be an important activity for me because it was something I could experience with my peers, since I spent the bulk of my time with my parents or their friends. Don’t get me wrong. It was nice being Butch and Barbara May’s only child. I got a lot of attention. Although Dad had two sons from his previous marriages, Brack and Scott, who were eleven and eight years older, respectively, I rarely saw them growing up. Not only because they lived in Northern California with their mother, Linda, but also because my parents preferred to keep me isolated from any possible family melodrama.
In my mind, dancing was an important activity because it allowed me to let down my hair; to challenge myself physically and express myself emotionally; to tap into the fun side of my personality (even ham it up at times); and to have something that was mine, and mine alone. Plus it was a blast. There was a side to me that loved performing. When I was little, Dad recalls, every time somebody said the word “Hollywood” to me, I’d beam from ear to ear.
Being raised as Butch and Barbara May’s only child helped me develop quite an imagination and a flair for the dramatic. I was the kind of kid who plastered stars all over her ceiling, falling asleep every night making wishes on them. After my family got its first video camera, I put on the entire production of Cinderella, with my cats, Spike and Pokey, starring in it with me. The cats played the mice who made the dresses for the ball. I played Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, the prince, the wicked stepmother, and the two horrible stepsisters. And when the video camera wasn’t rolling, I’d draw pictures, paint watercolors, or build forts in my closet. I’d play video games, including Atari. I’d put on skits with my Barbie dolls. I’d cut my own hair. My favorite TV show? On Saturday mornings, I loved to watch the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling with my friend Liz Martinez. And the weirdest of all? When my parents would leave the apartment, I’d clear out the vegetables from the refrigerator and empty the canned foods from the cabinets, and I’d play grocery store checkout person. I thought it was the greatest job ever. (I’ll never forget the first time I stumbled on a self-checkout line at K-Mart. I thought, “Dream come true!”)
When I was growing up, we never had a lot of money, so my participation in dance was a bit of a stretch for my family. People have this perception that I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth. In actuality, it was more like a rusty spoon. My entire life, we lived paycheck to paycheck. I remember watching my mother doing the family’s bookkeeping at the kitchen table. She would always lament, “I hope your dad gets paid this week. We need the money.”
My dad couldn’t understand why dancing required more than one class. You take Ballet I one night, Ballet II another. With every class, there’s a recital at the end, and you need a costume for each. “Can’t you just wear the same outfit for all these dances?” Dad would ask. He is the kind of guy who wears things until they fall off. “No, because each dance is different,” Mom would try to explain. Dad never complained about my dance lessons because he knew he always could work weekends at MGM to make extra cash. However, he never comprehended the expense of all the costumes.
When it came to school clothes, though, I always got hand-me-downs from my cousin. My parents bought the essentials—shoes and underwear—but things from department stores like Macy’s or Nordstrom came from Natalie Grubb, Uncle Edward’s youngest daughter. I didn’t have a fashion sense, and when these clothes arrived, it was like Christmas to me. They were beauti
ful, expensive, and cutting edge. And it seemed as if they’d only been worn once. Some, in fact, still had tags attached. Because Mom had married Dad, he says, my grandparents didn’t give her the financial jump starts they gave Uncle Edward or Aunt Betty Ann. Dad always has felt guilty about holding Mom back. In fact, he still refers to himself as “the black sheep” of the Grubb family. Throughout their marriage, he’d ask Mom, “Do you regret marrying me?” She’d always answer, “No, absolutely not.” When I grew taller, Natalie’s clothes quit coming because they didn’t fit me anymore. Dad says he’ll never forget Uncle Edward saying, in jest, “Misty, it’s too bad you’re so cute, and your parents are so poor.”
The struggle to make ends meet was an undertone throughout much of my early childhood. Yet, through sports, we were able to rub elbows with successful and influential people. Not that I, as a child, always was aware of the socioeconomic divide. We were treated as honorary members of the Sand & Sea Club, a private social and athletic club on the beach in Santa Monica with a strong Jewish membership. In the 1960s, the other clubs on the beach had restrictive membership policies. It was the most beautiful beach I’d ever seen—the Sand & Sea was at the site of the Marion Davies estate—Malibu to the north, Palos Verdes to the south, framed by the club’s white, wooden buildings with dark green trim. We were blessed to be exposed to wealthy Los Angelinos. Doctors. Lawyers. Hollywood movers and shakers. Dad remembers meeting comedians Don Rickles and Bob Newhart. While my parents were engrossed in beach volleyball or paddle tennis games with the members, or were busy giving them free private lessons, I was able to swim in the Olympic-sized pool and romp in the sand in front of the club. This was my playground, too. If you were to compare incomes, ours probably wasn’t much more than those of the people who took care of the grounds, and we always were grateful that we had a place like the Sand & Sea to go to. My parents tried to give back to the club, in whatever ways they could, and they were especially mindful of playing sports with some of the older people whom no one else would play with. We made friends for a lifetime, people who embraced us as family, and have allowed us, through the years, to be included in their children’s successes.
Although we always seemed to be strapped for money, my parents did what parents do: If there was something I wanted to participate in, they wouldn’t say no. They would find a way to pull it off, even if it meant skimping as a family in another area, or more often than not, their going without. If worst came to worst, they’d say, “Go ask your grandparents.” If Mom and Dad were scraping the bottom of the bank account, they’d never tell me. They didn’t want that knowledge to affect my decisions. They never wanted me to think, “I shouldn’t do this because we can’t afford it.” When I needed braces on my teeth, for example, Mom made a trade-out deal with the orthodontist. As payment for my braces, she’d give her private tennis lessons.
In a city like Los Angeles, where people are defined by their cars, my parents couldn’t have cared less about what they looked like sitting behind the wheel. We always had transportation, but it was never top of the line, and it certainly wasn’t anything brand new. Usually, my parents drove their vehicles almost into the ground, like their Honda Prelude, which racked up 270,000 miles before Dad handed it over to my half brother Scott. We also were given several used cars, courtesy of my grandparents.
Tucked in between the spectacular beach houses of Malibu and the sprawling mansions of Beverly Hills, the tiny Santa Monica apartment I grew up in was very nondescript. The I-10 freeway, which goes all the way down to the Pacific Coast Highway, separates Santa Monica. The haves are on one side, the have nots on the other. We lived on the south side of the freeway, where the rents were a lot lower. Our unit had no views; it butted up against apartment buildings.
On the first floor, there was a small kitchen, a living room, and a half bath. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, one beside the other, and one bathroom, with one of those old heaters, where you flipped a switch and the coils turned red. I’ll never forget its louver windows. On nights when the wind was blowing hard, the glass would shake. And because there was a problem with the roof, when it rained, water ran down the walls of my bedroom.
While most kids have posters of athletes or rock stars plastered on their bedroom walls, mine were bare. Even to this day, I have a hard time putting anything on the walls of my house. I had a TV and a little trundle bed. If my friends slept over, we’d make caves and sleep under the bed. Our hair would get all tangled up in the springs.
Mom loved the Salvation Army, and our apartment and our wardrobes reflected her favorite place to shop. We called it Sally Ann’s. It was located less than two hundred yards from our apartment. My dream one day is to hire an interior designer to make over my house, because we could never afford a luxury like that. We were always the family who got pieces from here and there, put them together, and didn’t care what the finished product looked like. None of our couches were comfortable. Some of them had chewed-up pillows. Dad would just put covers on them and flip them over. We rescued three-legged chairs—and knocked off the three legs. Eclectic? Our style was a cross between gypsy and nomad.
Sally Ann’s taught me valuable life lessons. Mom and I loved shopping there together. I’d buy little records and whatnot. But there was one time when I only had a certain amount for one record, and I suddenly remembered a story Mom had told me, when she and my aunt Betty Ann had gone to the store to get Band-Aids for my grandmother. The metal containers of Band-Aids were never full enough, so they removed some of the Band-Aids from another container and stuffed them into the one they were going to purchase. Well, I only had money to buy a Snow White record, but I also wanted the Sleeping Beauty record. So, when no one was looking, I slipped the Sleeping Beauty record into the Snow White cover. Later that day, Mom discovered what I’d done, marching me right back to return the record.
Even if my parents had had the money to blow on furniture, clothes, cars, toys, or records, those things wouldn’t have been important to them. If we’d been millionaires, if we’d won the lottery or if we’d just had a little extra money to throw around, they would’ve used it to take care of friends who were down on their luck, or to help feed and care for homeless, sick, or stray animals. Whenever they had leftover food at the pizza stand, they always offered it to homeless people.
My parents taught me a person isn’t measured by the money or the material things he or she has accumulated, but rather, by the amount of kindness, love, and intangibles given away to others. As they always told me, “You can’t keep it unless you give it away.” To this day, I live by the adage: The best things in life are . . . just things.
My dad has a favorite illustration of that important lesson. When he was ten and shining shoes on Waikiki, he met a successful businessman named Harry White. Dad says Harry was an orphan, who’d been something of a juvenile delinquent growing up. Harry was given a choice by the courts—join the armed services in the war effort in Korea or go to jail. When he retired from the Navy, he opened up a sheet metal fabrication company in Los Angeles.
In 1963, Dad saw Harry walking on the sidewalk near Muscle Beach.
“Hey, aren’t you Harry White?” my dad asked.
“How’d you know, kid?” Harry replied. Dad explained that he’d shined Harry’s shoes on Waikiki. Harry bought him a hot dog and a lemonade.
Fifteen years passed before he saw Harry again. On my first birthday, Harry walked by my parents’ pizza stand. “Harry White!” Dad yelled. “It’s my daughter’s birthday, all pizza’s free.” Harry wadded up a fifty-dollar bill and threw it into the pizza stand.
On my birthday, for the next eight years, Harry sent me a hundred dollars. Dad and Mom always admired him, not only because he’d turned his life around but because he’d never stopped helping others do the same. He’d helped prostitutes get respectable jobs, drug addicts kick their habits. Then, one July 30, we didn’t hear from him. Five months later, at holiday time, Mom said, “We never received a Chris
tmas card from Harry.”
Dad investigated and discovered he’d had a stroke. He called Harry and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” From then on, Dad made it a point to work out with Harry at the gym a few times each week. One day, Harry said, “Butch, how come you have never asked me for money?” Dad didn’t miss a beat, “Because I work.”
In the years Harry had left, he sent me five hundred dollars every birthday. The money helped pay my volleyball expenses.
After Harry died, Dad received a summons to show up in court. Harry had left the people closest to him a couple million dollars. He left Dad one hundred thousand dollars, awarded in three installments over fifteen years. But Harry added a stipulation: If someone needed the money more than Dad did, he had to give it to that person.
White’s act of generosity had quite an impact on me and my family. Mom and Dad said if we were ever privileged enough to help others financially, we certainly would do that. And if we weren’t in a financial position to do so, then we’d lend a hand in other ways. Harry’s unexpected gift taught me about the value of being nice to others. It taught me about the importance of giving of yourself. It taught me that simple acts of kindness lead to the biggest blessings in life.
5
GIRL FOR ALL SEASONS
I am a huge proponent of kids playing multiple sports. I don’t believe in specialization, which is the way of the world these days. It leads to burnout, tunnel vision, and narrow-mindedness. It overworks muscles. It minimizes friendships. I believe kids should be well-rounded—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I am a good example of the theory that participating in lots of activities can produce an outstanding athlete and a whole person.
Misty Page 5
