[img]872|left|Albert Vera||no_popup[/img]It was the second time we met that Albert Vera, whose funeral is tomorrow, said, “I want you to write my life story.”
In those days, I still was wading through his Italian-American lexicon, which, periodically, packed the impenetrability of cement.
He never needed encouragement to weave adventurous stories of his childhood in Italy, his daring trip to America at 15, his time in Texas and his arrival in Culver City.
In case my memory was faulty, those early stories played over in an unending loop on almost every visit to his Sorrento Italian Market.
He was in his third and final term on the City Council, and ostensibly we were talking City Hall business when we adjourned to his back-of-the-store office. Dependably, though, every conversation u-turned back to his colorful early life.
If either of us had been more disciplined or more determined, writing his life story might have materialized. But it was treated more like a toy that we rolled back and forth on the floor, which happened a lot during Mr. Vera’s 75 years.
He talked more and dreamed more than anyone else on the Council.
I didn’t say, though, that everything belonged under the heading of non-fiction.
But even when he didn’t have new insights, he still was the most interesting interview in town.
At a point, it was time to visit the distant, mysterious Vera ranches in the Central Valley. The number of ranches, I was told, is north of 75, but, like certain sensitive areas of Mr. Vera’s life, it was permanently veiled from public view.
He had his bragging points, as every self-made man should, and galleries of photos with celebrities and those who should be celebrated stood as mute, slightly flamboyant evidence.
One Sunday morning, Mr. Vera, his putative biographer and the biographer’s wife climbed into his familiar white van, which reminded me of my father’s brown 1936 Chevy because it didn’t have seat belts, either.
All three of us rode up front in a van designed for one meticulous person. I remember tilting in several directions as I jotted down more biographical flavorings. We wound through landscape that seemed untouched since the 19th century at a pace meant to make the roundtrip swift.
The ranch where we stopped was sprawling, but it didn’t matter. Because the next property was owned by Mr. Vera, and so was the one after that and the one after that.
I was thrilled to arrive back in Culver City without feeling obligated to look for my name in the next day’s obituary section.
This Won’t Change, Will It?
Those were halcyon days.
I felt they couldn’t end because Mr. Vera was one of those out-of-body personalities who seems bulletproof and eternal. He was not faster or stronger or smarter than anyone you knew, but he was more savvy than everybody you ever had met.
Like many men who grow up impoverished and create unimaginable wealth, Mr. Vera, friends said, spent money as if he had 75 cents in his bank account. But you can throw a baseball out a window in all four compass points from your home, and it will strike a person who is a permanently grateful recipient of his quiet generosity.
On a certain morning, my telephone rang and the voice on the other end began the way he always opened a call. “Mr. Noonan, this is Albert.”
He made an intriguing proposal that would be 180 days in the making before suddenly sputtering to an entirely unexpected finish.
Following the stunning ending of our agreement, a series of horrifying misfortunes beset Mr. Vera and his family. They pelted him the way a sudden, unmerciful rain punishes a tin roof.
Through every crisis, legal or lethal, though, he remained staunchly unflappable.
What was so fascinating for me about Mr. Vera, whom I saw at his lowest and at his highest, was that there was no change, ever, in his persona throughout our scores of interviews.
As far as both of us were concerned, nothing could alter our arm’s length relationship. That is the way I choose to remember him,
