Epitaph in Mt. Hope Cemetery:

Ernest A. Schmierseifer 1946-2011

Beloved Husband and Father

Civic and Professional Leader

Bush Campaign Committee 1988

20 RAPTUROUS MOMENTS (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) IN THE LATER LIFE OF AWARD-WINNING SAN DIEGO PR MAN ERNIE SCHMIERSEIFER

Rapture No. 1 - Jan. 16, 1988 . . . driving a 1988 fire-engine-red Mercedes 450SL off the lot at La Jolla Foreign Wheels - with Whitney Houston's "One Moment in Time" rising toward its majestic climax in the tape deck. (First thought: Even smells like heaven. Subsequent thoughts gliding under the palms of Prospect Boulevard: No more Ernie Schlockmeister in a Taco Bell baby-blue Chebbie with carcinogenic accents. Yee-haw! Chicks of the world, here comes Ernie, rinsed with Listerine, splashed with Brut and impressively sheathed as a rock star's pampered twat stretcher. We'll get that sleazy kraut Kunstoffer to cough up expenses in advance for his jackass opening, should cover the first car payment. Loved the monkey concept, knew he would, the cretin. We're talking couple grand to the Zoo plus a shit-kicker radio buy and can string those Arbitron whores out forever. Ernie's sweet talk scored and he made the payment after only the first dun notice; the nifty number, so eloquent in the driveway of his Cape Cod Glen subdivision home, wasn't repoed for two more months.)

Rapture No. 2 - Feb. 4, 1988 . . . being invited to sit with his wife Sunny at the same Sahara show table in Vegas with builder client Jamil Khosrabian (American Dream Builders) and Louden Glatter, first v.p. of the National Association of Light Contractors, at the NALC convention and having Craig Luckman, a hated colleague and Sunny's first husband, notice. (Glatter spent two hours, broken only by the topless number, talking about World War II duty on Kiska and pitying Ernie and Khosrabian, a recent immigrant, for having missed the "great look-out-for-each-other camaraderie of military men, so important in the business of life." Luckman was sitting with San Diego small fry and "that mousey broad who handles his media and his raging libido," as Ernie quipped to an unamused Sunny.)

Raptures Nos. 3 and 4 - March 22, 1988 . . . (a.m.) seeing his daughter, Turner, in beautiful sub-deb braces at breakfast - her splayed uppers and lisp were a source of profound (and often expounded) paternal chagrin - and deciding Sunny needn't be told his father, Ernie Sr., was picking up the tab. ("Sure they hurt," he told his grimacing only child, "but a girl's gotta work at her looks, Sugar, or she'll be left at the station.") . . . (p.m.) taking his newly hired secretary-bookkeeper Debi Kreske, age 19 - "not too shabby in the T and A department" - to lunch in his 450 and hearing her say, "This is my first time," followed by a vivid blush and the hurried recovery, "riding in a Benz, I mean." (Ernie, who thought of himself as a worldly sort, was surprised by the heart flutter Debi's blush induced. Later, when he remembered she was married to some sailor, he was ashamed of himself for being touched. He made a mental note to have Sunny shine his old elevator brogues - this cutie was a good inch taller than him in flats.)

Rapture No. 5 - April 2, 1988 . . . getting two local TV stations and the Journal to cover the grand opening of Kunstoffer's Computer Mecca by lining up a trained orangutan from the Zoo to play Nintendo. (A mild after-rapture came when a 30-second segment was picked up on Peter Jennings two nights later even if the bastards held it up as routine cretinous Southerncaliforniana and he got absolutely no plug, not even a store sign showing! Kunstoffer's contract called for a two-grand bonus for a national hit, no matter. With a surly letter canceling the contract, Kunstoffer paid, enabling Ernie to make payroll only one day late. Fringe benefit had been getting Debi in as the monk's keeper, upstaging the beast in a stunningly undersized Zoo outfit.)

Rapture No. 6 - April 30, 1988 . . . capturing honorable mention at the 1988 San Diego FLACK Awards in two categories, Best Feature in a Weekly Newspaper under 20,000 Circulation for his piece - he wrote it, a rarity - on the musical water beds ("Come Rocking With Us") at the Hillcrest Easy 7 Motor Lodge and Best Column Plug in a National Trade for his item in Flange and Gasket on Washerama's patent-pending giveaway (YOUR LOGO HERE) of an oral O-ring for making owl hoots and Times Square-class smoke rings. ("My finest day . . . is yet unknown," he hummed as he headed for the podium. Downer was driving there in Sunny's white Rabbit with its "Mothers Against Drunk Driving" bumper sticker. Sticker poorly removed, it was his thereafter.)

Rapture No. 7 - May 6, 1988 . . . he and Sunny leaving via United for Maui (first-class!) for a week in Buster Kronmeister's condo, their first trip to "the land of the lei," as Ernie frequently put it with a smirk, a tradeout for his campaign introducing Buster's line of "Macho" legwarmers for men. (The trip was a bomb: Sunny went into a pout the first night on catching Ernie outside the "Kane's Room" at the Lahaina Outrigger, after two fog-cutters and a half bottle of Zinfandel, trying to force a pair of Buster's 'warmers onto a mildly protesting Wahine from the lounge act taking a cigarette break. They returned home speechlessly two days later. Ernie blamed his behavior on having just received his quarterly testosterone shot, an ongoing "augmentation," in his urologist's (pre-Viagra) euphemism, to keep him above the lower levels of the normal range and barely in the batting order.)

Rapture No. 8 - May 18, 1988 . . . reading the note signed - even if mechanically - by George H. W. Bush thanking him for a $35 contribution "well before the Iowa caucuses," with an invitation to be a part of the Insider's Club (which for lack of $5,000 in liquid assets he was wistfully forced to let go unaccepted. The framed note remained for a year on the wall of the office Ernie had occupied in the downtown LBTK Building, pending arrival of a new tenant. "My God, Mr. Schmierseifer, you know Bush!" Debi, now famed in agency circles as the office dish, had exclaimed with big eyes and an adorable little wiggle.)

Rapture No. 9 - May 26, 1988 . . . power-lunching at Arrivederci Roma in a new sincere-blue $1,500 suit from Nordstrom with Norm Lacey of Lacey, Bennett, Turnwalter and Klopp and nailing down the deal for 2,000 square feet, furnished, in LBTK's downtown midrise in tradeout for full-scale programs for LBTK ("must be tres discreet, pal . . . "), Turnwalter's Hyundai dealership, two developer clients of LBTK (the law firm would bill them for "miscellaneous services"), and Norm's brother's struggling hydrofoil service to Ensenada. (" . . . if you seize that one moment in time, make it shine," Ernie crooned as he waited for the check, Lacey having left before coffee "to get a haircut." This sweetheart of a deal gave Ernie's Impact Public Relations a "prestige address" and clients Luckman would eat his heart out over, downside being that I.P.R. offices could only be reached through the LBTK lobby and the LBTK receptionist kept the only key - save for LBTK senior partners - to the men's room.)

Rapture No. 10 - May 31, 1988 . . . inducing a daiquiri-numbed Debi, whose husband, an E-6, was in WestPac aboard the U.S.S. Avenger (MS-33), to join him in the Easy 7's melodic honeymoon suite (with appropriately equipped video center), rapture shattered by his beeper and a call from Sunny reporting that Turner had fallen over her handlebars and likewise shattered braces and one front tooth. (Officially, it had been his night to attend the monthly NALC Sales and Marketing Dinner. And, indeed, he and Debi had made it for cocktail hour before leaving separately on press of business, his wink making sure Luckman noticed.)

Rapture No. 11 - July 1, 1988 . . . receiving a tequila-reeking abrazo on stage at the inauguration gala from Manuel Mejia, local NALC prez, for handling entertainment - Ernie had obtained within a skimpy budget several third-tier performers tenuously associated with several second-tier performers - and an introduction as "one of this town's top flacks, a friend of the Chicano community, and a leading local Don Juan," the latter evoking mock dismay from Ernie and an undisguised look of pain in Sunny's tired, purple-shadowed pale blue eyes at the head table. (And she'd been so cute when he'd stolen her way back in '72 from that candyass Craig, fortunately no longer his partner . . . bastard never let him forget how he'd greased him into the PR Club presidency five years ago, before their little breakup . . . trivial matter of Ernie's favorite massage parlor billing the firm for "business development services." Ernie had gotten on the ham-fisted Mejia's good side by donating two months' services to his bail-bondsman cousin ("a sleazeball," as Ernie often described him) in a successful bid for a lucrative port-commission seat.)

Rapture No. 12 - July 9, 1988 . . . winning the Over 40 Low Hurdles at the Lions Club Cystic Fibrosis Track Meet, leading from the bark of the starting gun after two of his four rivals fell over before the first barrier, in a time only two seconds off what he'd done in high school (with Sunny and Turner - front tooth crowned and newly rebraced - in the grandstand and a pony-tailed Debi selling Lionburgers at a refreshment stand), knowing he could get a column item out of it. (Troy Scampone, July 12, third item: " . . . tub thumper and self-styled girl watcher Ernie Schmierseifer beat four other puffing Lions Clubbers to the tape in the 220-yd. lows at their annual flab derby and gave it the full stadium trot with the Stars and Stripes like a boozhwah Carl Lewis . . . ")

Rapture No. 13 - July 24, 1988 . . . reading with glee and unfounded pride an "over-the-transom" bottom-right front-page Real Estate section feature with three-column color art in the Journal on Lacey's new "French country chalet" at Rancho Santa Fe, appearing the day before a meeting "to review the lease arrangement for tenant nonperformance" and greatly smoothing Norm's feathers after Ernie allowed how hard he'd worked to hose it. (Ernie sent a liter of Cuervo 1880 to the editor, a margarita freak, who sent it back with an unpleasant note about journalistic integrity and the P.S. that, if he'd known Ernie handled Lacey's shop, chances are he'd have killed the piece.)

Rapture No. 14 - Aug. 6, 1988 . . . winning the Charleston contest (with Turner his feather-light partner), just as he had in high school (his mother had taught him), at the Holy Innocents Catholic High School "Father-Daughter Dance," the same night Turner later went into hysterics after Ernie made a widely observed and quickly rebuffed pass at the bosomy female vice principal in the school's new post-nun world, and Sunny later announced out of a clear blue sky that she wanted a divorce, the last thing Ernie would ever expect from what he often called "my ridiculously devout wife."

Rapture No. 15 - Aug. 24, 1988 . . . acting as replacement moderator (Luckman, now president of San Diego's largest agency, had "taken ill" after learning Ernie had been picked for the panel) of a symposium on "Using Marketing Communications to Make a Better World" during "We Are the World Week" at San Diego State, Ernie's promotion-minded alma-mater. (Intro by Professor of Journalism Cornelius Chang dubbed Ernie "one of San Diego's leading publicists" and he, still giddy from those words and Debi's perfumed presence in the front row in an Angora sweater, had hastily agreed to sell a block of 20 season tickets to the SDSU football season, not one of which he would ever sell. Ernie spoke on using PR to promote the "American work ethics" [sic] in underdeveloped countries, a subject to which he had never given a moment's thought till two days prior. "Jeez, a friggin' United Nations you gotta suck up to in this town," he reviled himself later that night as he thumbed through a Hustler in the massage parlor lobby waiting for his favorite gal to finish up with a septuagenarian County Supervisor.)

Rapture No. 16 - Sept. 7, 1988 . . . getting the phone call from George Bush's "headquarters" announcing that the candidate had selected him to be on the campaign national steering committee, members of which were voluntarily contributing $1,000. ("Tell George I've got him covered and keep stepping on that Greek bellyacher," said Ernie, flushed with the successes of 1988. Both personal and corporate checking accounts were overdrawn, what with one of Lacey's apprentices asking three-grand upfront for the divorce - "if you insist on throwing her out of the house" - Turner needing psychotherapy, etc. Ernie equivocated through one dun letter, a Bush Campaign Swifty Mailgram and two hard-pressing phone calls while proudly carrying the gold-embossed steering-committee ID card, which Debi borrowed to show to her girl friend Misti Banner in Navy Housing.)

Rapture No. 17 - Oct. 15, 1988 . . . watching Debi's blissfully inept dance routine at the stag party Ernie threw for Hal Sievers, editor of the Daily Recorder, on the eve of his third wedding. (Ernie had lined up Debi with a half hour's sweet talk and the promise of a $500 Christmas bonus. Debi's jiggling hula had been the hit of the night - she'd taken the de rigueur course when Herman was stationed at Pearl - and ended with her bestowing a large public hug and smooch on Ernie before scooping up her grass skirt and halter and fleeing the private room at the Easy 7. She'd earlier raised Ernie's ire by refusing to go to Hal's room after the party so he'd decided to "dock her bonus at least a C," as he untruthfully told the soused journalist, there never having been nor would there ever be a bonus at Impact Public Relations.)

Rapture No. 18 - Nov. 22, 1988 . . . opening the Journal at his studio apartment and finding his name in the Wanda Kettleson social column as a committee member for January's "Extravaganza in St. Moritz" at the La Jolla Beach and Yacht Club. Music rising, " . . . when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away, and the answers are all up to me." (Yee-haw! After their years of struggling to "break into one of the better crowds," he finally makes Kettleson - irony! - two weeks from their dissolution hearing, if only in a laundry list of 16 chairpersons, a group he'd squeezed into by persistence, strategic blandishments and promises of lavish PR, the latter of which he'd of course turn over to a go-fer in the office and forget about. That morning at the office, newly returned to a Class C loft in the warehouse district, two of their old friends called to say they'd noticed and Ernie was alarmed to realize the rapture was gone. How come he kept thinking of his eight hours in the labor room at Mercy waiting for Turner to pop, back in those days when he was chain-smoking? Knowing for sure it was a boy ol' Sunshine was going to pop out for him. Better damn sight be, after all the troubles and lost sleep this carefully nurtured pregnancy had put him through, including her recent insistence on the college trust account. He had decided on "Ted Turner Schmierseifer" after his media and yachting hero but, foiled by nature, settled on just Turner. Was Sunny just putting on all these ghastly expressions? Of course not! - having a kid's no cakewalk. Basically a good gal, Sunny - kept the house clean, good with clients, veins yeah but no cottage-cheese thighs yet. Then his focus was drawn to a small and scrawny terrier out the window down on J Street futilely facing heavy traffic and trying to cross the thoroughfare to a vacant lot beyond, one frequently populated by the homeless. Wildly agitated, it took a crazed dart into the street, barely dodged two speeding cars and was nicked by a UPS truck, finishing the passage hopping on one hind leg and then collapsing unheeded beside an overloaded dumpster. Ernie looked away and chased the vision. His eyes were getting itchy from thinking about cigarettes. Did he need one now? He considered calling Sunny to see what the shrink thought about Turner's suicide attempt and how the house sale was going. Then Debi knocked and came in breezily with a mug she'd bought on her lunch hour labeled "Big Horn" and displaying a childishly obscene cartoon of a stag. He'd been dropping hints about a marriage someday plus an IPR vice presidency and Debi, sick of Navy housing and an absentee husband, was tuning in. Ernie laughed for the first time on the 22nd and, with the door open, blew Debi a discreet kiss. He made up his mind, dammit, he wasn't going crawling back to any broad. He walked into the outer office and bummed a cig from his bookkeeper.)

Rapture No. 19 - Dec. 2, 1988 . . . hearing Debi say she loved him and that he was "really gangbusters in the sack," after dinner at her souvenir-cluttered Navy Housing apartment, a red-nosed Rudolph blinking beside a glass-cased Kabuki doll on the faux-brick mantel, scant minutes before Herman A. Kreske, boatswain's mate 2/c, enlightened via transpacific telephone by neighbor and former shipmate Bud Banner and home early on orders he'd finagled to damage-control school, kicked in the latched front door, strode to the bedroom with a Shore Patrol

38-mm handgun, and, standing above his pale white left shoulder, put a hole from a distance estimated at 18 inches by homicide criminologist Duc Tinh Tran between Ernie Schmierseifer's horror-stretched eyes.

Rapture No. 20 - July 4, 2011 . . . regaining consciousness for approximately one minute, after achieving, thanks to Sunny's irrepressible pro-life viewpoint, the longest coma in the annals of Western Hemisphere medicine and receiving thousands of column inches in San Diego and L.A. newspapers, as well as blockbuster stories in Time, Newsweek, USA Today, Modern Neurosurgery and the London Daily Mail, plus two gruesome minutes each on "True Police" and "Geraldo at Large," when orderly Luz Clemente in a patriotic enthusiasm turned on the rarely used wall-mounted television set to the Fourth of July fireworks and pop music celebration presided over by President Barack Obama from Washington, D.C., while giving her rabbinically bearded, 87-pound patient his weekly sponge bath and needle replacement on the six-to-midnight shift, forcing past the gauzy gray veil with a split-second's sweet infusion of bliss the Olympian voice of Whitney Houston in high crescendo, "I will be . . . I will be free," as suddenly overlapped by Luz's ripe Charlie scent mingled with a rancid antisepsis and a fiery whiteness through the glaucous slit of one remaining eye from the stentorian sunburst of a Medusa-headed pyrotechnic illuminating the small, dim room in the Bide-a-Wee long-term-care facility. Mangled words struggled to form in his fractionalized frontal lobes but never finished the hazardous trip to his vocal cords. Materializing inwardly like a dying shortwave signal through an eternity of barbarous pain the word "cigarette," then "Sunny!" and then, rising to his deepest vision, the fire-storming eyes of judgment converging into the black muzzle hole and, with the deafening climax blast of multiple fish-tailed rockets over the Washington monument, the muzzle exploding with finality - "WHERE?" "WHAT?" - and then darkness. (A middle-aged and still shapely Debi, living with Herman and their three children in Miami eight years after his parole, read about the death in the Herald and, gagging, threw the section into the trash. Sunny and Turner, the latter in a motorized wheelchair on a three-hour leave from Mesa Vista Psychiatric Hospital, Craig Luckman, two local reporters on assignment, and a National Enquirer stringer attended the brief services at Mt. Hope. Her white hair in a bun, Sunny, who had long ago withdrawn her divorce action and refused despite unrelenting pressures to "pull the plug," still dated Luckman sporadically. She described the deceased to reporters as a good husband and father and said she was glad he could finally rest in peace.)

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J. C. Frampton's stories, verse and humor have appeared in literary journals, including Danse Macabre, in the U.S. and U.K., both online and print. A resident of Southern California, he has had reporting, commentary and arts/literary reviews in metro newspapers in the region. framptonatsandotrrdotcom