The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 235

nrprzi ft crpn nn rp I bi "i i Tr 1 xS MISSING MOM INDEX Ann Landers E2 Astrological Forecast E4 Real Life E3 O.C. Books E2 For women who were young when their moms died, Motherless Daughters lends support E3 RSVP Hale-Bopp attends an outdoor party for the Doheny Eye Institute. E2 Go6 Axuicles Sftme orange county SECTION SUNDAY, APRIL 20, 1997 A Long Way From Camelot Vaughn Meader's JFK impersonation made him a star. Then an assassin's bullet took everything away. ft f- V- -1 J- By DAVID LAMB TIMES STAFF WRITER HALLOWELL, Maine-The hard part of the day waking up, staring at TV, waiting for someone to come and visit is over and Abbott Vaughn Meader is back in his element, at the River Cafe on Water Street, nursing a rum and coke through a straw.

Although he tries never to peak too early, he is indeed, at 5 in the afternoon, in danger of doing just that; his words shouted, the jokes rolling slurred and fast off his tongue, his eyes dancing with ing. 'Tolerant' is the word I'd use. There's magic here and magic you can't explain. No sleazebags, no phonies. That's why I came back to Maine." It's been 35 years since Meader, a young comedian playing the coffeehouses of SoHo for $7.50 a night, skyrocketed to fame and fortune with his album on the Cadence label, "First Family," an impersonation of President John F.

Kennedy so close to perfect as to be eerie. And 34 years since his career died, at the very moment a bullet struck down Kennedy in Dallas. "That was it," Meader remembers. "One year, November to November. Then boom.

It was all over." Lenny Bruce was playing Carnegie Hall that night. He took the stage and, after a respectful silence, sighed, "Man, poor Vaughn Meader." Meader, who goes now by his first name, Abbott, lights another cigarette and pauses to let pass a cough that comes from deep in his lungs. He nibbles a pretzel, rolling it over toothless gums. He orders a margarita, just a touch of triple sec, salt on the rim, please, and Christ, oh yeah, he says, the $1 million or so he earned from "First Family" was piddled away years and years ago, on coke binges, on booze and wives and fancy living, and now Please see MEADER, E2 "Abbott," says Sheila, his fourth wife, a couple of bar stools away, "I think you're absolutely crazy. Why don't you come home and let me cook for you?" He'll have none of that.

He much prefers being here among his friends, people who tolerate him and care about him and laugh with him. They are, after all, the only crowd Vaughn Meader once the hottest name in the recording business has left to work. "I love this place," Meader says of Hallowell, an old mill town, population 2,500. "I've been thrown out of every city in America, but Hallowell, it hasn't even tried. People are very accept DAVID LAMB PorTtwTtmei Vaughrr Meader's comedy album "First Family" WCIOriBiinon in salesBut.

after Nov. 22, 1963, he couldn't geFanWer Their Friendship Is Letter Perfect FIaSTFEESCN By PATRICIA MARROQUIN TIMES STAFF WRITER I turned 40 in February. Another milestone reached, and Kay reached it with me. Kay. Like a guardian angel, she's been with me in the joyous times as well as the difficult ones.

can't begin to tell you how sorry I am to hear your news. At our ages we begin to expect losses in the family, but hardly someone of our own generation! What a tragedy to lose someone so young. to hear that you're beginning to recover from the initial shock. Its going to take a long time to work through that much pain. In a June 1988 card upon hearing of the death of my brother at 27 She was there when, at 16, 1 got my driver's license.

She cheered when I received my diploma from La Puente High School in 1975 and saw me through two more graduationsfrom Cal Poly Pomona and Stanford University. She was thrilled for me when I married a co-worker at 27, and sympathetic when I went through a painful divorce nine years later. Pat, you should know that after 20 years you can write to me about anything. We've seen each other through some really crummy times on both ends. I hope that you're closer to sorting all of this out.

I hope you know that whatever Please see FIRST, E4 CRAIG Y.FUJU hoi Angeles Times "I'm paid by UCI to find my interests and say what they are on a page," James McMichael says. "I'm miraculously entertained. I don't make compromises." A of the "ST ames McMichael, one of the nation's preeminent poets, is seated at the kitchen table of his pinky-beige suburban condo talking about being a single parent raising a teenage son. McMichael is framed, not by volumes of Walt Whitman or William Blake, but by a wallpaper border of achingly cheerful sunflowers. The surroundings are more about decor than food.

McMichael confesses sadly that he isn't much of a cook. He and his son never eat together. They never talk. His son prefers the company of his friends and the atmosphere at Del Taco. Then there's McMichael's girlfriend.

Well, his former girlfriend. She's packing up her clothes, some of the obscure Southern California writer who just happens to be known in elite literary circles as one of the best living poets in the Western world. She's at the mirror. I need to get behind it to the aspirin, do so, close it. "Goodness you wake up with a lot of headaches." "Sorry." "Don't be sorry, Fm sorry for you." Surprised that it turned out like that, and hating her, hating what Fd heard in my own voice, I get out of her way.

From the privacy of brooding on it in another room, I hear what she meant: "Congratulations. As good as you are at headaches, why settle for so little, why not work up a malignancy of some kind?" And I remember that yesterday, when we were getting in the car, she winced. She's always twisting her neck or back or something, so I didn't ask her "Did you hurt yourself?" but "Did you hurt yourself again?" James McMichael weaves words of the commonplace into the extraordinary. The distinguished professor lives and writes quietly in Irvine but is known in literary circles worldwide. Moms! Your Chance to Name That Gift Sick of those 1-ounce bottles of eau de cologne? Those undergarments with a few too many frills? Those countless toasters? Mom, what do you really want for Mother's Day? Tell us in 50 words or less for an upcoming story on gift-giving.

Send your preference to Dream Gifts, Life Style, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, and include daytime and evening phone numbers. Or fax to (213) 237-4888. (No phone calls, please.) Submissions must reach us by April 25; sorry, they cannot be returned. fy plants and rattan furniture and moving out on Friday. "Relationships tend to get harder as you get older," the 57-year-old bard says.

"But nothing feels as good as being settled two people having separate days and then coming together. "I want a mate." It is the plain-spoken declaration of a man who defies stereotype, a distinguished professor who talks and writes with breathtaking intimacy about ordinary things: houses, marriage, children, insomnia, real estate, stamp collecting, trout streams, computer chips, map making, lovemaking. It is the simple remark of a twice-divorced father of three who grew up in Pasadena, drives a Toyota Tercel and rarely ventures beyond the bland housing colony on the UC Irvine campus where he lives except to play golf. Above all, it is the unself-conscious comment of a man of letters who writes prose-like narratives about the human experience, a rather Outside of English departments on college campuses, almost no one has heard of James McMichael. He is not a showman.

He's about as likely to seize a microphone at a coffeehouse poetry reading as a coyote is to meow at the moon. Please see POET, E4 By JANET W1SC0MSE SPECIAL TO THE TIMES 4.