Season for Everything, Tales of a Reluctant Pastor
Columns from the Road Trip soon to be posted:
Beale Street
Crossroads
San Marcos
Alabama Hills
Salton Sea
Graceland
Big Country
Monroeville, AL
Coming into Canton (AR)
Sallisaw
White Sands
Monument Valley
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
Salinas
San Francisco
Bob's travels continue...
Danville News Column
Robert John Andrews
Friday September 3, 2010
“Paint Business Woes”
Word Count: 750
I visited home the other weekend. My brother turned sixty and there was a party. His daughter recently was married in a private family wedding out in California. So she came east to show off her new husband. It was a combined affair. The party gave a chance to visit my father and mother, which I, negligent son, fail to do often enough.
Dad opened up. Despite the fun party, it turned sad. After 80 years, my father, brother, and sisters are experiencing tough times at our family paint business with homeowners postponing hiring painting contractors, less construction these days.
My parents are at the finger-cramping age when they’ve had my sister replace the child proof caps on their medicine bottles. 11 bottles sit in the basket on the kitchen table. Mom and Dad are puzzled by the disappearance (the looting?) of their affluence. Strident voices on TV assigning blame have become magnets to the needles of their apprehension and unspoken anger.
What went wrong with the economy? Why did their investments evaporate into the clouds only to rain into someone else’s pocket? The ready cash in the wallet isn’t there the way it used to be. It used to be Dad would show affection by chasing me around the lawn to stick a $20 bill in my pocket. Now he doesn’t have $20 in his.
We tried to console. There is a mighty difference between failure due to your fault and failure due to circumstances beyond your control. Sometimes you cause it. Sometimes the bird just poops on you.
Either way, both lead to the same result. They should be at the pinnacle, basking in the sunny rewards of decades of hard work, admiring the spectacular landscape of satisfying success. Instead, they sadly represent the shrinking of America’s middle class.
If my recent cross-country tour of America has made me anything, it is depressed. Given the dying towns and the boarded up shops I saw while on the road, our small town has it very good. For a small town, we’re fortunate because we still have a middle class. We’re the exception. Dad worries whether they can float the business through winter.
It isn’t fair.
We’ve heard platitudes about failure. I even believe most of them.
How it is healthy to fail. For a football team or golf team, there’s nothing worse than winning all the time. It becomes a curse and you actually can feel relieved when you finally lose a game. How failure is the nursemaid to fame. How if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger.
Yet, is it fair that at 85 years old my father – still working 10 hour days, 6 days a week, as he has for 60 years -- should think of himself as a failure? Sixty years of labor’s sweat have gone into the business.
You can end up blaming more than solving. You can get bitter.
You may be familiar with Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Well, there’s a follow-up to Murphy’s Law called Flanagan’s Principle. Flanagan adds: Murphy was an optimist.
Take a look around here. We’ve had a taste of it. Much of my life’s work hasn’t turned out exactly where I, when young and untested, imagined it would be. Where’s the fame? Where’s the sanctuary bursting with ardent listeners? Where’s the professorship? Where’s that wallet thick with ready cash? There’s enough failure to go around. You can only learn from it and move on.
Are we learning from disappointment? It is partly why we in town and church, in worship and commerce, keep exploring which changes we must implement.
The reality is that doing nothing is a change of a kind; being stagnant is change of a bad kind. I’d rather choose the kind of change while we can. Changing for the better is wisest while you are in good shape and still can.
I am trying to choose my change. If I expect other to, I better be first in line. I have of late learnt that I have gotten too comfortable. I’m stuck in my successful rut. Tenure has made me lazy. Realizing this is painful. Reinventing myself is uncomfortable. This is hard trying to learn how to improve what I’ve been doing for years. Maybe I also need to revisit how I define what it means to be successful. Maybe you first have to be satisfied in your own skin that you did you best, regardless the result.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FROM THE ROAD TRIP:
Graceland
Word count: 1,393
X marked the spot. X, according to our tour guide, may have marked the spot where he
started off singing, but after he drank all those cups of coffee and him nervous about his
last chance to impress Sam, he started bouncing around the room like cold lard on a hot
fry pan. A few feet away you could see the small indentation dug into the original
linoleum by the end pin of the Stand Up Bass. Slap those strings.
Sam, long time a radio disc jockey, thought his first recordings rather ordinary and,
frankly, dull. He didn’t think the young man was worth much effort. His sound was one
of dozens. Sam’s partner, however, remained convinced he had talent and after a year of
pestering finally gave Sam an ultimatum: unless they give this young man a chance,
she’s leaving. The threat was genuine. Sam did the tech work; she did most of the
typing and managed the office. After a couple of ballads, however, Sam’s opinion of the
young man hadn’t altered. The boy was good, sure, but so were most of the singers who
came knocking at the doors of his recording studio. Let the boy sing at church and make
his mother proud. Let him keep his day job driving truck and delivering produce to Beale
Street.
The group took a break, escaped to the restaurant next door, and drank coffee.
Scared, nervous, pumped up, the singer returned and stood where X now marked his spot.
He cradled the Shure microphone. The pent up energy erupted. “That’s Alright, Mama.”
he sang as he jumped, wiggled, swiveled around the room.
Sam looked up from the recording machine. “Is that you, Elvis?” Sam called out from
the booth.
According to Sam’s last will and testament, that very same vintage microphone stands
beside the famous X. Sam wanted everyone who visited Sun Studio to get the chance to
hold in their hands (and sing if they wished) the very same microphone Elvis used that
day and for records later. Sacred space. Sacred artifacts. Sacred relics. Our hushed
silence was votive offering enough.
Several years after producing “That’s Alright, Mama” Sam sold the rights to Elvis
Presley to RCA for $35,000. Sam said it was the best deal he ever made. Sam’s
recording studio was good. It was, however, also local. Elvis deserved national
promotion, a bigger stage. Elvis deserved more. Elvis deserved better. Besides, the
$35,000 allowed Sam the chance to introduce to the nation other newcomers. Johnny
Cash. Carl Perkins. Roy Orbison. Jerry Lee Lewis. Just to name a few.
There are givers and there are takers.
A black and white photograph hangs on the sound proof wall of the recording studio.
Only these photographs and a few framed letters have been added to the décor over the
last fifty years. In the photograph, Cash, Perkins, Lewis, and Elvis gather around a piano.
The tour guide explained that there is a person missing, ignored by the camera lens. Elvis
had brought a show girl back from Vegas with him and she was seated on top of the
piano. It explains why Jerry Lee Lewis’ eyes are focused elsewhere rather than on the
music sheet.
Despite the drizzle trickling off the 3 inch brim of my fedora and the humidity making
soggy the sweatband, it was an eager walk up the ten blocks of Union Street to Sun
Studio. Some shrines for the pious cannot be missed. We had hoped for a place to grab
some coffee and a bite to eat. Except for one internet café, the area offered more
warehouses than amenities.
Food came after the tour, across town, just a few blocks east of the Mississippi River.
The unpredictable sheets of rain could have made standing out front of Gus’s a miserable
experience, as we and two dozen others waited an hour and half to get inside the concrete
block building and gnaw on Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. I had had a hankering
for fried chicken for days. The rain fell. But misery or joy remains a choice. The
waiting crowd pressed together beneath Gus’s small awning. Some enjoyed long necks.
One group of four shared a quart of beer. Jokes were shared along with introductions.
“Where are you from? Are you here for the music fest? Wow, are you really from
Pennsylvania?” A father and his two daughters were in town for a volleyball tournament,
for which the storm made the whole team from Arkansas late. Another young woman,
explained the popularity of rubber boots (what my half English wife calls, ‘Wellies’)
among the young women attending the Beale Street Music Fest. Mud was something
with which she was familiar, having grown up on a dairy farm in Missouri. “Have you
ever milked a cow?” Mississippi riverbank plus steady rain plus thousands of tramping
feet equals mud.
Thus can arise the camaraderie of the pilgrim oppressed. An impromptu kinship born of
sufferings shared for the noble cause. As contented diners exited, squeezing their way
through the crowd at the door, we counted down when it would be our turn next to gain
paradise. Each diner assured us poor and hungry supplicants that the long wait was well
worth it.
The rainfall of Saturday was the tail end of a massive storm front that had stalled over
Tennessee. Tennessee, east of Memphis, was drenched. Nashville was inundated by the
Cumberland River, cresting at historical levels. We in Memphis were only temporarily
inconvenienced by a heavy Friday nighttime downpour and the drizzling gusts of
Saturday. Side streets were cluttered with debris. One manhole covered lay pushed up
and left askew by the volume and velocity of storm water.
Whereas Nashville’s Grand Old Opry was ruined by flooding water, the gods of ‘Rock &
Roll’ had been appeased by our piety. We awoke to a Sunday that promised sunshine.
There remained one more shrine to visit. Nay, more than mere shrine. Our pilgrimage to
the cathedral awaited.
On our way back from brunching with the ducks of the Peabody Hotel, applauding as
they paraded from elevator to lobby fountain, we phoned to make sure the highways were
passable, all road clear. They were. We grinned.
Convertible top down, trusting the sunshine favor of the deities, we arrived. It was, after
all, Sunday morning. We had come to pay homage. For Memphis is the city of two
kings.
I have been to the mountaintop. I have been to Graceland. I too joined those touring to
recover a nostalgic age when we were thin, our hair thicker, and cars had bench seats.
Messages from pilgrims from around the world are scrawled upon the wall of the
entrance gate. I gazed with my fellow pilgrims at the white living room. I toured among
the holy vestments. I adored the Jungle Room, complete with trickling fountain. I
marveled at the pool table, with the rip in the felt near the far corner pocket, surely to
remind us mere mortals that even deities have their humble moments. I stood in line very
near where the king of kings died at the age of 42. Prescription overdose? Watching the
video in the Racquetball Court, it made perfect sense to me to learn that Elvis’s special,
“Aloha from Hawaii,” enjoyed more television viewers than did the moon landing.
That’s alright. Then with fear and trepidation, I paused before the base of Elvis’s grave
in the Meditation Garden. TCP (Take Care of Business) and his trademark lightning bolt
were cast in bronze on the lower portion of his grave.
Graceland itself (I’m excluding all the Graceland exhibits across Elvis Presley
Boulevard: the Auto Museum, the Airplanes, the gift shops, the Hall of Costumes) was a
much smaller place than I had imagined. But then, it’s not really a place anyhow.
Where is Graceland? Graceland isn’t a place, it’s more of an attitude. It’s a state of
mind. It is everywhere, for those willing to receive. It is what you can experience,
receive, wherever you go.
In the Meditation Garden, an eternal flame burns at the head of Elvis’s grave. The names
of those who contributed to this cubed marble memorial are carved into its side. Included
among them is the physician who wrote the script for Elvis’s prescriptions.
It is sad that Elvis himself didn’t find enough grace even at Graceland.
Danville News
Robert John Andrews
Word count: 770
Ours is a big country. I’m sitting here waiting for the sun to rise over Monroeville, Alabama and announce Wednesday. I have driven just shy of 1100 miles since Monday morning. Today, Tuesday, should be easier as I’m only heading next door to Mississippi. Got to listen to Johnny Cash and go to Jackson. A sudden thought of home intrudes: I’m wondering if my congregation will look after each other.
Virginia’s tail is especially tedious. I left Wytheville yesterday morning. I drove Route 81 toward Chattanooga with the sun rising over my left shoulder. My left arm was already sunburnt from the day before. Driving past Rogersville. I’d demand a new name if I lived there. 81 is a busy road with busy people busily going somewhere. Watch out when the car merging is battered and dented, driven by an old lady wearing a baseball cap, the bumper decorated with faded Sunoco stickers.
Steinbeck on his jaunt across our country named his vehicle Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse. The conceit is forgivable. I’ve toyed with the notion of naming my Miata. Should I choose the name of Sancho Panza donkey? Or something more exotic? Calypso? Bellepheron? Tardis? Or perhaps Cutty Sark? I always did fancy myself a clipper ship captain. It;s very odd how I ended up being a lighthouse keeper instead.
God bless cruise control. Watch out for the cars parked at an angle along the berm, white plastic bags fluttering from the driver side window. Watch out for the blown tires, resembling elephant hides after a kill. With each exit ramp I wonder what more curious and more interesting eateries lay beyond the interchange. Beyond the ubiquitous Hardees and Applebees.
I note the signs along the way:
© Authorized vehicles only
© Road closed, merge right
© Orange and white collapsible plastic barrels. What happened to the old metal ones?
© Pilot open 24 hours
© Rest Stop
© Oversize Load
© Fog Advisory Area
© Leaving Fox Advisory Area
© Pilot – open 24 hours
© Next Rest Stop 73 miles.
Time to figure out the iPod my daughter loaded for me. She scoffed at me putting all my favorite CD’s in a shoebox. After some sharp words I realized the iPod works best when the radio is turned on. I hit Music. Hit Album. Scroll with my fat thumb down to my fancy. I fancied ‘The Band.’ Talk about your memories. That was my first real kissing date. With Linda Bonner. She laughed when I changed shoes to drive. Good thing I got my license because I got it only that morning. And I had purchased tickets at the Garden State Art Center to see ‘The Band.’ I never occurred to me I’d fail. Heck, I had a date that night. Linda ended up marrying the guy who beat me out in class elections as ‘Class Friendliest.” He beat me by one vote. I voted for him. He got Linda too. He buried her three years ago. I went to the viewing.
Dad couldn’t teach me everything about driving, but he taught me well enough. The day after I got my permit, Dad took me driving. Turn here. Slow down. Stop slow. Let’s veer right here. He took me onto the entrance ramp of the Garden State Parkway at rush hour. “Get use to it,” he laughed.
Driving resembles playing a game of tag with trucks. Or better, avoiding being tagged. I note the truck names:
© Old Dominion
© Schneider National
© UPS
© Overnite Express
© GOD
© England
© My favorite was Toch Foods, specialists in chicken. It was a tank truck!
Given my sports car vantage I’m also becoming an expert in truck mud flaps:
© Heil
© Peterbilt
© Freightliner
© Maverick
© Volvo
© Great Dane
© Utilities National 3000R
I decided to detour into Chattanooga. A map would have helped. And a compass. This town twists and turns. Somehow I crossed the river and ended up on the North Shore. But I found the bridge to go back over. From the bridge I spotted the Riverfront tourist area. Descending onto that shore, I wound my way around. Parking was pricey so I just pulled over on the curb. I only needed to see. I saw what I needed to see. Piers. River tours. A few bikinied young women sunbathing. A paddle-wheel moored on the opposite shoreline.
Here, over a hundred and fifty years ago, the powers-that-be rounded up the inconvenient Cherokee and stuffed them on barges. In those days, they didn’t have cattle cars. Thus began the Trail of Tears.
Robert John Andrews
Word Count: 825
The side roads can’ be called dirt roads. They are all red clay. I didn’t see a mockingbird but I did see lots of blackbirds pecking at morsels of road kill.
No, I really didn’t expect to seek Scout rolling down the lane in an old tire. No, I really didn’t expect to see Atticus Finch in his white suit walking down the road toward the trial. Nor did I really expect to see Boo Radley. Though, I will admit part of me really hoped to.
Still, I got close.
It has been argued that The Great Gatsby is our great American novel, with its opulence, snobbery, self-indulgence, fast cars, martinis, parties, and empty living. Others have promoted Huck Finn as the greatest American novel. Huck and Jim rafting downriver, initially fascinating but they do turn into caricatures.
No book captures the American heart as does To Kill a Mockingbird. Its beauty is how decently it exposes the soul of the town. She simply tells the tale, not with modern salacious delight nor crusading conviction, but with simple love, with a compassionate humanity. It is simply a story told by a child. Sometimes it is simply amazing how we can survive the day, given all the hurt and heartache we go through. Sometimes it seems a shame children learn what adults discover in time, what really goes on in a town, in families, behind closed doors. The trick, I guess, is to avoid being tainted.
Now I’m driving into the town where Harper Lee wrote her book. Monroeville, Alabama. The town which inspired both book and movie. Her novel was published fifty years ago this year. Yes, I acknowledge the movie was filmed in Pasadena. But its heart was here, in this small town in southern Alabama. She was quoted, saying, “What I did present exactly were the clime and tone, as I remember them.” When I entered Monroeville from the back road from Selma, the tree lined lane of homes I drove down sure reminded me of the bungalows where Finch’s and Radley’s lived.
There’s been changes since.
Mel’s Dairy Dream, featuring hot wings, now stands where Harper Lee grew up, several blocks from the town square. The home Capote visited still stands next door. A dilapidated stone wall where they as children likely sat and plotted remains. But not much remains. Aluminum doors have replaced screen doors.
In the museum in the old Courthouse you can see a photograph of Harper Lee and Gregory Peck walking across the street toward the Courthouse. Behind them, painted in large letters, you can read: Bedsole Dry Goods Store. That name now is white-washed out. Elsewhere around the block you’ll find the Framery, Johnson Jewelers, Economy Shop Country Thrift Store. A middle-aged African American man strolls by wearing an garish orange tee shirt and dew rag. The fellow who ran my credit card at The Monroeville Inn was Pakistani.
Next morning, at the Sweet Tooth Cafe I bought a coffee, large, and cinnamon bun and chattged with the elderly manger, who said that rain might be a’comin. I ate my bun there but finished my coffee, sipping from the Styrofoam cup, while seated on a green bench in front of the old Courthouse. Behind me the Camellias were budding. The Rose of Sharon, a lustrous red, was in bloom. Ten feet away, between my bench and the street, sat a squat monument dedicated to Atticus Finch by the Alabama Bar. It reminds all lawyers (and jurors) to remember Atticus’ closing words: “In the name of God, do your duty.”
Buildings change. So do neighbors. Towns too. Words remain.
The old Courthouse now is a museum dedicated to preserving the virtues of Harper Lee’s book. Nathan Carter, the grandson of Mary Ida Carter (Truman Capote’s beloved aunt) greeted me warmly and kindly. We talked books. He mentioned to me that within about 20 minutes 200 elementary school children were about to arrive. He smiled charmingly when, after taking my tour of the building, I told him how pleased I was that I got to stand in the spot in the courtroom balcony where the best line takes place. Carter said, “I can guess which one.” He knew. “Stand up, Miss Finch. You’re father’s passing.”
The line gets me every time. Carter told me that many lawyers come and visit; many mention how Atticus is the reason they entered law. I smiled and confessed that he is one reason I entered the ministry.
It has to do with those doors. As a kid, I remember thinking about the troubles my family was going through. It also occurred to me how we were a really good family. We were happy, healthy, successful.
And I looked at my front door and thought about all the stuff going on behind our door. And it made me look at all the other doors in my neighborhood and wonder: what’s going on behind their doors?
Robert John Andrews
April 9, 2010
Word Count: 845
I thought I knew rural from having lived eleven years in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. But here in Alabama rural is really rural. You can drive on a two lane road for twenty minutes without seeing another car. Beside farm fields, you pass by the occasional trailer or shack. Shacks of a varied kind. Porches invariably cluttered. The sign alongside the road tells me this is the Bobby McCray Memorial Drive. Was he some young soldier who never returned?
Gentle swells of roadway pass under me. One upon a time it was part of the Natchez Trace. To my right is the Beulah Baptist Church. Around the bend you find the True Way Holiness Church, soon again I pass by the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Our Pennsylvania church names are woefully uncreative, predictable, and mundane: First, Second, Trinity. Down here it is:
Morning Star Missionary Baptist
King Solomon Missionary Baptist
Hopedale Missionary Baptist
Antioch (just plain Baptist)
Rose Hill Missionary Baptist
New Zion Missionary Baptist
North Star Missionary Baptist
Seven Stars Missionary Baptist
Pennsylvania dirt smells of corn and manure. Here wafts a different aroma. A thick sweet smell, close to honey and baking bread.
Entering the outskirts of Canton I slowed down for a pick up truck towing an empty horse trailer. It was exiting the driveway behind a big white building. A man wearing an apron was smoking behind the building. I get it. It is a slaughter house. Admittedly, I did come into Canton by the back door rather than the exit ramp of the interstate. Back door for friends and family. Front door for strangers. Front door is where you hope to make an impression.
But don’t look for quaint at highway interchanges. Mostly it’s Super 8’s, Hardees, and Citgo’s. Leave behind also those romantic illusions of quaint villages. Take, for instance, Lake Village Arkansas. The town hugs the curving shoreline of vast lake. Cypress trees stand knee-deep like patient fisherman along the shoreline. Transplant Lake Village to New Jersey and in a flash it would be a snobby, affluent community. Contractors would rush to build a gated community next to a high class retirement village. Here in Lake Village you find boarded up shops, where the busiest place in town is the scrap yard. No wonder the fellow working the counter at the Arkansas Visitor Center outside town looked at me funny. I asked if there were a lakefront restaurant I could enjoy down the road downtown.
Outside downtown Canton across the street at the traffic light a large yellow sign announces: Big Daddy’s Check Cashing. More of the same followed as I turned left and drove toward the main part of town: Family Cash Advance, Checks Cashed, Pawn Shop, Cash Advances.
I imagine she once was a belle of a town. Wide streets offer the diagonal parking which seems common throughout southern small towns.
The handsome Madison County Courthouse occupies the center of the square. I drove around it three times just to reconnoiter. There’s a traffic light at each of the four corners. A fancy wrought iron fence squares off the property. The fence allows a gap at the middle of each block. There are concrete steps that take you to (or from) the sidewalk. A gazebo also sits on the grounds. Many of the old buildings that face the Courthouse feature New Orleans style second floor porches.
Here is where they filmed the election rally scene from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” It always amazes me how our imaginations are more elaborate and refined than reality. Those expectations will get you every time. Admittedly, I didn’t take time to snoop, to ask around, to discover (or be led to) the lovely and wonderful places not so obvious. I have to learn to ask around more. But then, I’m just passing through. When you sit down at the MacDonald’s nearest the ramp and grump at the smudge of ketchup on the table, you ought to wonder what more interesting eateries lay beyond the interchange.
But the obvious can be equally disappointing. Here in Canton there was no Woolworths, where the manager tossed out George Clooney’s character. Was the rally stand built on the Courthouse Square? Where are all the charming men and women wearing fedoras and bonnets? I really wanted to hear the little girls singing. But alas, all I saw on the sidewalks was one young man swaggering defiantly listening to his earphones and an older fellow sitting on the stoop of a shop nibbling on a snack.
Being thirsty, I parked. I parked on the inside of the town square, diagonally. This is what I was anticipating ever since I left Monroeville four hours ago. A chance to have a sip, a bite, and enjoy the local flavor. I limped across the street, my foot sore from the long drive. Upon seeing this invalid, a friendly driver paused his van in the middle of the street and waved me across. I pulled on the doors to the grille. They were locked. They weren’t just locked. They were padlocked.
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Sallisaw
Word Count: 846
During the entire drive from Russellville, Arkansas, in the Ozarks, I listened to Big Country 107.3. Mood music. Charlie Daniels, Pasty Cline, Conway Twitty.
My destination? Sallisaw, Oklahoma, where begins Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
They still have Sinclair gasoline here. Plus plenty of heavy-duty, good looking pick-up trucks passing me by. I feel little a humble in my Miata.
Sallisaw isn’t as flat as I supposed. Rolling hills surround it. Where do you locate the dust bowl? Where did those depression era dust storms destroy the soil, send it whirling in black clouds all the way to the east coast. Ships miles off shore in the Atlantic ended up dusted in dirt.
Railroad tracks run parallel to my right, storefronts to the left. You pass by Sallisaw Lumber, School of Dance, Indian Jewelry and Guitars, West End Liquors (closed), H&R Block (open). In the middle of town, opposite the old train station you will find Sallisaw _ardware, A+B Furniture, _estern Auto. A few of the plastic letters across the facade are missing. Most of the old gas stations downtown have been turned into shops, such as the Old Feed Barn Restaurant or Antiques
Beyond the Feed and Fuel a second set of railroad tracks curve in from the left and hook up with those on my right. I drive under the trestle. Farther down I turn around in the parking lot of three story modern building:
Cherokee Nation
Area 3 Office
Before I leave town I stop at the package-good store tucked around the corner of a traffic light. The hand written sign on store announces: Open 4 -9. Well, I’m not about to wait five hours. I have to rendezvous in ten hours with a friend flying into the Will Rogers World Airport, Oklahoma City. He’s joining me for this southwestern portion of the trip. The company will be greatly appreciated. Frank will want a sip after he arrives.
As I’m slipping back into my car a cheerful woman calls out from open door of the shop next door and asks if she can help me. Her name, I discover, is Linda. Linda makes candy bouquets for sale. She waves me inside and takes me behind her counter through a door into the adjoining store. I make my purchase. Outside I ask her about the town. We talk a little about The Grapes of Wrath. She says that they still have a bit of a festival but there’s not much fuss. The bigger festival is in the neighboring town. That’s the Red Fern Festival, named for the book and movie based on that town.
Are there many foreclosures? I ask Linda. “No,” she says. “There is lots of unemployment and welfare but homes aren’t being lost.” “The Indians,” she adds, “get a lot of free benefits.”
On the road heading north toward Tahlequah to visit the Cherokee Heritage Museum, I did see outside Sallisaw several pleasant split levels, several nice housing developments, plus the Cazadores Mexican Restaurant near Hog Creek. To my right I pass by the First Christian Church. Immediately after comes the Nazarene Church. A hundred yards beyond that is the bigger Emmanuel Baptist Church. Its sign proclaims: “Loving God, Loving People, Loving Life.” Across the street is the Oak Ridge Assembly of God.
Sallisaw. Here is where the Joads begin their journey for a new life in California. At best, it’ll be a farmer’s paradise. The least it’ll be is a chance. So they think. So the brochures promise. The worst they’ve already gone through, they think. The farm’s lost. Ma refuses to look back when they set out in their over-packed jalopy. Ma refuses to confuse sadness with despair.
The pocket money I’m carrying for my trip to California is four times their entire life savings. Pa debated long and hard about giving up a precious penny for some hard candy at the Truck Stop on Route 66. But when Mae the waitress lied and said they were 2 for a penny, Pa pinched out a coin and let the kids have a treat.
I had thought I could save a little of my money by sleeping in my car some nights. I haven’t yet. There’s really no wise place to pull over. I did cut back by taking advantage of the free coffee from the motel lobbies and by eating only supper. Given how little exercise you get driving, you can understand why some truck drivers get such guts.
But even with my cost cutting, I don’t think I budgeted this trip too well. There’s $200 dollars in my money belt, $700 dollars in a zippered bag stuck down my boot. There’s another $100 or so in my back pocket wallet. But there’s always my new credit card. I figured on using the credit card for gas and motels.
I’m not wealthy but I’m comfortable. Between Elaine and I, we are able to tread water, paying off our mortgage along with a variety of school loans. Yes, I guess you could say we are pretty prosperous, pretty darn fortunate.
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“White Sands”
Robert John Andrews
Word count: 765
There are times to be frugal and times not to be. We debated whether or not to pay the entrance fee for the White Sands National Park. Every National Park or State Park we wanted to visit required a fee. But at White Sands were glad we finally did decide to pay up and tour. For miles, we weaved through glistening white dunes.
My mind raced back to memories of Island Beach State Park in New Jersey with its acres of ample sand dunes.Except these massive, flowing, layered, crescent shaped, parabolic dunes of pure white granules weren’t sand. They make up 275 square miles of gypsum desert. Calcium sulphate. 250 million years ago a shallow sea covered New Mexico. 70 million years ago the gypsum bearing marine deposits were uplifted into a gigantic dome. 10 million years ago the center collapsed creating this massive basin. The Tularosa Basin.
Given our brief window of time, we are prone to think the earth static, dependable, steady as a rock. Too often think the same of family, society, or institutions, until life proves otherwise.
But these rocks are not steady. Our recent earthquakes should teach us that.
Our window of time is very small. Take a step back and think not in minutes or years but in the ebb and flow of millennia. From the view of eons, even rock is flux and fluid, change and unrest. It is a matter of perspective. And perspective can be unreliable. The town you see when cresting a hill seems only few miles away when it actually is ten. You squint at the boulder balanced at the base of a butte and assume it is the size of a car when it actually is the size of a cathedral.
Crossing from New Mexico to Arizona you drive at 7000 feet through canyons where once upon a time there was a vast lake. You visit the Meteor Crater and walk its rim.
175 million tons were displaced in ten seconds when an asteroid 150 feet wide struck ground. The asteroid that hit Arizona is one of the 150 known asteroid strikes on Mother Earth. Or you visit the Grand Canyon and marvel at how cascading water carves up soil over six million years. But for now, on these dunes young people kiss. Friends gather on these gypsum dunes for picnics and parties. Families bring colorful inner tubes and snow saucers for the kids to slide down the gypsum slopes to the bottom, then they eagerly wade up the hill for the next ride.
There are times to be frugal and times not to be. Since we splurged on tickets for the National Park we decided to cut back on where we would spend the night. For $5 we set up our tent in the Oliver Lee State Campground in Dog Canyon. Which meant that the other campers in their RV’s looked at us funny when we pulled in with our sports car. Which meant that dinner consisted of water and Fig Newtons. Which meant that we slept on unforgiving ground.
But Oliver Lee Campground also meant that we had potable water, comfort facilities, and a concrete picnic table. It also meant that we tented at the foothills of a sheer, towering escarpment and overlooked a desert stretching out for leagues toward the San Andres Mountain range.
And then we celebrated our night near White Sands by watching the reason we came here in the first place. With a portable video player plugged into the socket of my car, we watched the classic 1953 Science Fiction movie, “Them.” White Sands is precisely where giant ants attacked the trailer (in the movie at least). White Sands is where the military searched out their nest and discovered to their horror that the new queen ants had escaped. Humanity was threatened.
“Them” follows the typical plot of many B-movies of the era, spawned by the fear of atomic bombs. The cold War. The arms race. Nuclear testing. Monsters from radiation.
For White Sands also is the region of Trinity, farther toward the north in the most forsaken land possible. Trinity is where the first atomic blast took place.
Before we sat on the picnic table and watched our movie, I stood on top of the picnic table to watch the sunset. Beneath streaks of cottony clouds, the sun dipped behind the silhouette of the mountains, the sky behind them turning resonant, radiant, the incandescence of a farewell. Defiant rays fanned out from behind the mountain toward the clouds. The clouds looked on fire. The sky turned turquoise.
It helps to remember that at sunset it is not the sun that moves.
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Monument Valley
Robert John Andrews
Word Count: 768
Most are thicker than a New York City block and all rise up taller than a skyscraper. Actually, that is incorrect. They didn’t rise up. The desert floor descended, the result of countless ages of wind and water erosion. Their tops once were the floor.
Regardless, when you’re beneath them you still must look up at them and their streaks of red and white stratification, sandstone formed of mud from the ocean floor millions of years ago, their color changing in the shifting sunlight. West Mitten Butte and East Mitten Butte, so named because each of them has a matching ‘thumb’ of jutting rock. Merrick Butte. Elephant Butte. Mitchell Mesa. Rain God Mesa. Spearhead Mesa. Camel Butte. Each filled with alcoves and ledges. Some sit like gigantic boxes on the desert floor. Others rise up like bony hands.
Hundreds of other solitary buttes, free standing rock formations, vast canyons, and mesas greeted us as we drove northeast from Tuba City, Arizona, toward Mexican Hat, Utah. At Mexican Hat you meet a different type of rock formation, almost comical, which gives the town its namesake. High above the town a rock formation resembles a sleeping man, his legs tucked up under his chin, his giant sombrero shading him.
The interpretive sign at the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Visitor’s Center – welcoming you to the most condensed cluster of these buttes and mesas -- tells you that the Navajo name for the valley is “White Streaks Amidst the Rocks.” The sign continues: “Navajo elders and ceremonialists tell us that there are many sacred places within this valley including springs, places where plants, medicines, and places where prayers are offered. These places have names and stories and they are occupied and visited by the deities…”
Well, of course the deities visit them and still occupy them. Surely enough for the Navajo and surely enough for my brothers and I raised on a steady diet of Hollywood Westerns. Our boyhood kind of deities. If you’ve seen any John Wayne western, you already are familiar with what I’m describing.
Here was filmed dozens of those classic western moves: “The Lone Ranger,’ ‘My Darling Clementine,’ “Stagecoach” as well as “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.” It is my favorite John Wayne movie. It was his too. The wind swirled with a dust devil and I do believe I saw ghosts.
Despite the warnings that the dirt road winding along the floor of the valley is dangerous to recreational vehicles and low clearance vehicles, we descended in our brave little sports car down among the buttes. Only once did I scrape the bottom of my car. No leak result, fortunately. Other tourists whisking by in their jeeps and SUV’s took pictures of us navigating the stones and silt. But it was worth it to drive, stop, and stand where Captain Nathan Brittles and Sergeant Tyree galloped. Gallant men that they were. Another line in the interpretive sign was dead on when it said, “These rocks are alive, they have ears, mouths, and breathe, just as humans do.”
Miles into the valley drive you find the John Ford point, which resembles more of a New England pulpit sticking out into the valley. Over there you can imagine the US Calvary digging in. Was that a stagecoach racing by, raising up a cloud of dust, chased by hundreds of warriors?
You might remember the most famous line of the movie, spoken by John Wayne’s character several times: “Never apologize, it’s a sign of weakness.”
Though, if you know the movie, it is rather odd for him to say that, because several times in the movie he does express regret for some of the decisions he’s made or things he did.
Which is perfectly okay because what he means is don’t whine or complain. Don’t try to shift the blame, dodging owning up to the wrong you’ve done by cleverly saying how you are sorry they took offense, as if it is their fault. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Don't make excuses either. Don’t expect that the person you wronged is somehow obligated to forgive you. And any time in your apology you use the word ‘but’ you’ve just canceled your apology.
The reality is, even for Nathan Brittles, even for John Wayne, even for America, even for you and me, we each have enough for which we need to apologize. It takes a big man to apologize, Dad use to say. It takes a man to imitate Nathan Brittles and man up, fix it if you can, take responsibility.
Anything else erodes your character until everyone else towers above you.
Las Vegas
Robert John Andrews
Word Count: 818
We woke at the Carvillo Bay campsite, overlooking blue Lake Mead, hundred of boats, and an equal number of RV’s. We collapsed the tent, packed the car, and, improvising our itinerary as we went, decided we’d take a drive down the famous Las Vegas strip on our way west. Originally we weren’t going to bother, but, well, we had to go by anyway to get to Death Valley.
After visiting both, I’m convinced which place is the deadlier. Although, even at the gas station at the Nevada entrance to Death Valley you can both fill up your car and spend a half hour with an approved prostitute. How utterly sad. With Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park we had seen what nature could create. The hoodoos, grottoes, cap rocks, stone and soil had been chiseled by wind, rain, and river into a cacophony of spectacular delight. Windows and arches carved in limestone. Pinnacles rise like organ pipes hundreds of feet high.
Red petals from flowering cacti. Tiny green vested and white banded birds do gymnastics in the air with their triangle wings, chasing bugs above the cottonwoods, before settling into their nests tucked up into the rooks of cliffs. 
Thin waterfalls cascade in tiers 2,000 feet, forming emerald pools. Water will flow where it will. Now we wanted to see Las Vegas and see what man could make.
This trip is beginning to make me believe that everybody trades on something. Every town trades on what it can.
Which was why I had to visit Roswell after we left Lubbock, Texas. Some dreams get a chance of being fulfilled. I’m ripe with dreams.
Now, let it be said there are lovely sections of Roswell that warrant a hello. The Public Library for instance. Large metal letters naming American authors run in a continuous band along the top front edge of the building: SEUSSHEMINGWAYTWAIN… It also deserves to be mentioned that Roswell is the (self-proclaimed) Dairy Capital of the World. But neither cows nor books were the reason I was there. I have dreamt of visiting Roswell for years because the UFO International Museum is there.
For years I have dreamt of standing on the sidewalk wearing aluminum foil on my head. Which I did. Which you can do. No one cares. No one says anything because it’s a goofy town. It also is a tacky town. It reminds me of the Jersey shore. Main Street consists mostly of UFO gift shops, some with eerie music playing. They all sell the same stuff. Plastic inflatable green Aliens, caps, mugs, key chains. Of course, the real crash site of the supposed aliens (most likely chimpanzees on a test ascent for NASA) took place closer to Corona, New Mexico, 75 miles north.Everybody trades on something. I love it. God bless us.
Take Winslow, Arizona, for instance.
Construction crews made it impossible for us to drive through the key part of town -- the east bound lane of Route 66 -- because they are fixing the curbs and installing a large road sign in white brick in the middle of the intersection. We parked a few blocks away. The bricks will resemble the classic Route 66 traffic sign. They are installing it at the intersection where stands the bronze statue of a fellow taking it easy at the corner in Winslow, Arizona. A mural of a girl in a flat bed Ford is painted on the wall behind it. This whole town is trading on one line in a song by the rock band, The Eagles. Well, that is why we visited and had breakfast there.
Or even take San Juan Capistrano, California, where the legend of Zorro was birthed and where on March 19th, the swallows annually return. Well, not as much as they used to. The whole region is building bigger buildings so there are more places now for the swallows to roost. But the old Mission at San Juan still hosts a few. It is nice there is the Swallow Inn and the Old Mission Cantina nearby. Everybody trades on something. Mostly it’s harmless. Except for maybe Las Vegas.
It was either ironic or prophetic that the moment I unzipped the flap to the tent back at our campsite at Lake Mead and stepped outside, I startled away a prowling coyote. The bevy of pigeons I had to forcibly shoo away.
We drove down the famous strip: $70 1 Hour Massage, Pawn, Bail Bonds, Wee Kirk in the Heather Wedding Chapel, Cupid’s Wedding Chapel Themed Weddings – Themed Rooms, Little White Chapel, Strippers Nude Daily Nude Nude, March Madness Shoot to Score Free Admission, Bail Bonds, Pawn Shop, Super Bail, We Loan More, plus signs reminding parents not to leave their children in the car.
The Mirage Hotel and Casino is the most honest of the fancy places there. Las Vegas is all mirage. They call it craps for a reason.
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Los Angeles
Robert John Andrews
Word Count: 827
We spent the night in Malibu at the Malibu Motel. It was luxury after two nights of camping out in a tent. Our room overlooked all the pricey beachfront homes that lined the Pacific Coast Highway, their houses blocking beach access and their fences shielding a view of Malibu Beach from the road. We woke with the intent of touring Los Angeles on a lazy Sunday.
A word of advice if you’re a planning to drive in Los Angeles: don’t. Just don’t. Even on Sunday.
Los Angeles ranks as one of the lower circles of Dante’s Hell. LA’s traffic serves as a vengeful angel of God’s retributive justice. For the sin of impatience you must eternally drive in LA traffic with a stick shift. Motorcycles seem exempt from the rules, as they buzz between cars trapped bumper to bumper for hours. LA highways tease you. You get a little speed going, then, wham, at every exit and egress, thousands of cars come to a stifling congestion. Then you creep. Sometimes. Downhill gives some relief because you can slip the car in neutral and roll. Otherwise, it’s shift to first while destroying the clutch.
We failed in finding Bronson’s Canyon located somewhere in the undulations of Griffith Park. Bronson’s Canyon is famous as the Bat Cave and the scene in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” where the escaping couple hides out from the villagers morphed into alien pods. We passed by the Observatory where the knife fight took place in “Rebel without a Cause." But somehow we ended up back outside on a major highway caught in a traffic jam of cars trying to squeeze their way into the zoo.
We failed in finding the steps on Vendome Street where Laurel and Hardy pulled and pushed the piano up that eternal flight of steps. Our failure was from sheer neglect. When we drove along Sunset Boulevard toward the famous Hollywood sign, we must have been around the corner from them. But I was too distracted by traffic lights, motorcycles rocketing between cars, cars attacking from side streets, and those faded directional arrows painted on the macadam.
We did succeed in finding the 6th Street storm drain in the Los Angeles River. A quest fulfilled! The circle complete! Back at White Sands, New Mexico, we saw where the giant, radiation-muted ants first foraged for fresh meat in our favorite 1953 Sci-Fi movie “THEM.” Here at the 6th Street drain, directly beneath the 6th Street Bridge, is where Ben from New Mexico Highway Patrol and Robert from FBI in Alamogordo, with the help of the father and daughter scientists revenged themselves by killing the remaining ants, saved the boys, and protected all mankind.
The Los Angeles River is a strange river if you’ve ever seen a river. But, given the fact that Hollywood is in LA, I guess it works for LA. For the Los Angeles River is a gigantic concrete storm drain. Openings in the side, such as at 6th street, channel the storm water from the storm drains from the streets above. Usually, it’s dry.
Frank hooked up the portable DVD player and we compared scenes from this 1953 movie to the area. We couldn’t cross the 6th Bridge due to construction, so we looped over the 4th Street bridge and backtracked. Most of our access to the edge of the fake river was blocked by warehouses and rows of railroad tankers and box cars. We finally were able to slip around Mission Street and parked behind an abandoned warehouse.
From a ramp we gained a decent view despite the ten foot high cyclone fencing and razor wire. I noticed holes in the fence. Frank noticed steps leading to another bridge. I waited in the convertible while he took photographs from that bridge. I waited nervously.But we still wanted to get closer. Obsessions are like that. Studying the movie screen and driving through the alleys behind the warehouses, our eyes widened with eagerness when we saw a way of driving under the 6th Street bridge where we might get a clear view straight from our side into the drain where Ben and Robert drove their jeeps to find the ants. To find ‘THEM.’
But I made a slow U-Turn when, turning the corner of the alley to get under the bridge, we saw the real them. We ran into a village of the homeless. There were over 50 shacks made of cardboard and blue tarp tucked up against the concrete foundation of the bridge. You see what you want to see. Often comes the sadness of someone who knows how to see. All along the LA River we began to see persons living in the viaducts and drains. One couple dragged their folding chairs into an alcove between the 6th Street and 4th Street bridge.
We decided we were no longer Sci-fi movie buffs but voyeurs. Now we were intruding. We decided to drive to Laguna Beach.
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Salinas
Word Count: 800
It had been hours driving up Route 1, wending, weaving, winding along the switch-back curves along the Pacific Coast, some with guard rails. My destination? Salinas, California.
Father James Ezell, rector at the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Salinas, drove up to meet me as I waited in front of the National Steinbeck Center. John Steinbeck, once upon a time, served as an acolyte at St. Paul’s. Cesar Chavez, champion of the United Farm Workers, held meetings in Jim’s church with the support of the pastor at that time. The growers left the church because of it.
Oh, I can’t call him Father Ezell. He’s Spiff. He’s been my friend since Junior High. His lovely sister married my brother.
Salinas. Located at the top of Salinas Valley, its long low flat fertile valley stretches out between the Santa Lucia Mountains and the Gabilan Range. The Gabilans are named for the hawks that soar about the hills. Salinas boasts being the ‘Salad Bowl of the World.’
Salinas. Here, in the region in which he grew up, Steinbeck based many of his stories. Tortilla Flats. The Red Pony. Over in Monterey you find Cannery Row and the sardines harvested from the deep cold trench out in Monterey Bay. You can take an East of Eden walking tour, following Kate on her walk after she deposits her earnings from her bordello to her home at the corner of Main. Here also is where the citizens of Salinas twice burnt Steinbeck’s books.
Twelve miles south is Soledad, which translates as ‘solitude,’ ‘loneliness.’ Soledad is the backdrop for Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men. George and Lennie wander from ranch to ranch, hanging onto the shred of a dream of a little piece of land of their own, and rabbits for Lennie. Brawn coupled with ignorance spells sorrow. Lennie smothers Curly’s wife, and George does what he must to his friend. Trapped men. Imprisoned men. Lonely men. Spiff reminded me that Soledad is more famous for being the home of Soledad prison. Prison on one side, agriculture on the other. Families following their jailbird sons, husbands, and boyfriends have led to an increase in gang violence throughout the valley.
While waiting for Jim to meet me outside the Steinbeck Center I watched an elderly fellow poke a walking stick into a trash bin. He wore a turquoise cap, a blue windbreaker, grey slacks. Rummaging through the trash, he pulled out a plastic bottle, poured out the remnants of the soda, squashed it with his sneaker, and stuck it into his plastic bag. He moved on, harvesting from the rest of the bins up the street. You can make a few bucks from the recycling.
Next morning I woke to my first rain since Virginia. Before dropping me off at the Center so he could get back to his office to prepare a funeral, Jim took me to meet his friend, the Methodist pastor. They, in partnership with the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches operate a drop in center for hundreds of homeless men, women, and children. These folks wait out of the rain for the free lunch the churches provide daily. Today was enchilada casserole. They can change their wet clothes for dry from the clothing ministry. The church library, which once held religious books that no one read, now serves as the food pantry, canned goods lining the bookshelves. Counseling services are provided as well as volunteers who come just to listen to the homeless. Homelessness also means isolation, no one to talk with. A van pulled into the cramped church parking area. Clinica de Salud. This week was dentist week. 22 Churches in Salinas participate in the ‘I Help Ministry,’ rounding up the homeless in vans and bringing them to churches for a safe and warm night.
Salinas is where The Grapes of Wrath ends. 300,000 to 500,000 dust bowl migrants, these ‘harvest gypsies,’ left their homes, such as in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, drove Route 66, and huddled together in caravans of the desperate and disillusioned, hoping to come to work the abundance of California.
Sallisaw comes from the French word for salt, from the salt deposits along the streams used by settlers and buffalo hunters to preserve their meat. Salinas likewise means salt. Salt preserves. Salt brings out flavor. Salt also can heal, despite it stinging.
While touring the Steinbeck Center, me especially glad to see ‘Rocinante,’ the vehicle in which Steinbeck traveled cross country, I glanced out through the glass entrance-way and saw in the drizzle the same fellow in the same clothes searching the same trash bins.
The Grapes of Wrath starts with a drought and ends in a flood. What is left of the Joad family huddles together in a rain-soaked barn. They have lost everything except each other.
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San Francisco
Robert John Andrews
Word Count: 843
I stand at the intersection of Bush and Stockton Streets. Bush runs east and west, Stockton runs north and south at the very heart of San Francisco, two blocks from Union Square. It can’t be called a true intersection, as Bush is an overpass over a tunnel.
On the west side of the Bush Street overlook, nearest pedestrian steps, you can get a drink at the Tunnel Top Bar. Directly opposite it is a quiet Laundromat. Diagonal from the Tunnel Top Bar is the World Market Wyndham. A multi-level parking garage rises up from the southeast corner of the road below. Opposite it on Stockton sits The Green Door A Touch of Ecstasy Massage Market Liquor Sauna Whirlpool In Call Out Call. From Bush you look down on its neon signs.
Here is the spot where Miles Archer is killed. Shot by a Webley-Fosbery. In Humphrey Bogart’s movie of “The Maltese Falcon” there appears neither tunnel nor steps. It is a dead-end slope of grass and shrub. In the night, the shot rings out. Archer tumbles against the fence, the fence breaks. He rolls down the hill, murdered. Sam Spade will find his partner’s killer. Don’t get in his way. All because of the bird. The Falcon. The Maltese Falcon. Jewel encrusted, with red garnets, amethyst, emeralds, blue sapphire.
At the end of the movie, they all discover that the Falcon the Captain of the La Poloma delivered to Spade is a fake. The Fat Man resolves to continue his search in Istanbul. Spade has justice in mind.
Too many look in the wrong places for fortune. What Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Joel Cairo, and Kaspar Gutman needed to discover is that treasure isn’t something you search for. Treasure isn’t something you steal. Treasure isn’t something you find. Treasure is something you create.
Some have mentioned to me that this drive across country is a trip of a lifetime. Nonsense.
Trip of a lifetime? Nonsense. The trip of a lifetime was marrying Elaine thirty-five years ago. The trip of a lifetime was her having our three babies.
Here I am standing at the intersection of Bush and Stockton. We look down at the parked tram as the passengers are invited to exit for a moment. We watch the Transit Police inquire of two young gentlemen whether or not they have in their possession their transit passes.
You may have noticed I used the first person plural, ‘We.’ For I am not alone standing here.
My wife and I came to San Francisco 35 years ago for our honeymoon. In 1975 a young man and young woman, freshly flung onto the world from college graduations, honeymooned here. Our parents thought us too young. We were, but we didn’t know it then.
35 years ago Bermuda was the hot spot for honeymoons. Give us a city any day over a beach. Sand, sunscreen, and waves might be okay for a day, especially if there is a good seafood shack someplace near, but give us instead a city with theatre, restaurants, and the flavor of a city’s spice.
Now I stand at the heart of San Francisco with my 28 year old daughter. Who could have conceived then what is now? Evidently though, something did get conceived. Well, someone actually. Not immediately, but someone appropriately eventually.
After picking up our daughter up at her office, she and I hopped on the bus, hopped off, then walked down to the Buena Vista for an appetizer and their famous Irish Coffee. Here, quite possibly at the same table, is where her mother and I sipped our first Irish Coffees. Thirty-five years ago.
Here, while watching the men haul the Cable Cars around by hand, is where we laughed and smiled and began to figure out how to love. Thirty-five years ago.
Here down those steps into the Cannery is where your mother and I ate oysters on a half shell and sipped cold beer. Thirty-five years ago.
Did we just pass Chinatown? We spent a festive night eating at the Empress of China, tasting all sorts of new treats. Thirty-five years ago.
See, over there was a Hungarian Restaurant where we ate goulash spiced with plenty of paprika and drank a Tokaji Szamorodni for the first time. Thirty-five years ago.
Here just around the corner from Union Square is Geary Street where we stayed 6 nights at the Rafael Hotel, recommended by my Unk. Thirty-five years ago.
Look up. See the glass windows at the top of the Bank of America Building. That is where your mother and I ate our final meal of our honeymoon. We settled snugly into cavernous leather chairs and watched from this tallest building the fog roll in and enshroud the Golden Gate Bridge. Thirty-five years ago.
Who then could have imagined now?
With the haze of the setting sun before us, gently filtered by graying clouds, we turned the corner. Now, around the corner of the Castro District, rainbow flags flying, our Margaret and her Nick enjoy their apartment on 17th Street.
Tag, you’re it.
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