Solstice Canyon

Having found ourselves summarily evicted from the Holy Land. Young Beauregard and I blast forth in his spaceship around a long sweeping bend and there she is: my old friend the Pacific Ocean. Many times in my day my trusty old '68 Plymouth convertible and me were wont to  make this long sweeping turn that deposits you onto the far edge of the continent.  These New Age automobiles are swift and silent and ready for outer space; but give me Old Steel anytime. I knew just how much I could push her on a turn like this before the rear wheels would break loose. I really loved that old car and she was a loyal friend through a lot of adventures. Today my loyal friend is this here little rascal of a first born child and we cut right up the coast and pull into some kind of seafood place that wasn't there thirty years ago...in fact, this whole area looks different. Something has changed. But right now I am hungry and order a swordfish sandwich and fries. Beau has picked up a little dish of granola from the deli counter. I head around the side of the restaurant to the restrooms. When I come back, Beau is bringing a big basket of fries and my sandwich. As we sit down I notice that he doesn't have any food, just that little dish of granola.

“Aren't you eating?"   I squirt a big dose of malt vinegar all over everything in front of me and plop a large dollop of ketchup next to the basket of fries.

“I'm a raw vegan now, Dad.”

“Uh...oh. Well, you should have said something.” I'm a little embarrassed by this huge pile of batter-fried wonderfulness in front of me. “So, you can't eat some of these fries.”

“No, Dad, they were cooked in animal fat.” This is taking a lot of the fun out of the feast. But I have not had a solid meal since I got off the plane close to seventy-two hours ago and I'm ready to eat. So he sits carefully chewing his granola while I plow through about two pounds of fish and chips. A couple beers and maybe a two hour nap on the beach would make this a splendid day indeed. But Beau does not drink, and when I am with Beau, I do not drink also.

“Your Mom and I used to hang out on the beach here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Here and Zuma.”

“I haven't talked to her for a long time.” he says, looking west, gazing out over the vastness of the Pacific.  "I don't remember the last time."

It is a problem. We are an absolutely fractured family. And my West Coast version ain't the only one. I also have an estranged ex in Chicago and another son there. The cause of all this fragmentation of hearts is me. It all centers around me, obviously. But I don't really understand. I didn't do it on purpose and the reason Beauregard hasn't spoken to his mother in a long time has more to do with her serious immersion into biker-gang drug dealing and addiction. It is an unbelievable tale and if you knew her, you would never guess. She is a perfect front for those rotten bastards, well dressed and articulate and hanging on to her beauty but she is the Mother Lost and here we are, Beau and me, a couple orphans sitting in the sunshine at the side of the Pacific Ocean and both of us, my son and I , have been through enough blast-furnace pain and loss to kill a squad of infantry. But I am still here and so is he.  I guess all we have is each other, three thousand miles apart.  I wrap up the remains of my food and put it into the trash can.

“I didn't mean to bring her up Beau. I'm sorry.”

"Oh, hell no, Dad, it's okay. It isn't your fault.”

 Yeah it is.

Back in the Time Machine we roll down the windows and blast on North up the Pacific Coast Highway. Man! All that Hollywood and Laurel Canyon crap was a big part of my old life here, but it was the PCH where I came for fun. It was Malibu and points north where I could punch the old Shark into high speed and just roll along with the wind in my hair. I'm ready to climb up on the roof of this Magic Bus and start singing LA Woman at the top of my lungs. Hell, I used to LIVE in a Hollywood bungalow.

Beauregard turns right up a canyon road. This ain't Topanga Canyon.

“This ain't Topanga, Beau.”

“I know. Did you ever come up here? Liz and I come up here all the time.” Liz is his fiance.

“No, this is new to me.” It is called Solstice Canyon. We come to the entrance to a County Park, but he goes on past.

“We always go to the Park, but I never went on up the road. Let's see if it goes over to the Valley.”

“Fine with me.” I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I really combed these hills and roads back in the day. But it was a long time ago. Who knows? Maybe it is a new road.

We wind back and forth up a steep, really steep little canyon road and it keeps on going. Every once in a while he sweeps around a cliff-side switchback a little too fast and I get a shot of adrenalin. I almost never ride in cars and this is like a roller coaster ride at an amusement park where anything goes. I have been in Florida for a long time and the highest I ever get above sea level is the sixty feet or so of a big bridge. These rail-less hairpin turns are carved into the side of steep cliffs and going over the side would be a wild ride indeed. Then, just like that, we reach a little roadside parking area. End of the road. We get out and look around. Man! This is a view we should be paying for by the hour to enjoy. You can see for miles across the vast arroyos and pinon scrub and there is a foot trail heading even further up. We don't say anything. We just start climbing.

There are some kind of stratified rock eruptions up ahead. The climb is steep and I am old and that swordfish feast is still right there. I'm breathing hard but granola-boy is sprinting up the trail like a mountain goat. The trail leads to some kind of natural amphitheater. But there is an old foundation here. Incredibly, someone must have at one time built a house here. An odd thought crosses my mind.

“You don't have a bunch of friends up here in black robes waiting for the human sacrifice, do you Beau?” He laughs.  But after all, the Sostice doth rapidly approach.

“Of course not, Dad. We wear green robes now.” It does indeed look like the perfect spot for a solstice sacrifice and given the name of the road up here...

“Man, son, this is incredible. Who the hell would build a house way up here? And how?”

“Did you call me Manson, Dad?” It is a game we started playing when he was just a lost teenager running the roads with me, building commercial restaurants and sleeping in motels. Start a theme and riff on it all day.

We stand there at the top of this little mountain for awhile, looking around. It is about seventy-five degrees out, the sun is smiling down on us and we are way the hell out there and alone on a mountaintop together. I don't know what I am doing here so far from home, but if this moment, this moment just right now is why I am here, it is good enough for me.

“It's just that I haven't seen you for a year and I got that big deposit check and I said the hell with it, I'm going to fly my Dad out for a visit.” We are standing in the sky in a fantastically beautiful place. You can turn in any direction and see forever. He speaks again. “I came to Florida on that three day trip last year and you and I just spent a couple hours walking around the old neighborhood together and then we went and sat at the Crooked Angel and you drank beer and I drank grapefruit juice and the whole thing, the whole visit was like a dream. It lasted just as long as a dream.”

“We saw that white dog. The stray.”

“Yeah! I forgot about that!”

“The wolf?”

“Huh?”

“You used to always see a wolf. You would wake up in the middle of the night because you thought you saw a wolf.” He thinks for a moment. Far below us I can  see some kind of huge bird flying along,  floating on a rising thermal. I could live here.

“The Wolf! I forgot about the Wolf!”

“It was a pretty big deal. That wolf cost me a lot of sleep.”

“I'm sorry, Dad. When did that end?”

“I don't know.” We turn and head back down the steep rocky trail.

“I don't really remember that wolf thing all that well, Dad.”

“Good. I always wondered what it was about. I mean, a wolf is pretty standard imagery but I don't remember where you got it. Probably from my Mom.”

“I don't really remember her much, either.”

“That's okay. It was a long time ago. At least you remember me.”

“Hah!” He bounds over and gives me a bear hug. “I love you, man!” Risky business, two big men hugging and stumbling down this precarious path. Risky business indeed.

“I love you too, Son.”

 From where we stand on this high ground the sun is not a mystery.  There it is right there, smiling and warming these exposed boulders and these two orphans.  There it is but not for long;  our old friend the sun is headed for the horizon and we have got to head back to town, ourselves.  Back to LA.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park on location:Back To LA

#92

Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard has changed very little since the last time I was here. We are moving along fairly well in this modern automobile; I have spent more time in a car in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 48 weeks. I am a cyclist. I ride a bicycle and mostly I am out doors moving at the speed of slow. Not here, though. Here it is cars and I am in one now with my son Beauregard headed west. We are going to Malibu. But we are taking our time getting there and enjoying the ride, as they say.

Back in the day, long, long ago, Los Angeles was a little Pueblo where they raised cattle. It is where downtown L.A. is now. But it was still Southern California and those Pueblo cattlemen saw, somehow, the need to take their cattle to the beach. Go figure. And they were not that far from the beach, there in the Pueblo, but it being California, they decided to follow an old game trail that roughly paralleled  the curve of the nearby mountains on their right hand when facing Northwest. They cleared and cut and pushed their cows Northwest for twenty three miles and created a cattle trail that one day would come to symbolize everything wonderful and shining and hopeful in what would be known as Popular Culture. The first residents of Malibu were the Tongva Indians and the Downtown Cows and I don't pretend to understand any of it but here am I now, riding in a swift whispering ship with my firstborn on my left hand. The sun is glowing happily over my right shoulder and the Pacific Ocean and a colony of stars are directly in our path.

As we pass the Chateau Marmont I start to make a wisecrack, but I don't. I lived in a cheap motel here a couple streets over for almost a year in my youth and some of my illegal duties involved visits to that place; I am revisiting my deepest past and really, there ain't that much joy in it. For me, being on Sunset Boulevard is like sitting somewhere with my ex-wife and her rich new boyfriend as they tell me about their recent trip to an exclusive nudist colony in Sri Lanka.

But here I am on my mystery tour and it was only yesterday when this powerfully built, confident and cocky young guy driving me all over the place was a little kid sitting in my lap and telling me stories of his daily fears and conquests. It was only yesterday.

“This place hasn't really changed much at all, Beau. This is how I first came to L.A., down the Pacific Coast into Malibu, then I saw a a street sign for Sunset Boulevard. We took a left and we ended up at the Tropicana Motel."

“Really? Didn't Jim Morrison live there?” There is no way to be in this area without Morrison's name coming up every few minutes. His spirit so absolutely permeates the very atmosphere of the place that it is inescapable. Oddly, as an Indiana high school hick-kid I never really understood the Doors and to tell the truth, when I heard them on the radio I visualized a lounge act, with matching suits and fancy hair. But that is not surprising, given my clueless youth. I never heard of Hunter Thompson either until one day when I was blasting down Sunset Boulevard in my '68 red Plymouth convertible and some guy at a light yelled “Hunter Thompson!” at me and when I told the story later a guy handed me a copy of Fear and Loathing...

“Yeah, son, a lot of guys lived there but I didn't know anything about all that. It was just a cheap motel and a place to crash.”

“You could have made it big, Dad. You were doing all the stuff.”

“Yeah, Son, I coulda been a contender but now it's your turn. You're doing pretty good.”

There are a lot of really tall palm trees that line the sides of the Boulevard as we blast along. The sun is seriously getting up there and I had mentioned back in the slap-dash planning part of this adventure that if he was going to rent a car he should get a convertible. This is the best place in the world and the best time of the year to drive around with the top down. There is an aesthetic that goes with convertibles that alters the automobile reality. But at least in this car we have a T.V. that shows us where we are going when we are going backwards.

“Hey Dad, do you remember that time I was in detention up in Virginia?”

“Yeah, I have some vague recollection.” I had spent five days one winter in Williamsburg in a corporate motel doing down time while he did real time over at the town juvenile center. It is a story unto itself and maybe I'll tell it, someday. I have been chastised, criticized, threatened and incarcerated during the raising of this kid. Every moment of his existence is etched onto the movie screen of my life and now here we are, blasting merrily along in Movie Land on the trail of my past and the memories...well, they don't bring a smile to my face.

“Well, Dad, you gave me that copy of 'Autobiography of a Yogi' and I read the whole thing while I was in there.”

“I remember. That's a good book for jail. Over five hundred pages, though. I never knew you finished the whole thing while you were inside.”

“Oh yeah. You know how jail is.” Indeed I do. He and I share the singular father-son relation of having both been in the Daytona Beach jail at the same time, once, on unrelated offenses. He for a minor drug charge and me for my usual behavior inside a saloon. Politics and manic depression and tequila just don't mix. But I gotta tell ya, it is a particularly heart-warming experience walking the exercise yard with your child on a sunny Florida afternoon. A real Hallmark Moment.

“So anyway, Dad, the Self Realization Fellowship is just up ahead somewhere. Wanna go?”

“Sure.” Not really. I don't know why. My world, my reality, has become a kind of microcosm experience of bicycles and country rides and trailer park repair. At times it is cause for despair and desperation and at other times it is sublime. To be old and free of ambition and responsibility is a kind of freedom it takes a lifetime to achieve. Some people never get there. My parents died failures only because they never understood that cars and houses are not the mark of success.

“Hey! There it is!” This whole trip has had a feeling of being scripted. It was my idea to take this route but I suddenly find myself thinking we would have ended up here anyway. He makes a u-turn across six lanes of mild traffic and we pull into the parking lot of the meditation center of the guru Yogananda Pramahansa. I know this place. It is a whole lot of acres of prime LA real estate with its own spring-fed lake and some beautiful shrines and it is the home of one of those damnable cults that seem to be everywhere and in control of so much money and land and human spirit. The Autobiography was a beautiful book but the Yogi has been dead many, many years and this is the franchise that grew up around his name. We park the car and I go over to look at the entry sign. I'm wondering how much this is gonna cost and if once in, will we be able to get out. Beauregard lights a cigarette. No smoking in the rental car.

“I gotta pee,” he says.

“It says no smoking,” I say, pointing at the beautifully carved wooden sign of regulations.

"Damn! Well, I gotta pee.” He strides over to a nearby dumpster corral. It is the nicest dumpster corral I have ever seen. Redwood and carved block. I myself have peed in dumpster corrals many times under beer-induced duress, but this place...well, it just doesn't seem like the kind of place to piss in the parking lot.

“Hey!” Someone shouts behind me. I turn and a guy is coming towards me with a big tray of ornamental flowers on his shoulder. He is accompanied by a mild-looking Mexican gentleman with a small gardening spade in each hand.

“Is he with you?” the flower guy asks. “What's he doing in there?”

“Uh...” I can't think of any answer that won't result in yet another father-son Hallmark Moment. The two guys hustle on down to the dumpster. I can see puffs of smoke coming up over the walls of the corral. They go in and I hear shouting and I briefly consider going back out to Sunset and sticking out my thumb. I consider hustling on down to that dumpster myself and helping him overpower the Guru's gardeners. I find myself wondering what kind of security staff the Self Realization Fellowship employs. Probably ex-Sri Lankan Rebels armed to the teeth. I suddenly remember that Leslie Van Houten was once a member here and had to sneak away in the middle of the night. They all come out of the dumpster corral and Flower Guy is still yelling. The Mexican gentleman is raking the two little hand spades back and forth over each other like a movie villain with knives. He doesn't look so mild-mannered now. Beauregard is backing slowly towards me and if Flower Guy doesn't calm down real quick Beau will be within ten feet of where I stand. My Son  knows what he is doing and where I am standing. He knows this ain't no movie showdown; that boy has been on the road with me since he was fifteen years old and he knows that I can cover ten feet really fast and that stupid nazi gardener won't be yelling anymore except for help and that other guy will find those two little shovels in a place he doesn't want them to be.  But brawling in the parking lot of some highbrow meditation center isn't why I came out here.  At least, I don't think so.

“Hey!” I yell. “Back off! He was only pissing in your fucking dumpster. We're leaving.”

“He was pissing on the Yogananda's flowers! And smoking! This is a church! You can't do that here! And no cussing!"

I begin to realize that this might be a challenged person and I drop my aggressive posture. The atmosphere is crackling with menace and there is no chance that this will turn out good.

 “You guy's get out of here!” he says. I'm getting pretty mad. I'm tired and hungry and I haven't had a drink for two days and now here I am in this ludicrous situation. A double shot of rum and a cold beer would be a good thing, right now, but no doubt also against the rules.

“Let's get out of here, Beau. We're probably on camera.” He turns and looks at me. He smiles.

“Are you sure, Dad? Don't you want to see the SRF?”

“Maybe some other time. I'm hungry.”

“Okay, Dad."  We get in the car. The two guys are still standing there. They aren't very smart.

“Should I run over them, Father?”

“Yeah. But do it in reverse so I can watch it on the little video screen.” He laughs and pulls out of the parking lot.

“What did he mean you were pissing on Yogananda's flowers?” I ask. We are headed west again on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

“Oh, there were a bunch of those trays with flowers in there. But I wasn't pissing on them. I'll bet that stupid fucker never read the whole Autobiography of a Yogi while sitting in a detention center for five days.”

“That's probably a safe bet. But you might want to think about reading it again.” We both laugh and he puts the pedal down.  The day ain't over yet.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park on location:  Back To LA!
#90

Laurel Canyon

The Canyon Store is alive this morning with a happy buzz. At a low round table near the entrance sits a group of ladies of the canyon, laughing and graceful in full length skirts and long hair bound with scarves from someplace far away; there is a light gloom in the canyon but if you look at the tops of the hills there is a glow and it is getting warmer. The morning sun is creeping into the shady depths of Laurel Canyon. The coffee is good and strong and as my son Beauregard growls into his cell phone at late arriving crew I look around, tourist-like, and drink it all in. I have been here before. He puts away his phone and comes over to where I am sitting.

“These guys don't get out of bed until I wake them up.”

“Didn't you say that they are musicians?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there ya go.” There is another burst of gentle laughter over at the big table. To my ear it sounds a little forced. There can't be that much to laugh about at seven-thirty in the morning, but who knows? This is Los Angeles and I remember feeling the same way thirty years ago. This is a much-storied location, here in the Canyon. Gypsies and wizards and singers and writers and devils and angels have occupied the steep twisting streets all around this little market, and before that the Tongva people were here. It is an old place and you can feel its ancientness and maybe the laughter is a little forced from some sense of the spirits that surround this spot. Probably, though, the lady picking up the tab just told a joke

“So, Beau, what's the plan for today?” I ask it with a light tone but I am not happy. I am vaguely hung over from the effects of a different kind of spirits that I had been steadily imbibing for five days before my flight. There are some things that I cannot do sober and flying to LA is one of them.

“ I don't know, Dad, what do you want to do?” Since this plan began to hatch just after Thanksgiving there have been many changes, mostly based on economic/atmospheric conditions. It had driven me half-mad, and by the time I got on the plane I had given up on itinerary and sanity in equal proportions.

“Son, I'm here because you wanted me here. I can see that the drive to Big Sur might not be a good idea, since you obviously haven't got that deck done and got your check. So why don't you just take care of business and I'll just hang out.”

“No No No, Pops it's all good. Here come the guys. Let's get them up to the job and then you and I can go for a drive.” A couple of California carpenter-musicians come up to the table. Late twenties, I would think, and mirror images of all the guys I had worked with all those years ago. Introductions are made and hands are shaken and we pile into the fancy automobile Beauregard has rented. It has a video screen to show you what you are about to run into as you drive in reverse.

We get to the house where the deck is located. Going around to the back of the house I am struck with the stunning view across the steep canyon walls. There is a mist blowing through the hills and as the sun gets closer the effect is dramatic and quite oriental. This place exudes magic from its every crevice.

The old deck exudes something, too. It ain't magic. New lumber rests alongside old rotting timbers that are more termite habitat than wood. Old fasteners have rusted away until only luck and magic are holding this relic to its vertiginous location. I turn and look at Beau, who is busy getting out tools and talking about the day's work with his two helpers. This whole thing should have been replaced. But I don't say anything. Not in front of the crew. I look at it some more but it makes me unhappy to do so so I go sit in a corner and wait to see what happens next. I wish the sun would hurry up. I have had a chill all morning that no amount of coffee could conquer and I think some of the feeling of cold and trouble is coming from deep inside my soul, rather than from these concrete canyons or this mystical place. Looking at what is going on behind this house is doing nothing to improve my mood.

“Okay, guys, me and my Father are going to run some errands and we will be back in a couple hours. You know what to do.” Their enthusiasm is not at a high level. Not much is going to get done today. And there is a lot to do. There is a lot of work to do but Beau and I go back around the front of the house and get into the rented automobile.

“Where too, Dad?”

“Son, you need to be here with your foot up these guys asses. And why aren't you replacing the whole damn thing instead of patching it back?”

“Because she said the other two contractors told her the same thing and she told me that whoever would just patch it would get the job. And I needed the job.”

'Yeah. I've been down that road before.” I think about it. The boy is in over his head and spread thin. I knew that before I got on the plane. I had figured that if he were still too busy to take a road trip to the redwoods (the original plan) then I could just goof around Hollywood, ride the train, whatever. But he is after something and a day of driving together around town might get us closer to finding that thing that he is after.

“Well, Beau, I used to get a kick out of driving on Sunset from Laurel to Malibu and then back over the hills on Topanga.”

“Okay! That's it! I do that all the time! Like Father like Son, huh Dad?”

“No arguing with genetics, son.” He puts the car into drive and we wind down the crazily twisting canyon roads back past the Canyon Store.  The table full of ladies is still there, waiting for the sun.   But not us.  We are in motion now.  We are going someplace.  We head on down the hill onto Sunset and we take a right hand turn. We turn right and there is the sun. The sun is up and doing it's job and we cruise down Sunset Boulevard towards the Pacific Ocean.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park on location:  Back to LA!
#88

Morning In the Valley

Walking down the sidewalk in an unknown direction I see the sun bouncing from the distant hills as another day begins here in the San Fernando Valley. It is a warm glow and it helps. Next to me on this sunrise sidewalk are eight lanes of steadily increasing traffic. Already I am surrounded by more automobiles than I have experienced in the entire year just past. But I am happy enough to be here. Right now I am on foot and in search of coffee. This is California: there has to be a Starbuck's close by.

The coming day is a mystery. As near as I can tell it involves carpentry work repairing a rickety old deck perched precariously on the side of a steep hill in Laurel Canyon. I had originally misunderstood that it was attatched to a house once occupied by Jim Morrison, but that is not the case. Instead, the Lizard King connection is that two guys who work for my son live next door to the old Morrison House there in the heart of the Canyon behind the fabled Canyon Country Store.

The traffic is getting worse as I trudge along looking for coffee. The Hilton where I am staying is located in one of those heavy-handed office developments. There is no horizon, only the stark face of the next building in front of you, and the growing and growling and honking line of worker-bees in their generic automobiles heading for the hive. I am out of place  at six a.m. and wondering why my son would think that I would be comfortable here. I was very unprepared for this trip. I live in a shabby trailer park and I look the part. Passing through the lobby on my way out this morning the desk clerk was not quite able to cover her surprise at the hobo that somehow had sneaked into the gilded palace.

I cut around a corner and there are the hills again, positively alight with morning fire and they look good to me and I wish that I was up there in those hills and out of this damnable noisy concrete canyon, trapped here with these stupid cars. I haven't really slept since leaving Florida and I feel shabby and poor and out of my element.

I can't find a coffee shop. I could go into the restaurant in the hotel but I looked in there this morning and definitely didn't feel right about going in. When did I become such a bum?

The house in Laurel Canyon where I am supposed to save the day is on a street that I remember. I was a young buckaroo gunslinging carpenter working with a crew building a house there. That was over thirty years ago and I never sold a script and the novel from those days is still in the bottom of my trunk. It wasn't very good.

And it would be quite something if I were called forth from the trailer park to salvage a broken script for Travolta or Cruise or any other Scientologist that needs help. But instead I seem to have been called here to the Other Coast for a different kind of saving.

I give up on the coffee search. This is more walking than I have done in a long, long time. Any trek outside of the Whispering Pines is done on two wheels and indeed, I have almost lost the ability to simply put one foot in front of the other for a sustained period. Man, I wish I had my bicycle.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park on location:  Back To LA!
#85

The Wolf, 1993

I turn on the lights. Seven years old is a perfect time for children, I think. He is sitting up in the bed, rigid with fear, his face a drama-ridden mask of fright and concern. Will my Dad understand?

“What is it, son?”

“I saw the wolf.”

He has some inner demon that takes the form of a wolf. I don't know where it comes from within his seven year old soul. It started when he was five. Abandoned by his mother at three years old, he lived with my parents at first but now, Dad having made a new home and after having worked hard to get it right and ol' Dad having found a new mom and having made a new little brother it was here, at five in the morning in a quiet house on a respectable street in a village by the sea that Dad had his first chance to kill the wolf.

“Where is the wolf, Beau?”

“Over there.” His small fingers are clutching the covers to his chest. A little over a month ago he found his Grandpa slumped dead over the steering wheel of the Cadillac Grandpa bought with the insurance money from when Grandma had died.

“Here in the corner?”

“Yes. He's really there, Dad, don't let him kill you.” I go over to the corner and turn on the light on his desk. I am a carpenter and a simple man and I am not afraid of wolves. But my son's wolf worries me.

“No wolf, son. He must have left.” I go over and sit on the side of his bed.

“The world is a scary place sometimes, isn't it, Beau?”

“I'm not scared!”

“Oh, I know, son. You are very brave. And I will always keep you safe. Okay?”

“Okay, Dad.” I rub his head a little and I get up and walk to the door.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“Do you have to leave again Monday?”

“Yeah, son I have to go back to work and you have to go back to school.”

“Can't you stay here and fix it?” My kids are only vaguely aware of what I do out there. They just know that their Dad goes away in three trucks with a bunch of guys and works really hard. Dad leaves and is gone a long time. When Dad and the guys get back home they are dirty and tired but later there is lots of fun; restaurants and shopping and laughing and a little Dad time. But always, always does he leave again. Dad always leaves.

“I have to go away to work, Beau. That's just the way it is.” I go back to his bed and I put my hand on his head again. “But don't worry, little man, I will always come back.”

“Okay, Dad. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Son”

Whispering Pines Trailer Park on location:  Back to LA!

#86

Love The One You're With

Love the One You're With

As a more or less Family-Friendly Site  the Trailer Park Cyclist always tries to keep it clean.

 The Family

That's why you will almost never find me delving into the two most dirtiest subjects known to Blogger Man: Politics and Religion. Why bother? Nobody listens and nobody agrees. So relax, I ain't gonna start now.

The Sweet Bird-Brain of Youth

Back in 1968 I was an energetic and earnest little crew-cutted peckerhead

Me at Thirteen

 spending my summer vacation going door to door and handing out leaflets or pamphlets or something or other as a member of...wait for it...the Young Republicans. That's right, it's my fault. Without my effort, Richard Nixon would never have been President. But don't blame me, blame my parents. 

Mom & Dad

They were Republicans so I was a Republican too. Hell, I didn't even know what it meant. You were either a Donkey or an Elephant and by weird (yet appropriate) coincidence the Clyde Beattie and Cole Circus had come to town that summer, also. 

Nixon On the Campaign Trail

The Circus was sponsored by the local chapter of the Elks Club and guess who's Father  happened to be Chapter President that year...

Elk Head

So I was an Elephant and my Parents were Elephants and as the son of the Head Elk (This is getting confusing) I was privileged to bring one friend and help set up the Big-Top, using elephants, of course, and get my picture on the front page                               . So I did.

Later I did that door to door thing and I can't remember if I thought the Circus and the Election were somehow tied together but I do remember that same summer there was an uproar in Chicago at the Donkey Convention. And guess, what? I was there, too.

What Are All Those Donkey's Up To?

I know, I know, I'm starting to sound a little (a lot) like a certain famous box o'chocolates totin' shrimp catchin' lawn cuttin' movie character but why not?

For whatever reason, at the whim of whatever strange wheels and levers move the Universe and the Comstock Family, we were there.

Ostensibly for a simple family road-trip, Babar Goes to Chicago kind of thing. 

 But who knows? My Dad later had a rather obscure job doing rather obscure electrical engineering things in countries around the globe that seemed to have a hard time keeping their Donkeys and Elephants from killing each other.

Dad Worked Hard

Now, I wish I could give you a blow-by-blow report of those blazing days from our country's relatively recent history, but no...all I remember of Chicago 1968 is the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum of Natural History, Chinatown, and something that happened on the elevator at our hotel.

Please Come to Chicago

Up until then, hippies were comical characters that sometimes made the Evening News just after the Body Count Report and just before Mom brought out desert. It was fun to eat apple pie and listen to Uncle Walter tell about the latest escapades of those Long-Haired Freaky People out there wherever they were. But they didn't seem real or at least not real like the Monkees and really, nothing like that would happen around here.

But up there in Chicago we got on the elevator at our hotel. Mom had bought matching plaid shirts and bermuda shorts for the three brothers and color coordinated outfits for her and Dad and we were a proud and American Vision there on the Family Vacation that for whatever reason found itself about six blocks away from a defining moment in American History. We were proud and complacent and giggling at one of Mom's silly little kinda-sorta off-color jokes and then a Hippie got on the Elevator with us.

Wow.

Not just any hippie, either. This was a for-real hippie, barefoot and smelly and honest-to-god wearing a real Robin Hood hat with a really long feather. He had on beads and granny glasses and I remember how hairy his feet were. He had really long greasy hair and if a Donkey or an Elephant had got on the elevator with us and taken a big dump and then got back off the effect would have been no less momentous.

OK, I know all of you are wondering about this: the way I knew it was a real Robin Hood hat was because just one summer before I had sent off two weeks worth of lawn mowing savings and some forgotten number of box-tops from some happily forgotten cereal boxes (probably Raisin Bran) and then waited yearningly for the postman to bring my official authentic Robin Hood hat. And standing there on that elevator it only took one glance for me to realize I had been gypped and it was obvious as hell that this guy bought his hat at the same place the real Robin Hood bought his.

It got real quiet on that elevator, the way only elevators can get quiet. Me, being a half-witty guy and all, nowadays can crack up the whole room, as small as it is, in only two or three floors. But not that day in Some Hotel in Chicago in 1968. What happened was, this guy, probably twenty or so, got on an elevator Downtown with what must have looked to him like a group of extras on their way to film an episode of the Osmond Family goes to Hooterville. We all stood there as awkwardly as only wild animals and domestic animals can be when they are trapped in the same cage, praying for the elevator to hurry up. Which it did. It hurried up and on the next floor (not ours) it stopped and the doors opened and about six hundred Shriners were standing there. Six hundred fez-wearing Shriners, as boozy and grab-assy and giddily glad as only Shriners in Hotels can be. Three got on, because Shriners run big (at least in those days) and that sealed the deal.

This had become a crowded elevator, to say the least. Directly in front of my Dad was the Hippie. Mom and me and my little inconsequential brothers were more or less jammed into a corner and those three Elephants were lined up across the back. And that long feather in that Hippie's Robin Hood hat was tickling my Dad's nose. Emboldened by his Rotarian Backup, he made what he meant to be a humorous remark:

“Anybody got a scissors?”

HE MEANT THE FEATHER! HE MEANT THE FEATHER!

That Time I Had the Measles

My Dad was a great guy and worked about sixty hours a week and still found time to work with the Elks on their charities and take us kids for outings and keep him and my Mom in their matching Lincolns and us boys in Shiny New Bicycles (Schwinn, Walmart hadn't been invented yet) and for a high school drop out, he did pretty good in the sixty-two years God gave him. He would have given that hippie the shirt off his back and told the guy that the reason he laid in that freezing mud in Korea that winter was so that he (the hippie) could look however he wanted and vote for whoever he wanted and hell, go live in the forest like Robin Hood and shoot Elk if that's what turns ya on, Ha Ha...

Long Hair and Funny Hat

But that ain't how it works outside of Sherwood Forest. In those days Get a Haircut was the Mantra of the Ruling Class and god knows why that long-haired freaky person was in that hotel and in that elevator and where were his shoes? But all he knew was he was about to be attacked by obnoxious hicks and big men in funny hats and that their feral hillbilly children would fight like ravenous wolverines for scraps of his flesh and to tell the truth, I did have my eye on that hat.

It just occurred to me: What if the guy was on acid? Holy crap...

All's Well That End's Well Most of the Time,  But...

Anyway, the hippie hit a button and got off the elevator and that was that. But what if  that hippie was Charles Manson on his way to join the Elks and get a haircut and turn his life around except that Elevator Thing sent him over the edge and so in the very same summer I was indirectly involved in the election of Richard Nixon and the way Charlie turned out. It's quite a burden.

Late For the Sky

Loomings

Call me Tim Joe. I planned on having this my  hard life, having read all those best-seller jacket liners about how some author of This or That had to be everything from a street sweeper to a lion tamer in order to write down simple facts; but what did I know? I was a hick kid from Indiana, (and Southern Indiana at that). Hell, I was practically a Kentuckian, (the unhappy brunt of our geocentric jokes that stood in the stead of all those ethnocentric Polish jokes since just about every person in my little riverboat hometown was either German or Polish.) It was a hell of a lot more fun to make jest of those jackasses living a half mile away across the river than it was to take all the myriad failings of this our race, the Human Beans, upon our own breasts.

Leave It To Beaver

And so, made brave  by my superiority to the Children of Boone, I, the Hoosier Lost, set forth upon my delusional journey into the future (of myself), confident in my inherent capabilities and also, (having read at least the opening pages of Moby Dick), also was I confident that I could knock men's hats off in the street and have a journey aboard a ship, however ill-fated. Likewise was I confident that Ahab, (no doubt of Kentuckian descent), would call upon my Hoosier wisdom in both hooking up and reeling in that tricky Leviathan.

We all know how that worked out.

First: the Horns, Then the Bull

There comes a time in the life of all cyclists when, after confronting the demons of steel vs. crabon and the travails of the late-night cycling forums, after reading late into the night the comments of the unenlightened and surreptitiously clicking into those viagra ads we are forced by either boredom or inertia to figure out the overwhelming question of our clan: What Am I? Roadie or Mountain Biker? Commuter? Do I ride my bicycle because of the sensation imparted to my perineum or because I like to wear those tight clothes?

Troubling questions indeed! But, like a light under a bushel, here am I to answer and clarify. All human knowledge must pass through the Crucible of Truth, which, fortunately, I happen to have purchased at a yard sale last week and then, using cheap labor, donuts and beer, I was able to have it yea and verily transported here to my trailer and bolted down right over there behind the Quasitron 6000 Search Engine. Lo, my trailer doth groan beneath the weight of these Machines of Knowledge as doth my own Great Head, loaded as it is.

Talk Show

First Question:          Will we catcheth the whale?

Quasitron 6000:        Are you asking me, or the Crucible of Truth?

First Question:          Uh... Quasitron.

Quasitron 6000:         I don't know. Pull my chain.

Crucible of Truth:      He means pull his finger! Ha ha what an idiot.

Quasiton 6000:         What the hell does that mean? I don't have any fingers, only gauges 

                                  and chains and relief valves and that big brass thing.   

Second Question:     Big brass thing?

Crucible of Truth:       Are you asking me, or the Quasitron 6000, who truth be told don't      

                                    smell so good.

Trailer Park Cyclist:   You guys cut it out! Readership is down by twenty per cent which 

                                     means you two clowns and me and the Voice are the only ones       

                                     showing up here, except for Miss Daisy the Yellow Dog because she 

                                     heard that these computers store cookies.

Quasitron 6000:          Yes, Master.  Hey, did you hear the one about...

Crucible Of Truth:         Can it, Nuts-n-Bolts.  Hey, Big Guy, you gonna finish that whole bottle by
                                       yerself?  All this truth makes the ol'  Cruce a little thirsty...   

The Counterpane

Then, like a clarion bell ringing forth from the hidden towers of my most remotest visions, it came to me: if I just stick to honest, clear-cut stories of my cycling exploits, tales of fish and miles and dreaming, I will bore my readers into a hypnotic stupor where I can get away with anything. Then, emboldened by harpoons and bent spokes, weird concoctions in the bottle cage and winds that bow down before me, I, the Trailer Park Cyclist, will...

Hey!

“Huh? Voice? Is that you?”

Yeah, of course it's me. You were getting a little carried away there with your Ahab-ness.

“No, Voice, I wasn't Ahab, I was Ish...Tim Joe.”

Relax. Los Angeles is no more intimidating now that it was when you left. Your firstborn just needs a little dad-time, and a little reassurance, and little bit of that thing you do. You'll be fine. It ain't about you or bicycles or wisdom. It's about blood.

“But, Voice...”

Hush. It's late and that bottle is almost gone and the  Moon is up.

“Oh, yeah. Waning moon. I gotta pee. C'mon, Daisy...”

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Place In the Sky

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