In the morning Linda and I went to a coffee house, the Coffee Cartel, to mooch their internet. Behind us on couches a half dozen men and women were meeting in what sounded like the inaugural get-together of a dating support group. One tall and rather glamorous blonde woman said, “so that was my first husband, and that didn’t go well, and then my second husband and I got divorced, but then we got married again....”
Later we drove up along the coast to Will Rogers State Park, in Pacific Palisades. The park was the Rogers’ family ranch, until his widow deeded its 187 acres to the state in 1944 (Rogers died in 1935). Most of the land is scrub-covered hills, but there’s his big rambling house too, bordering a large greensward and polo grounds surrounded by towering eucalyptus trees.
We went on a two-mile loop up to Inspirational Point and a hazy view of Los Angeles and the ocean. But the highlight of the visit was the house tour, led by a docent named Lester, a fiftyish man in jeans and boots and white t-shirt and originally from Brooklyn. He talked almost non-stop for the whole hour and everything he said was worth hearing.
The eight of us on the tour stepped first into the main room, which was long and high with gray and weathered wood-plank walls and wood rafters. Mission-style couches and chairs were scattered about, cowboy art was everywhere on walls and shelves--drawings and sculptures and paintings, several by Charles Russell--two ornate saddles were draped on a wooden form, with a coiled whip hanging off the pommel of one; a stuffed calf stood by the fireplace, over which loomed the mounted head of a full-grown longhorn steer; there was Indian regalia too, an Apache headdress, a couple long pipes, and a portrait of Sequoiah, creator of the Cherokee alphabet. Rogers was part Cherokee himself, born and raised in Indian Territory, before it became the state of Oklahoma.
Will Rogers could afford the big house--two wings, ten or so bedrooms--because for a time in the twenties and thirties he was the most popular entertainer in America. And all his wealth and popularity, his great success, started with a seemingly minor if impressive skill--the man could do some fancy roping.
As a young man he had worked as a cowboy on ranches in Oklahoma, first his father's, then several others till he'd raised a bit of money; he traveled to Argentina to try to establish his own ranch, and when that failed he got a job on a ship transporting livestock to South Africa. In South Africa he put his cowboy skills to a whole different use, hooking up with a traveling wild west show--and thus his entertainment career began. He did what was called a "dumb act," silently roping cows and goats and horses and pretty girls, completing moves that even seen in slow motion in old newsreels seem impossible--say, throwing three ropes simultaneously, one over a galloping horse's front legs, another over its head, a third around the rider. He worked for various wild west troupes--a still quite popular genre in the first years of the twentieth century--before moving to vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Frolics. Here the roping act promised only a brief longevity, so he began to speak as he roped, commenting on the events of the day (he'd read daily newspapers for material). And that was his breakthrough--people loved his folksy charm and humor. The rope tricks eventually became less important: the main thing was to hear what he had to say.
He parlayed the act into a radio and film career (he made 72 films and was the top-grossing star for three consecutive years in the early 1930s); he took up writing and composed a daily column for the New York Times, which was soon syndicated all over the country; he wrote six books and traveled all over the world on lecture tours. Lester, our docent, called him "the first multi-media celebrity."
But if he did less roping in public, he kept his hand in at home. Any vistor walking through the front door was likely to have a lasso thrown over his or her head. Rogers and his wife entertained Hollywood stars, bigwig politicians and industrialists, and they all got the rope treatment, when arriving, when sitting around the living room, when eating at the dinner table, or just whenever they attracted Rogers' attention, which was often. The man was obsessed with roping. In a basket by the door are a couple of his ropes, still ready to go; these were his indoor ropes, as his wife wouldn't let him bring in the dusty ropes he'd been using outside.
The stuffed calf had been a gift from a wealthy friend, who hoped Rogers would shift his rope throwing from his visitors to the calf (which was/is on wheels). Rogers was fond of the gift, wearing the ears right off the calf, but he continued to lasso his guests too (Lester said that today we might say Rogers had ADD; he hardly slept and almost never stopped moving).
Rogers died at the height of his popularity, at the age of 55, in a plane crash in northern Alaska. He'd been headed from Fairbanks to Point Barrow because he wanted to visit the continent's northernmost point. "People in their eighties and nineties will tell you," Lester said, "that they remember where they were and what they were doing when they got the news of his death." The nation mourned.
At the end of the tour everyone shook hands with Lester. We all were half in love with him and wanted him to tell us more stories, but he had to start the next tour so we were on our own.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Wanda in Redondo
Interstate 5 north, into the vast belly of the LA beast, is a wide and crowded and fast and noisy highway, riven unrelentingly by exit and on ramps. Big semi-trucks, SUVs, sports cars with vanity plates pile onto the freeway and fill the lanes, riding close upon each other, front to back, side to side. Tail lights light up and the vehicles pack even closer together as the pace suddenly slows from 70 mph to 40 then to 20; soon, though, the speed climbs again, at least till the next slow down.
Close to the broad interstate stand big signs for motels and restaurants, seedy apartment buildings, crowded strip malls, and one car dealership after another (a malevolent business, considering); the hills are blanketed with swarms of cube-shaped, stuccoed houses.
In the one hundred miles between San Diego and Los Angeles, only the open land of Camp Pendleton, a Marine base, provides respite from the sprawl; but the sky over the base is filled with helicopters, and tanks rumble over the hills, and then one comes upon the twin domes of San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, safe enough, supposedly, but ominous nonetheless.
Just before Pendleton I pulled off into a Rest Area, and here too the fruits of overpopulation were manifest. All the parking spots were taken, and I had to wait for someone to leave. Fifty people, almost all of them either Asian or Hispanic, loitered outside the bathrooms, smoking, eating snackfood from the vending machines, holding the hands of small children. Displayed on a bulletin board nearby were dozens of photos of missing children, most of them teenaged girls.
After two and a half hours of brutal, frightening driving, I arrived in Redondo Beach, greatly relieved to be off the road and out of the van.
I had come to a house two blocks from the beach to see my aunt, Linda, and her boyfriend, Bruce, who were visiting from Maryland. The house belongs to Wanda, who’s 96 and the mother of Linda’s late husband Steve, who died in 1993. Wanda has recently been moved to an assisted living situation, but the family is keeping the beach house for the time being.
Inside the small three bedroom house one steps back in time. The decor, the lamps and chairs and cabinets and appliances, date from the 1950s and 1960s. Pale pink and dark maroon tile in the bathroom. Wood paneling and a corner bar and an ancient Philco regrigerator in the den. Norman Rockwell prints and a crotcheted owl on the walls, quilts on two-single beds in the guestroom. And throughout the house the framed and fading photographs of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—family artifacts now bereft of their long-devoted caretaker. Little if anything seems to have changed in decades, though time has worn down the home’s features and fixtures. Supposedly the house is worth a million dollars, but probably the next owner will tear it down and build something fresher and bigger.
Ryann, my cousin, came over after getting off work. She works for an insurance company, managing offices in Pasedena, Mission Viejo, and Phoenix. I asked if she liked her job, and she smiled and said, “yes, I’m good at bossing people around.” She’s 32, witty, competent, and beautiful. She showed me two faint lines on her forehead, the scars of a recent bike accident on the boardwalk, in which she had hit her face on the handlebar basket. Later her boyfriend Chris came over for dinner and I wasn’t sure he deserved her.
Before dinner we went to see Wanda. She lives in a house only a mile or so away, inland, with another elderly white lady, Olivia. They are cared for by Ellen, a middle-aged Filipino woman, who is on-site six days a week and overnights, and Richard, a young Hispanic man, heavily tattooed, who mostly attends the women during the day and who told Bruce that he neither swims nor drives. The house has room for more residents, as many as six, but one recently died.
Wanda was sitting on a vinyl couch watching tv when we arrived (all the couches and chairs were either vinyl or plastic-covered). She was sunk down into a corner of the couch, a small woman with wispy white hair. Her walker stood beside her with a full water glass in a cup holder. Linda and Ryann and Bruce each gave her a kiss and when I was introduced we shook hands and I sat down in a chair next to her. She said, “aren’t you in the Navy?”
Her hearing is quite poor so it took several shouted disclaimers to correct her impression. Still, she was reluctant to let it go. “I really thought you were in the Navy,” she said, as if disappointed in me. Then she asked, “so what do you do?” When I told her I was a professor, she said, “very impressive” and nodded her head in approval, and I felt that I had come through for her after all.
We watched the network news and Wanda said some man looked familiar, and he did look a lot like Henry Kissinger but he wasn’t. She gestured at the television and said, “that thing is always on.” She leaned over and told me that she and Olivia don’t talk much (neither can hear well) and she gets bored. She drew out the last word and came down hard on the concluding d, to emphasize her annoyance. Ryann visits her a couple times a week, but of course Wanda wants more and who wouldn’t. Linda and Bruce have seen her often during their visit, and Bruce does crossword puzzles with her, though some days she’s not quite up to it.
I liked her. She had questions to ask and things to say—some of which were reasonable, some maybe delusional, as when she referred to a disappointingly bad dog show she had attended but Ryann said it had actually been a session of pet therapy. Wanda pointed to her knees and said they weren’t working today, but she bore her occasional frustration with what seemed a matter of fact good nature. Still, she has been whittled down quite a ways, and that I imagine is no picnic.
Close to the broad interstate stand big signs for motels and restaurants, seedy apartment buildings, crowded strip malls, and one car dealership after another (a malevolent business, considering); the hills are blanketed with swarms of cube-shaped, stuccoed houses.
In the one hundred miles between San Diego and Los Angeles, only the open land of Camp Pendleton, a Marine base, provides respite from the sprawl; but the sky over the base is filled with helicopters, and tanks rumble over the hills, and then one comes upon the twin domes of San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, safe enough, supposedly, but ominous nonetheless.
Just before Pendleton I pulled off into a Rest Area, and here too the fruits of overpopulation were manifest. All the parking spots were taken, and I had to wait for someone to leave. Fifty people, almost all of them either Asian or Hispanic, loitered outside the bathrooms, smoking, eating snackfood from the vending machines, holding the hands of small children. Displayed on a bulletin board nearby were dozens of photos of missing children, most of them teenaged girls.
After two and a half hours of brutal, frightening driving, I arrived in Redondo Beach, greatly relieved to be off the road and out of the van.
I had come to a house two blocks from the beach to see my aunt, Linda, and her boyfriend, Bruce, who were visiting from Maryland. The house belongs to Wanda, who’s 96 and the mother of Linda’s late husband Steve, who died in 1993. Wanda has recently been moved to an assisted living situation, but the family is keeping the beach house for the time being.
Inside the small three bedroom house one steps back in time. The decor, the lamps and chairs and cabinets and appliances, date from the 1950s and 1960s. Pale pink and dark maroon tile in the bathroom. Wood paneling and a corner bar and an ancient Philco regrigerator in the den. Norman Rockwell prints and a crotcheted owl on the walls, quilts on two-single beds in the guestroom. And throughout the house the framed and fading photographs of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—family artifacts now bereft of their long-devoted caretaker. Little if anything seems to have changed in decades, though time has worn down the home’s features and fixtures. Supposedly the house is worth a million dollars, but probably the next owner will tear it down and build something fresher and bigger.
Ryann, my cousin, came over after getting off work. She works for an insurance company, managing offices in Pasedena, Mission Viejo, and Phoenix. I asked if she liked her job, and she smiled and said, “yes, I’m good at bossing people around.” She’s 32, witty, competent, and beautiful. She showed me two faint lines on her forehead, the scars of a recent bike accident on the boardwalk, in which she had hit her face on the handlebar basket. Later her boyfriend Chris came over for dinner and I wasn’t sure he deserved her.
Before dinner we went to see Wanda. She lives in a house only a mile or so away, inland, with another elderly white lady, Olivia. They are cared for by Ellen, a middle-aged Filipino woman, who is on-site six days a week and overnights, and Richard, a young Hispanic man, heavily tattooed, who mostly attends the women during the day and who told Bruce that he neither swims nor drives. The house has room for more residents, as many as six, but one recently died.
Wanda was sitting on a vinyl couch watching tv when we arrived (all the couches and chairs were either vinyl or plastic-covered). She was sunk down into a corner of the couch, a small woman with wispy white hair. Her walker stood beside her with a full water glass in a cup holder. Linda and Ryann and Bruce each gave her a kiss and when I was introduced we shook hands and I sat down in a chair next to her. She said, “aren’t you in the Navy?”
Her hearing is quite poor so it took several shouted disclaimers to correct her impression. Still, she was reluctant to let it go. “I really thought you were in the Navy,” she said, as if disappointed in me. Then she asked, “so what do you do?” When I told her I was a professor, she said, “very impressive” and nodded her head in approval, and I felt that I had come through for her after all.
We watched the network news and Wanda said some man looked familiar, and he did look a lot like Henry Kissinger but he wasn’t. She gestured at the television and said, “that thing is always on.” She leaned over and told me that she and Olivia don’t talk much (neither can hear well) and she gets bored. She drew out the last word and came down hard on the concluding d, to emphasize her annoyance. Ryann visits her a couple times a week, but of course Wanda wants more and who wouldn’t. Linda and Bruce have seen her often during their visit, and Bruce does crossword puzzles with her, though some days she’s not quite up to it.
I liked her. She had questions to ask and things to say—some of which were reasonable, some maybe delusional, as when she referred to a disappointingly bad dog show she had attended but Ryann said it had actually been a session of pet therapy. Wanda pointed to her knees and said they weren’t working today, but she bore her occasional frustration with what seemed a matter of fact good nature. Still, she has been whittled down quite a ways, and that I imagine is no picnic.
Friday, June 27, 2008
I prefer St. Paul to San Diego
In San Diego I got off the highway at College Avenue and found the last house I lived in before moving in with Jenifer and Naomi in 1986. The neighborhood, and the whole city for that matter, seemed strangely naked—it’s the lack of big trees; there is much more sky here. Nearby was another former home, a one bedroom apartment I’d shared with friend James: he took the front room, I took the back, he got the mattress, I got the boxspring.
I drove the length of El Cajon Blvd, feeling strangely giddy and discomfited. The city that exists in my memory is limited to selected streets and buildings....but driving along I saw places that had long disappeared from my head, places where forgotten things had happened—maybe just buying motorcycle parts or going grocery shopping, but sometimes something more fraught. Twenty-five years ago at a strip mall on 54th and El Cajon I had sat outside a theater on the curb feeling dizzy and nearly undone, after fleeing the gory denouement of The Hunger, a vampire film with David Bowie.
I stopped at another former apartment on 49th, then at our last pre-Minnesota place, on Campus Avenue. On that wide street I was suddenly back with seven-year-old Naomi, walking her to the bus stop on a cool, foggy morning.
In Balboa Park I ambled through the Botanical Building, admired the big eucalyptus trees, bought an ice cream at the stand where I used to buy Naomi ice cream, by the giant tree she used to climb on but now there’s a fence around it.
I hadn’t been in San Diego in fifteen years, and had had no particular desire to visit; once here I discovered I hadn’t changed my mind. It was a little interesting to see the old homes and neighborhoods but also pointless. I’d pull up to an apartment and think, yep, there it is. The places, the city, they’re not significant anymore; this was home so long ago that I can hardly imagine what that must’ve felt like, to be at home here. A visit offers some nostalgia, maybe a few correctives to memory (a questionable benefit), but mostly I just felt homesick for Minnesota, my real place where my real people live.
Luckily, though, I do have a couple real people left here in San Diego. After Balboa Park I drove to a residential neighborhood perched on a long ridge and found one more house, a one-story rambler with lemon trees in the yard, occupied by friends Clinton and Annie and their two sons Trevor (15) and Andy (13). Clinton and I had worked on boats together through most of the 1980s, but I hadn’t seen him in over fifteen years. A little risky to visit people from whom you have so long been separated, but it turned out quite well.
Annie is a graphic designer, a freelancer who works out of a lovely sunroom built onto one side of the house. She’s smart and arty and a good cook and has impeccable taste and appeared to be a calm and effective mother. Her two boys are almost SoCal cliches, tall and thin with shaggy, water- and sun-damaged blonde hair; they skateboard and surf and play soccer. Trevor is a bit quiet/surly, but then he’s fifteen; he’s apparently an excellent surfer, and they just learned that one of his drawings had won a first place at the Del Mar Fair. Andy is a little more personable, but then give him a couple years. Aided by his mother, he explained to me how he had recently broken his pinky finger in a horseplay incident. After dinner, when we were still talking at the table, he draped himself across his mother’s lap, far too big for her but she didn’t complain.
Clinton is seemingly unchanged, despite a few wrinkles—his Lancashire accent is undiminished by time, and his proclivity for “takin’ the piss out of” people (that is, teasing, or “winding ‘em up”) is intact. I was long a main target, and it seems that sons were ready made for this type of affection. He no longer works on boats but applies his woodworking skills to houses, mostly new ones. In his own house there is much evidence of his talent—the dining room table, the front door, a television cabinet, and more. The garage is full of his tools and equipment, and he drives an Astro minivan with the backseats pulled out to accommodate his work gear.
His true passion, though, is for soccer, or for football, as he persists in calling it. He has been a Manchester United devotee since childhood, and was still reveling in their recent winning of the Champions League final. He’s currently following the Euro 2008 tournament, despite the fact that England does not have a team in the competition. There are televisions all over the house, as much for soccer-viewing as anything else.
I’ve been here at their house two days now, sleeping in the van in the driveway, and coming in for the morning to sit with Annie in her sunroom, each on our own computer. The boys are at lifeguarding camp, and Clinton is off at work, doing the wood trim in a massive house being built for some “rich focker.” Yesterday he helped put in the front door, a huge eight by ten foot slab that rotates in the middle; it took eight guys to lift.
As in Boise with Grandpa, as in Las Vegas with Rob, as in Borrego Springs with Larry and Sinda, I have been welcomed and well-treated here, and as each time before I am reluctant to go. I settle in easily and I enjoy hanging about the house....
But of course I don’t want to abuse such hospitality. This afternoon I head north for Redondo Beach and the next visit.
I drove the length of El Cajon Blvd, feeling strangely giddy and discomfited. The city that exists in my memory is limited to selected streets and buildings....but driving along I saw places that had long disappeared from my head, places where forgotten things had happened—maybe just buying motorcycle parts or going grocery shopping, but sometimes something more fraught. Twenty-five years ago at a strip mall on 54th and El Cajon I had sat outside a theater on the curb feeling dizzy and nearly undone, after fleeing the gory denouement of The Hunger, a vampire film with David Bowie.
I stopped at another former apartment on 49th, then at our last pre-Minnesota place, on Campus Avenue. On that wide street I was suddenly back with seven-year-old Naomi, walking her to the bus stop on a cool, foggy morning.
In Balboa Park I ambled through the Botanical Building, admired the big eucalyptus trees, bought an ice cream at the stand where I used to buy Naomi ice cream, by the giant tree she used to climb on but now there’s a fence around it.
I hadn’t been in San Diego in fifteen years, and had had no particular desire to visit; once here I discovered I hadn’t changed my mind. It was a little interesting to see the old homes and neighborhoods but also pointless. I’d pull up to an apartment and think, yep, there it is. The places, the city, they’re not significant anymore; this was home so long ago that I can hardly imagine what that must’ve felt like, to be at home here. A visit offers some nostalgia, maybe a few correctives to memory (a questionable benefit), but mostly I just felt homesick for Minnesota, my real place where my real people live.
Luckily, though, I do have a couple real people left here in San Diego. After Balboa Park I drove to a residential neighborhood perched on a long ridge and found one more house, a one-story rambler with lemon trees in the yard, occupied by friends Clinton and Annie and their two sons Trevor (15) and Andy (13). Clinton and I had worked on boats together through most of the 1980s, but I hadn’t seen him in over fifteen years. A little risky to visit people from whom you have so long been separated, but it turned out quite well.
Annie is a graphic designer, a freelancer who works out of a lovely sunroom built onto one side of the house. She’s smart and arty and a good cook and has impeccable taste and appeared to be a calm and effective mother. Her two boys are almost SoCal cliches, tall and thin with shaggy, water- and sun-damaged blonde hair; they skateboard and surf and play soccer. Trevor is a bit quiet/surly, but then he’s fifteen; he’s apparently an excellent surfer, and they just learned that one of his drawings had won a first place at the Del Mar Fair. Andy is a little more personable, but then give him a couple years. Aided by his mother, he explained to me how he had recently broken his pinky finger in a horseplay incident. After dinner, when we were still talking at the table, he draped himself across his mother’s lap, far too big for her but she didn’t complain.
Clinton is seemingly unchanged, despite a few wrinkles—his Lancashire accent is undiminished by time, and his proclivity for “takin’ the piss out of” people (that is, teasing, or “winding ‘em up”) is intact. I was long a main target, and it seems that sons were ready made for this type of affection. He no longer works on boats but applies his woodworking skills to houses, mostly new ones. In his own house there is much evidence of his talent—the dining room table, the front door, a television cabinet, and more. The garage is full of his tools and equipment, and he drives an Astro minivan with the backseats pulled out to accommodate his work gear.
His true passion, though, is for soccer, or for football, as he persists in calling it. He has been a Manchester United devotee since childhood, and was still reveling in their recent winning of the Champions League final. He’s currently following the Euro 2008 tournament, despite the fact that England does not have a team in the competition. There are televisions all over the house, as much for soccer-viewing as anything else.
I’ve been here at their house two days now, sleeping in the van in the driveway, and coming in for the morning to sit with Annie in her sunroom, each on our own computer. The boys are at lifeguarding camp, and Clinton is off at work, doing the wood trim in a massive house being built for some “rich focker.” Yesterday he helped put in the front door, a huge eight by ten foot slab that rotates in the middle; it took eight guys to lift.
As in Boise with Grandpa, as in Las Vegas with Rob, as in Borrego Springs with Larry and Sinda, I have been welcomed and well-treated here, and as each time before I am reluctant to go. I settle in easily and I enjoy hanging about the house....
But of course I don’t want to abuse such hospitality. This afternoon I head north for Redondo Beach and the next visit.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Apparently John Wayne liked cheese
At the Roadrunner Club pool, a big blonde woman sat on the steps in the shallow end, in water up to her chest. Her large, sun-burnished bosom bulged from a black one-piece. I dove in at the deep end, then pulled myself back out and sat on the edge with my legs in the water.
Across the pool the woman said, “You look too young to live here.”
I answered “Unfortunately,” which immediately afterwards struck me as odd. I don’t often wish to be older than I am. I told her that I was visiting friends, then I said she looked too young too, partly because she did, partly because it seemed the polite thing to say.
Her parents live at the Roadrunner, she told me, and she had come out from San Clemente to look after her mother, who had fallen at the pool. She, the mother, had been scanning the pool chairs for her husband and not watching where she was going, when she inadvertently stepped into one of the small side wells of the jacuzzi; she broke her upper arm and dislocated her shoulder. I winced but the daughter laughed and shook her head. “And just two weeks ago my father had to be air-lifted to Brawley after being bitten by a rattlesnake.” She laughed again.
She told me that when not having accidents her parents enjoy hiking and birdwatching. “They put out bits of raw chicken on their deck for the roadrunners here,” she said. “Have you seen them?” I have seen them, skulking among the landscaped cactuses, then dashing away when spotted; they’re large birds, something like a lanky crow in size. I’ve never seen one fly though I think they can. “If my father forgets to put out the meat,” the woman said, “the birds come to the sliding door and tap on the glass with their beaks.” I thought, I’d like to see that, an impatient roadrunner.
The weather had moderated ten degrees or so, and in the evening Larry and I went for our first and only hike, in the hills west of town. Picking my way down a slope of loose rock and cholla and agave and barrel cacti, I felt an overwhelming sense of at-homeness. The Borrego Valley makes me feel right with the world....
Back at the house, Sinda had made John Wayne’s Favorite Casserole for dinner. She got the recipe off the internet: lots of cheese, eggs and butter, highlighted with bits of green chilies. "You know, Capper," Larry said, "The Searchers is a very important movie for Sinda." We ate on tv trays in the living room, watching hiking video Larry had shot when I visited in January. More than once his commentary in real time would be followed almost immediately by identical remarks on the recording. “Spectacular!”
At the end of the evening I had to say good-bye, which I did with affection and great reluctance. The longer I stay in Borrego, and the more time I spend with Larry and Sinda, the more I want to stay.
In the morning I packed up and headed east towards and into the Cuyamaca Mountains. The climb was slow and steep and the temperature gauge rose to a worrisome but not dangerous level. Late in the morning I hiked three miles, first along a trickle of a creek, where fire had damaged but not quite killed oak and holly trees, and then up through brushy scrub to Oakzanita Peak. Along the creek birds flew between the half dead trees, picking off flies. I spotted a pair of acorn woodpeckers, birds whose head coloring always makes me think of clowns. Lizards scattered on the dusty trail, frantic to escape me though they really had little to fear.
On top, the rocky knob offered a long hazy view of hills and mountains in all directions. Three vultures and a red-tailed hawk soared overhead in big circles. When I set off on the return hike the vultures banked low to have a closer look at me, and I looked up and said, “fuck off.”
Back in the van, I headed down into San Diego for a strange afternoon of remembering places and episodes long lost and forgotten.
Across the pool the woman said, “You look too young to live here.”
I answered “Unfortunately,” which immediately afterwards struck me as odd. I don’t often wish to be older than I am. I told her that I was visiting friends, then I said she looked too young too, partly because she did, partly because it seemed the polite thing to say.
Her parents live at the Roadrunner, she told me, and she had come out from San Clemente to look after her mother, who had fallen at the pool. She, the mother, had been scanning the pool chairs for her husband and not watching where she was going, when she inadvertently stepped into one of the small side wells of the jacuzzi; she broke her upper arm and dislocated her shoulder. I winced but the daughter laughed and shook her head. “And just two weeks ago my father had to be air-lifted to Brawley after being bitten by a rattlesnake.” She laughed again.
She told me that when not having accidents her parents enjoy hiking and birdwatching. “They put out bits of raw chicken on their deck for the roadrunners here,” she said. “Have you seen them?” I have seen them, skulking among the landscaped cactuses, then dashing away when spotted; they’re large birds, something like a lanky crow in size. I’ve never seen one fly though I think they can. “If my father forgets to put out the meat,” the woman said, “the birds come to the sliding door and tap on the glass with their beaks.” I thought, I’d like to see that, an impatient roadrunner.
The weather had moderated ten degrees or so, and in the evening Larry and I went for our first and only hike, in the hills west of town. Picking my way down a slope of loose rock and cholla and agave and barrel cacti, I felt an overwhelming sense of at-homeness. The Borrego Valley makes me feel right with the world....
Back at the house, Sinda had made John Wayne’s Favorite Casserole for dinner. She got the recipe off the internet: lots of cheese, eggs and butter, highlighted with bits of green chilies. "You know, Capper," Larry said, "The Searchers is a very important movie for Sinda." We ate on tv trays in the living room, watching hiking video Larry had shot when I visited in January. More than once his commentary in real time would be followed almost immediately by identical remarks on the recording. “Spectacular!”
At the end of the evening I had to say good-bye, which I did with affection and great reluctance. The longer I stay in Borrego, and the more time I spend with Larry and Sinda, the more I want to stay.
In the morning I packed up and headed east towards and into the Cuyamaca Mountains. The climb was slow and steep and the temperature gauge rose to a worrisome but not dangerous level. Late in the morning I hiked three miles, first along a trickle of a creek, where fire had damaged but not quite killed oak and holly trees, and then up through brushy scrub to Oakzanita Peak. Along the creek birds flew between the half dead trees, picking off flies. I spotted a pair of acorn woodpeckers, birds whose head coloring always makes me think of clowns. Lizards scattered on the dusty trail, frantic to escape me though they really had little to fear.
On top, the rocky knob offered a long hazy view of hills and mountains in all directions. Three vultures and a red-tailed hawk soared overhead in big circles. When I set off on the return hike the vultures banked low to have a closer look at me, and I looked up and said, “fuck off.”
Back in the van, I headed down into San Diego for a strange afternoon of remembering places and episodes long lost and forgotten.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Grapevine Canyon
As Larry and I drove west up into the mountains, the temperature dropped into the nineties. We leveled out in Ranchita, a wide plateau scattered with small houses with trucks parked in the dusty yards.
We soon turned off onto the sandy Grapevine Canyon Road. Larry said, “so, Capper, this is the old way down to Borrego, the way the Indians used and later the ranchers. And now it’s the proposed route for a massive powerline to San Diego.” Most of the locals oppose the powerline, which will cross Anza-Borrego State Park, but Larry says it’s probably inevitable.
The newer road to Borrego Springs, which we had just used, climbs right up the mountains’ eastern face in tight curves, carved and blasted into the steep slope. It took ten years, 1952 to 1962, to complete the road, which provided a much more direct route to Borrego. The old road, though, descends more gradually and sensibly along the bottom of Grapevine Canyon, passing several springs before coming out onto the desert floor at Yaqui Well.
“Did you see that sign?” I asked Larry.
“Oh, yeah,” he said braking, "I wanted to show you that.” He stopped and backed up and we got out. “A bit of backcountry protest art,” Larry said, gesturing at a poster-sized image of Osama bin Laden holding a machine gun and wearing an SDG&E jumpsuit (SDG&E=San Diego Gas and Electric, sponsors of the planned powerline). Handwritten beside the sun-faded image was a short commentary that used the word “liars” repeatedly.
We passed several small ranches, the houses accompanied by eucalyptus trees, a few cows or horses, often a backhoe. We paused at Angelina Spring, where a single large cottonwood stood, a sure sign of water in the desert. In the canyon bottom, desert willow crowded in on the road. As we lost elevation, big catclaw bushes appeared, then tall sprays of ocotillo, finally the dangerously named teddy bear cholla. We had reached the wide mouth of Grapevine Canyon, a delta plain spread out in the shadow of Grapevine Mountain, one of a string of brown peaks running off eastwards.
At Yaqui Well we got out and walked up a bouldery slope, weaving among the cactus. The last of the day’s light was moving rapidly up the opposite ridge, making a stark division on the mountainside between late-day yellow and the brown of dusk. We stood and watched till the sunlight reached the highest peaks, until only a single contrail in the sky above was still lit.
Back at the house Sinda had made dinner for us, pasta and salad, but before we sat down attention turned to Vargas, whose terrarium rests on a counter in the dining room. He was hiding under one of the three rocks. Larry said, “so, Capper, you see one of the great things about having a scorpion is that you never know where it is.” I could imagine that not being such a great thing, but we went ahead and each made a guess about which rock Vargas was under. Then Sinda took the top off and reached in to lift up her rock. Larry stepped back and said “Sinda,” a single word of warning and worry.
She had chosen right--Vargas stood up, curled his tail and sidled halfway up the small depression in the dirt. “Ok, put it back,” Larry said. He doesn’t like to expose Vargas against his will, preferring to wait till the scorpion emerges on his own. Sinda used the edge of the rock to coax Vargas back to the bottom of the depression--Larry made a noise--and then she put the rock back on top of him.
After dinner we watched The Piano Teacher, a disturbing story about a woman who has mother and sexual issues. Back at the trailer I had to watch some Sports Center before I could go to bed.
We soon turned off onto the sandy Grapevine Canyon Road. Larry said, “so, Capper, this is the old way down to Borrego, the way the Indians used and later the ranchers. And now it’s the proposed route for a massive powerline to San Diego.” Most of the locals oppose the powerline, which will cross Anza-Borrego State Park, but Larry says it’s probably inevitable.
The newer road to Borrego Springs, which we had just used, climbs right up the mountains’ eastern face in tight curves, carved and blasted into the steep slope. It took ten years, 1952 to 1962, to complete the road, which provided a much more direct route to Borrego. The old road, though, descends more gradually and sensibly along the bottom of Grapevine Canyon, passing several springs before coming out onto the desert floor at Yaqui Well.
“Did you see that sign?” I asked Larry.
“Oh, yeah,” he said braking, "I wanted to show you that.” He stopped and backed up and we got out. “A bit of backcountry protest art,” Larry said, gesturing at a poster-sized image of Osama bin Laden holding a machine gun and wearing an SDG&E jumpsuit (SDG&E=San Diego Gas and Electric, sponsors of the planned powerline). Handwritten beside the sun-faded image was a short commentary that used the word “liars” repeatedly.
We passed several small ranches, the houses accompanied by eucalyptus trees, a few cows or horses, often a backhoe. We paused at Angelina Spring, where a single large cottonwood stood, a sure sign of water in the desert. In the canyon bottom, desert willow crowded in on the road. As we lost elevation, big catclaw bushes appeared, then tall sprays of ocotillo, finally the dangerously named teddy bear cholla. We had reached the wide mouth of Grapevine Canyon, a delta plain spread out in the shadow of Grapevine Mountain, one of a string of brown peaks running off eastwards.
At Yaqui Well we got out and walked up a bouldery slope, weaving among the cactus. The last of the day’s light was moving rapidly up the opposite ridge, making a stark division on the mountainside between late-day yellow and the brown of dusk. We stood and watched till the sunlight reached the highest peaks, until only a single contrail in the sky above was still lit.
Back at the house Sinda had made dinner for us, pasta and salad, but before we sat down attention turned to Vargas, whose terrarium rests on a counter in the dining room. He was hiding under one of the three rocks. Larry said, “so, Capper, you see one of the great things about having a scorpion is that you never know where it is.” I could imagine that not being such a great thing, but we went ahead and each made a guess about which rock Vargas was under. Then Sinda took the top off and reached in to lift up her rock. Larry stepped back and said “Sinda,” a single word of warning and worry.
She had chosen right--Vargas stood up, curled his tail and sidled halfway up the small depression in the dirt. “Ok, put it back,” Larry said. He doesn’t like to expose Vargas against his will, preferring to wait till the scorpion emerges on his own. Sinda used the edge of the rock to coax Vargas back to the bottom of the depression--Larry made a noise--and then she put the rock back on top of him.
After dinner we watched The Piano Teacher, a disturbing story about a woman who has mother and sexual issues. Back at the trailer I had to watch some Sports Center before I could go to bed.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Roadrunner Club
Last night when we were on the rooftop deck, a pack of coyotes started up nearby, yipping and howling, their surprisingly high voices carrying in the still air. They paused, then started again as if they could not suppress a collective lament. In Borrego people with small dogs have to be careful. I wonder what a coyote makes of a bichon frise, besides a meal.
In the morning I went for a walk around the Roadrunner Club. The streets and cul-de-sacs of doublewides are interrupted and softened by a par 3 course lined with big palms and willows and non-native conifers. White-winged doves murmur in the palms, and mallards stand beside a shaded pond. The green, well-watered strip forms a rough circle through the Club, and seems more like a park than a golf course. Workers were out in utility golf carts, collecting downed branches, raking leaves, and mowing the already short grass.
Only one person was playing, a man in his seventies with an awkward, truncated swing. He stood in a tee box and hit one ball after another towards a not too distant hole. A coyote ran out into the open to sniff at a ball that had just come to a stop. Unimpressed, it sauntered on across the fairway, pausing only briefly to look over its shoulder when another ball fell nearby.
The Roadrunner Club is less than half occupied this time of the year. There are a few full-time residents, but most people use the trailers as vacation homes in the winter months. You have to be at least fifty-five to own at the Club. Most of the current residents seem active types: they golf, some bicycle around the grounds, they take water aerobics at the pool, they gather for potlucks in the Clubhouse. Driving around in their golf carts,they stop often to chat and laugh with their neighbors. Most of them fall into the golden years category: over sixty, under seventy-five, post-career, pre-the-ravages-of-old-age.
The state of the grounds, as well as the vibe at the Roadrunner falls somewhere between country club posh and trailer park seedy. It’s just right, bourgy comfortable, well kempt but not pretentious. I want to move in, and I don’t want to wait.
Prices are reasonable, and numerous “coaches” are for sale. One two-bedroom, two-bath unit, with new hardwood floors and new appliances, was going for just $42,500. Larry’s trailer, which is relatively down at the heels (though still charming, in a pale paneled-wood sort of way), is worth half as much. The catch is you have to pay $600 a month in club fees, though considering the pool and golf course, that doesn’t seem so bad.
Larry inherited his trailer from his father, Mac, a career Air Force man. Supposedly Mac’s ghost still occasionally makes appearances at the trailer, at least according to more than one past visitor. But I’ve never seen him. Larry says he would have approved of my short hair.
Larry and Sinda moved out to the trailer from San Diego almost twenty years ago. Before long they had a house built, and the two-bedroom trailer became Larry’s office and library and a place to house visitors. In every room there are crowded and sagging bookshelves, variously devoted to science fiction, rock music, Japan, China, postmodernist fiction, natural history.... And no stretch of wall is free from high, tottering piles of records, vhs tapes, cds, or more books. In the closets are numerous boxes of cassette tapes, retired but not discarded. It’s a trash house of texts.
A framed picture of Mark Twain hangs on one wall, of Johnny Cash on another. On the refrigerator is a thirty-year-old 8x10 of Sinda holding a machine gun and striking a Patty Hearst pose.
Since moving out to the desert they’ve commuted to San Diego (two and a half hours away) to teach, going into town for three days a week and staying at a motel. They’re now both nearing retirement and only teach spring semester.
Late in the morning I went for a swim with Larry and Maggie. I swam ten laps to try to make up for my recent sedentary ways. At eleven the thermometer at the pool read 102, a noticeable improvement over the 110 at the same time two days ago. I’m not kidding--102 or 104 feels manageable in comparison to temperatures above 110. One hundred sixteen feels ridiculous;after a very short time you just laugh, realizing there’s no way, and quickly move indoors.
The four of us, Sinda too, went for lunch at the Red Ocotillo, a restaurant housed in a small quonset hut. Curved ceilings are cool. I had the Large Mixed Green Salad dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette and festooned with kalamata olives and I was pretty happy.
In the morning I went for a walk around the Roadrunner Club. The streets and cul-de-sacs of doublewides are interrupted and softened by a par 3 course lined with big palms and willows and non-native conifers. White-winged doves murmur in the palms, and mallards stand beside a shaded pond. The green, well-watered strip forms a rough circle through the Club, and seems more like a park than a golf course. Workers were out in utility golf carts, collecting downed branches, raking leaves, and mowing the already short grass.
Only one person was playing, a man in his seventies with an awkward, truncated swing. He stood in a tee box and hit one ball after another towards a not too distant hole. A coyote ran out into the open to sniff at a ball that had just come to a stop. Unimpressed, it sauntered on across the fairway, pausing only briefly to look over its shoulder when another ball fell nearby.
The Roadrunner Club is less than half occupied this time of the year. There are a few full-time residents, but most people use the trailers as vacation homes in the winter months. You have to be at least fifty-five to own at the Club. Most of the current residents seem active types: they golf, some bicycle around the grounds, they take water aerobics at the pool, they gather for potlucks in the Clubhouse. Driving around in their golf carts,they stop often to chat and laugh with their neighbors. Most of them fall into the golden years category: over sixty, under seventy-five, post-career, pre-the-ravages-of-old-age.
The state of the grounds, as well as the vibe at the Roadrunner falls somewhere between country club posh and trailer park seedy. It’s just right, bourgy comfortable, well kempt but not pretentious. I want to move in, and I don’t want to wait.
Prices are reasonable, and numerous “coaches” are for sale. One two-bedroom, two-bath unit, with new hardwood floors and new appliances, was going for just $42,500. Larry’s trailer, which is relatively down at the heels (though still charming, in a pale paneled-wood sort of way), is worth half as much. The catch is you have to pay $600 a month in club fees, though considering the pool and golf course, that doesn’t seem so bad.
Larry inherited his trailer from his father, Mac, a career Air Force man. Supposedly Mac’s ghost still occasionally makes appearances at the trailer, at least according to more than one past visitor. But I’ve never seen him. Larry says he would have approved of my short hair.
Larry and Sinda moved out to the trailer from San Diego almost twenty years ago. Before long they had a house built, and the two-bedroom trailer became Larry’s office and library and a place to house visitors. In every room there are crowded and sagging bookshelves, variously devoted to science fiction, rock music, Japan, China, postmodernist fiction, natural history.... And no stretch of wall is free from high, tottering piles of records, vhs tapes, cds, or more books. In the closets are numerous boxes of cassette tapes, retired but not discarded. It’s a trash house of texts.
A framed picture of Mark Twain hangs on one wall, of Johnny Cash on another. On the refrigerator is a thirty-year-old 8x10 of Sinda holding a machine gun and striking a Patty Hearst pose.
Since moving out to the desert they’ve commuted to San Diego (two and a half hours away) to teach, going into town for three days a week and staying at a motel. They’re now both nearing retirement and only teach spring semester.
Late in the morning I went for a swim with Larry and Maggie. I swam ten laps to try to make up for my recent sedentary ways. At eleven the thermometer at the pool read 102, a noticeable improvement over the 110 at the same time two days ago. I’m not kidding--102 or 104 feels manageable in comparison to temperatures above 110. One hundred sixteen feels ridiculous;after a very short time you just laugh, realizing there’s no way, and quickly move indoors.
The four of us, Sinda too, went for lunch at the Red Ocotillo, a restaurant housed in a small quonset hut. Curved ceilings are cool. I had the Large Mixed Green Salad dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette and festooned with kalamata olives and I was pretty happy.
Monday, June 23, 2008
I do not know you, Kung-Fu
After a late morning swim, I went alone to Los Jilbertos and sat down at an orange formica table to eat a plate of tacos. A thin, slight man in baggy cotton pants and sandals came in to the small restaurant. I could see his face only in quarter profile but thought he looked familiar. His countenance was mild but disdainful, his complexion, even his lips, a uniformly tanned shade of pale mud. He ordered in a quiet voice that did not carry.
I took a bite of taco but did not take my eyes from him. His haughty demeanor and long fingernails bespoke careful and long-term debauchery, pursued with phlegmatic cruelty. He took some time to explain to the woman behind the counter what he wanted and ended with a single, slightly louder and unsmiling word: “comprende?” The woman answered “comprendo” but looked confused, as if he had asked for something untoward. When he turned sideways to reach into his pocket, I thought, that’s Peter Fonda, who I recently saw on tv pitching a seven cd collection called “The Summer of Love” and looking wasted.
But when I got a better look, I realized that the man wasn’t Peter Fonda but David Carradine. Grasshopper. Kung-Fu. The singer of “I’m Easy.” Uma's Bill. Carradine stepped to the sideboard and filled two small plastic cups with pickled carrots, then waited for his order, motionless as a spider anticipating its prey. When his food was ready he took the white bag from the woman and headed for the door. He saw me and nodded, raised his hand in single-finger supercilious acknowledgement. But then he hesitated, stayed his hand halfway. “I thought I knew you,” he murmured in a quiet voice. No, you do not, I thought but did not say. No, I am not one of your minions, David Carradine, and I have not and will not be party to your corruption.
After my close encounter with celebrity evil, I proceeded to Larry and Sinda’s house. In response to the 112-degree heat, they were reposed on living room couches, Maggie too, soothed by a-c, holding tall drinks and watching a French film. That might sound a bit decadent too, but the mood was much friendlier than David Carradine’s Dementor vibe.
Just after the sun set we went on a drive up towards Coyote Canyon. A local rich person has bought up big chunks of open land in the Borrego Valley, named these parcels, collectively, Galleta Meadows, and sprinkled the lands with numerous life-sized pre-historic creatures. He commissioned a sculptor to build the two dozen or so sheet metal animals--camel-like, elephant-like, turtle-like, and more--and install them in the fields in small groups. They stand in the dead grass, rusty in the heat, strange and intriguing anomalies.
We drove into a lemon grove, down a long corridor of the trees, which grow together in a solid phalanx twenty feet high. At the far edge we got out, and I walked among the trees looking for ripe fruit. At my approach, big cicadas scattered out of thick-growing branches, bouncing off my hat and face and arms. Larry found me and we drifted out of the trees to the edge of the desert, where irrigated monoculture gives way to a far more interesting mix of creosote and catclaw and ocotillo.
Later back at the house, after dark, we all went up to the rooftop deck. Jupiter stood low over the southeastern horizon. Swathes of Milky Way stretched across the big sky. I lay down on a bench and spotted a couple falling stars before Maggie spilled her drink on my head.
Larry said that in Japan there’s a new and popular genre, the cell phone novel. Content arrives via text messaging, either the whole novel at once (the works tend to be shorter than conventional novels), or in installments. A Japanese aficionado told Larry that one of the best things about cell phone novels is that you can delete them immediately after finishing reading. Throwaway literature. I don’t know.
I took a bite of taco but did not take my eyes from him. His haughty demeanor and long fingernails bespoke careful and long-term debauchery, pursued with phlegmatic cruelty. He took some time to explain to the woman behind the counter what he wanted and ended with a single, slightly louder and unsmiling word: “comprende?” The woman answered “comprendo” but looked confused, as if he had asked for something untoward. When he turned sideways to reach into his pocket, I thought, that’s Peter Fonda, who I recently saw on tv pitching a seven cd collection called “The Summer of Love” and looking wasted.
But when I got a better look, I realized that the man wasn’t Peter Fonda but David Carradine. Grasshopper. Kung-Fu. The singer of “I’m Easy.” Uma's Bill. Carradine stepped to the sideboard and filled two small plastic cups with pickled carrots, then waited for his order, motionless as a spider anticipating its prey. When his food was ready he took the white bag from the woman and headed for the door. He saw me and nodded, raised his hand in single-finger supercilious acknowledgement. But then he hesitated, stayed his hand halfway. “I thought I knew you,” he murmured in a quiet voice. No, you do not, I thought but did not say. No, I am not one of your minions, David Carradine, and I have not and will not be party to your corruption.
After my close encounter with celebrity evil, I proceeded to Larry and Sinda’s house. In response to the 112-degree heat, they were reposed on living room couches, Maggie too, soothed by a-c, holding tall drinks and watching a French film. That might sound a bit decadent too, but the mood was much friendlier than David Carradine’s Dementor vibe.
Just after the sun set we went on a drive up towards Coyote Canyon. A local rich person has bought up big chunks of open land in the Borrego Valley, named these parcels, collectively, Galleta Meadows, and sprinkled the lands with numerous life-sized pre-historic creatures. He commissioned a sculptor to build the two dozen or so sheet metal animals--camel-like, elephant-like, turtle-like, and more--and install them in the fields in small groups. They stand in the dead grass, rusty in the heat, strange and intriguing anomalies.
We drove into a lemon grove, down a long corridor of the trees, which grow together in a solid phalanx twenty feet high. At the far edge we got out, and I walked among the trees looking for ripe fruit. At my approach, big cicadas scattered out of thick-growing branches, bouncing off my hat and face and arms. Larry found me and we drifted out of the trees to the edge of the desert, where irrigated monoculture gives way to a far more interesting mix of creosote and catclaw and ocotillo.
Later back at the house, after dark, we all went up to the rooftop deck. Jupiter stood low over the southeastern horizon. Swathes of Milky Way stretched across the big sky. I lay down on a bench and spotted a couple falling stars before Maggie spilled her drink on my head.
Larry said that in Japan there’s a new and popular genre, the cell phone novel. Content arrives via text messaging, either the whole novel at once (the works tend to be shorter than conventional novels), or in installments. A Japanese aficionado told Larry that one of the best things about cell phone novels is that you can delete them immediately after finishing reading. Throwaway literature. I don’t know.
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