Gold Coast... The Wild Coast

The Chinese have a saying that a journey begins with a single step. In my case, it began in naivety, progressed accidentally to actuality then somehow secured its place in my memory bank through sheer happenstance, perseverance and dumb luck.

Like some wonderful party that can’t be replicated even if all the same participants gathered together once again; a journey is really a time capsule. It’s a sliver of space in one’s life that gives birth to either good memories or bad, to wonderful thoughts or sad reflections. Yet, it always remains locked in that serendipitous turn of events which can never be changed, replicated or replaced. Whatever happened did happen. Whatever was gained can’t be changed even if it later becomes lost on in a fog of future events.

The idea for my two-wheeled journey north was born early one Sunday morning in some unnamed dive bar on North Beach, San Francisco, circ. 1964. 

It was a motley assortment of drugstore cowboys, fast food aficionados and one kid with two years of college under his belt. Each of us ruminating on about our release from military service a monumental two years away. This was long before “Easy Rider” spoke to my generation of the daddy of all road trips and my own sojourn to Danmark which was still years into my future.

Our conversation was a once telling; a lot of young recruit bullshit, bravado and at its core ‘what were we going to do after the service?’ Return to college. Head out for Europe. Stay in San Francisco or hit the road just like Jack Kerouac did in “On the Road.”

The more sober philosophers among us thought we should get on with our lives. Go back home after our hitch was up, get an education, marry our high school sweetheart and settle down to the good old standard American life. The more inebriated among us thought otherwise. Another round of beers and an impromptu survey was taken. The open road garnered first place with Europe a close second. Returning home to suburban tranquility didn’t even register.

Some of my comrades without arms were already open road desperados. One guy had a big-ass Triumph 650cc motor-cycle with enough horsepower to fly between San Francisco to Los Angeles in record time. He went down to the city of angels almost every weekend to see his girlfriend.

A couple of guys had souped-up cars they’d brought to the Presidio from back home. But soon one fellow was shipped off to Vietnam and another got transferred to Okinawa. As the hours dragged on, several more wannabes disappeared and that effectively took most of the gang out of the picture. I was the only one left with my Vespa motor scooter and some exaggerated, romantic notions of the open road still spinning around in my head.

A dream had been planted in my plastic brain that resonated throughout my body. I decided I might as well hit the asphalt highway right then and there instead of waiting another two years before my release was up. My destination would be the distant lands north of the Golden Gate Bridge. At that point, they were just shadowy mounds of gray that kissed the skyline outside my office window.

This was the old Northern California countryside before multiple ballot propositions changed the political and social landscape and a bulging San Francisco spilled its inhabitants far and wide; spilling out across the bay to once tiny hamlets like Sausalito, Mount Tamaulipas and Stinson Beach. It was a time when cows roamed empty fields amid gun emplacements that still protected San Francisco Bay from Japanese battleships.

A time when only a few small enclaves of new housing slashed into the green hillsides. An era, before satellites, when radar stations scanned the northern skies for raiders from Russia. A time when the only sound heard was the putt-putt of my tiny Italian engine against a wind blowing oceanside and birds on high, floating silently in the sea breeze.

So one Monday morning, instead of heading to work at the Command Information Office, I saddled up my trusty stead, wrapped supplies on the saddle rack and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge for points north.

After I had braved the crazy traffic on the bridge, I swung north to the tiny enclave of Sausalito. Even back then Sausalito was a very special place. During the war, the Navy had installed a host of ship maintenance facilities. By the sixties, those had all disappeared but a lot of the ship workers had stayed. They were joined by displaced beats and hippies from across the bay. Together they made Sausalito an eclectic community, a growing artist colony and home to the funky and weird.

I got my regular cup of Joe and sat on the dock, peering out across the bay back to my new life in khaki and I wondered where the road might take me next. Otis Redding, where were you?

On my way out of town, I spotted this inlet where fancy cars were parked in front and yachts in back. It was a novel idea at the time, priceless in this day and age.

Later that morning, I stopped at the Christian Brothers winery. I didn’t see any of my old high school teachers there but a couple of glasses of vino did wonders for the rest of my trip that afternoon.

The first sign of encroaching humanity. The pristine countryside of Sausalito was becoming just another suburb of San Francisco.

Some rundown motel among the sequoias was my refuge for that first night. Exhausted, dirty and yet feeling exhilarated. Note the sleeping bag I had hauled along. What was I thinking?

This was one of dozens of inlets along the coast road where the sea had dumped its collection of driftwood and debris on land. I’m sure there were treasures down there but I never stopped to investigate.

I was so tempted to ride down to this house to see who lived there. I can’t image a more remote, mysterious and wonderful place to live. It was probably some writer toiling on the great American novel and suffering the pangs of a broken love affair.

Back along the bay, I came across this new military housing complex being built. The view out their front door was to die for.

But more fascinating was the old-World War Two defensive installations that ran up and down the bayside. A concrete collection of pillboxes, command centers and the foundations for large cannons which would have been pointed out to sea.

Then, behind those old fortifications was a new radar facility and cameras pointed down at the kid on a scooter who was peering back up at them.

I was lost and didn’t really care. I had gas to go and wanderlust running rampant through my veins.

By the end of the week, I was flying with wild abandon. I only crashed once, taking a curve too fast on wet leaves and ending up in a gully sans my glasses, hat and pride. The scooter was okay except for the mud and leaves that coated its undercarriage with brown muck.  I found my glasses, picked the dirt out of my teeth and climbed back up on the saddle again.

After a week of meandering the bays and inlets, the back roads and tiny towns hugging the coast, I immerged out of a grove of redwood trees and found myself by some main artery that fed humanity back down toward the bay area. I used that as a beacon to head back south and my home base.

The trip was quickly forgotten and soon became a fading memory overshadowed by a multitude of other life events. Yet somehow those old slides followed me around for another forty-six years until a friend suggested I transfer them to digital. After gathering dust for forty plus years, those images took me back to a time when I was young and free and full of wondrous ideas and aspirations.

My California coastal tour was the first of several road trips. That was then, this is now. But back then, it was my first time skirting asphalt and concrete, tasting the grit and grime of the open road and opening my virgin mind to all kinds of possibilities. Some of which actually came true.

The scooter has been replaced with an E-bike and wonderous jaunts around the neighborhood, down the road and getting lost all over again. It’s not the same as my insane Vespa opened up flat out but it gives me the satisfaction of cruising along and taking in the world as I please.

I realize now that during my trip I was living in the moment…what Buddhists all mindfulness. Today we would translate that as conscious living.  In his book “Wherever You Go There You Are – mindfulness meditation in everyday life,” author Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about mindfulness as enlightening and liberating work. “It is enlightening in that it literally allows us to see more clearly, and therefore come to understand more deeply, areas in our lives that we were out of touch with or unwilling to look at.”

I’m doing the same thing with my E-bike. Life can be strange that way.

Whatever It Takes

She was born on a dirt farm in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska. Rental farm land that barely covered expenses and put food on the table. Her father worked the field’s every day and her mom tended to their home. It was bare bones living but it was a good life.

The family moved to another farm when she was eight years old. By then she was getting up early in the morning to help her father milk the cows, sling hay and keep the bulk tank spotless. She was the eldest daughter doing what was needed to be done to sustain the family.

Even then there were strong influences that shaped her life. People and events that steeled her determination to make something of herself beyond the 250 acres of wheat, soybeans and corn.

She had a loving grandmother who was more worldly than most farm wives. For two years the young girl walked from school to Grandma’s house for lunch. Instead of washing dishes, they played with dolls, colored, made sugar pies and drew pictures. A myriad of other mind-expanding experiences at every visit.

Long before women figured out, they didn’t have to wear girdles every time they stepped outside, there was an aunt who pioneered early feminist Zen for the young girl. The aunt traveled the world and ran a bar in the winter months. She could command a bar stool discussion with the best of her patrons. In the summers, her aunt had a gift shop up north where the young girl worked. It was there she learned how to charm the customers and make the sale, honing her business skills.

During her junior year in high school, a nun took a liking to her and told her she had to go to college. She would be the first in her family to do so. And even though there was no money for such a venture, it really wasn’t negotiable. The nun taught her how to break the rules and glass ceilings in that small town.

In small town America, she was the student class president her freshman, sophomore and junior year. Even though she was elected class president her senior year, the nuns decided a boy should have that position. So, the young girl learned to roll with the clerical punches and still come out on top. She went to Girls State, was awarded the Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year Award and elected Sodality President. The nuns couldn’t take that away from her.

Back in high school, a neighboring farm boy came to ask her out on a date. She politely declined and suffered the wrath of her father who thought she should have gone out simply because she had been asked. “What will our neighbors think?” her father asked her. “It doesn’t matter,” she answered. Still doesn’t.

One day the girl’s mother was cornered in town by ‘the attorney’s wife.’ The townies wanted to know why her daughter, a simple farm girl, thought she could go to such an elite all girl college in the cities. “Who does she think she is?” the woman asked the girl’s mother. “Her own self!” her mother answered. And that was that.

The young girl gleamed from all her life experiences the proposition that she ‘could’ and therefore she ‘would.’ If she wanted it, she would work for it. There was no free lunch but she was skilled in the kitchen. Those were giant assumptions in the early sixties, which in turn, she would pass on to her own children and grandchildren. No excuses, she would say, just focused determination to do what was needed to be done. ‘Whatever it takes,’ she would often say.

And she realized very early that she was smarter than most of the boys she dated. She still feels that way about men in general although she hasn’t dated in quite some time.

In college, she had to work almost full time while attending school as a day student. She lived with her aunt and learned to manage a tight schedule, be judicious about her sleep and still find time for student activities. She ended up student MEA president her senior year and traveled to Washington to represent the state. It was four years of sacrifice, hard work and little sleep and she excelled at everything she did.

Day students were not the girls who lived on campus. Boarders often didn’t have to work; they enjoyed time for studies, boys down the road and pondering their future career or lifestyle. Some enjoyed a preponderance of wealth. Like the girl with seven suede jackets.

This girl had a different suede jacket for each day of the week. Different colors, different styles and all unique. It spoke to the wardrobe packed in her dorm room. For many girls on campus, it was a gilded world of their liking. A few were pampered, privileged and very entitled. Others were not as privileged but still lived in a world far apart from morning milking chores and afternoon fieldwork the young girl was used to.

The young girl’s humble background and tough work ethic provided a sterling example for her children and grandchildren for what hard work, focus and determination can accomplish for a person. Success followed her academic and business career every step of the way.

She’s been president, chair, board member or committee member of every organization she’s ever belonged to. With her it’s almost a given. She was the first woman president of her Rotary club and first female Rotary district governor. Her list of posts, appointments, awards and recognition could fill a very large book. She still commands and gets the respect of every man in the group.

Businessmen universally respect her because she’s got the chops, the business acumen to deal with adverse situations, tough calls to make and focused goals to achieve. And unlike some of her professional colleagues, she has a common-sense approach to conflict resolution. She’s like a mama bear in an Ann Taylor suit.

Negotiations are her forte. Her ready smile and easy demeanor belie a sharp focus on the issues at hand, a calculating mind and deep insight into the human condition. Hardly seems fair to those sitting across from her in any business or political negotiations. I like to say she will eat you for lunch and you just came for dessert.

If I ever get my own writing thing going for me, I’m going to ask her to negotiate on my behalf. Her daughter is an attorney. No surprise there. Between the two of them, they would make a formidable team on my side.

In another life, she might have led a breakout at the cloisters, been Ophelia’s sister, a confidant to Clare Boothe Luce and most certainly a blue stocking suffragette. Perhaps even an Amazon Queen.

She still thinks she is smarter than most men. But I’m not going to give her that one.

I married her instead.

Dying is an Exercise in Futility

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

I have an old friend who is thinking about death and dying. Not in a fatalistic or pejorative way but rather as an objective and reflective exercise in self-examination and future planning.

He’s going on a retreat this weekend. He’s been doing that for over 30 years. It provides him with the perfect environment to help cleanse his brain of sundry matters and just focus on those issues in his life that really matter.

He’s been very successful in business, has been married to a wonderful woman for over forty years, great kids and grandchildren. He mentioned just casually he is also thinking about his life; taking a personal inventory and recognizing that there are less years left than when he was younger. He isn’t being fatalistic or a downer, just being realistic about his life as it is.

We agreed that we’re both at that stage in our lives where we don’t have much if anything left to prove. We’ve either done it or we haven’t. I wish I had done a few more things in my life but I didn’t. I wish some things had turned out differently but they didn’t. So be it. No apologies needed.

We agreed that we’re both old enough to see some things cycling around, coming back full circle into our lives. It’s really true that over time what goes around comes right back again. I guess it’s all part of that circle of life.

There is a movement in some of my city neighborhoods to bring back chickens. And chicken coops are now sprouting up in a number of backyards. My friend has a picture of his father in his old neighborhood back in the 30’s standing around a backyard of chickens.

My friend and I talked about streetcars choking downtown and our grandparent’s amazement at those new-fangled contraptions called streetlights to brighten downtown streets at night. A new University open-air stadium was being built on campus. It replaced the domed stadium which only 17 years before had replaced an open-air stadium at the same University.

I was raised in the city but couldn’t wait to get out of it. Now, young couples are flocking back to the very neighborhood I fled forty years ago. It got me to thinking. Does that mean that my circle of life is almost complete? Is my thirst for…. just an excuse in futility because who cares anyway? I hope not. There’s still so much to do and who knows how much time to do it.

I’ve talked about meeting my old high school classmates in my blog “In the Company of Old Men.” I mentioned how shocked I was to see that a number of them had passed on. It feels very strange to look at an alumni picture book, spot an old high school chum and then read the caption: ‘Deceased.’ It leaves an unsettled feeling in your stomach. And you don’t know if you should be looking over your shoulder for that shadowy figure in the black shawl anyplace close.

There are so many inconsequential ways to spend the rest of one’s life. I don’t want to spend countless hours shopping for groceries just because I’ve got the time to do it. Or sit with other old men in the coffee shop, bitching about anything and everything. I don’t want to travel just to keep moving or get a job just for something to do.

Role models are hard to find. I only know of a couple of older folks who are still active and alert and pleasant to be around. But the few I know are an inspiration for someone anxious to ‘do what I’ve always wanted to do’ and then some.

There are thirty plus books in my office that I haven’t read yet and if I count those books in my library that I’d like to revisit again or just review, I’d be page-locked for the rest of my life.

I will continue to seek out and welcome past acquaintances who want to share the good and sometimes not so good memories of a time since pasted. I’ve done it with several high school friends and it’s brought laughs and sighs and subtle nods.

Both my kids have promised to tell me when I’m acting like an old person. The trouble rests with their definition of getting old. Melanie thinks that my blog ‘Growing old without underwear’ was simply TMI (Too much information). I guess I’ve failed to make my case to her. She says the first thing to go are the social graces.

So, either my assumptions are correct and I just haven’t yet been able to communicate my thoughts and ideas in that area. Or my kids are right and I am getting old without even realizing it. In either case, as I ponder my predicament, I found the following quote that pretty much says it all for me.

Risk

To reach out is to risk involvement

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self

To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to 

risk their loss

To love is to risk not being loved in return

To live is to risk dying

To hope is to risk despair

To try is to risk failure

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life

is to risk nothing

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing

is nothing.

He may avoid suffering and sorrow but he simply cannot

learn, feel, change, grow, love, live…

Chained to his certitudes, he is a slave

He has forfeited freedom

Only a person who risks is free

-Anonymous