Along The Way
It was my sons, my youthful offspring, and the father-son relationship, that inspired the words, and most of the deeds, that follow.
We realized we would have a lifetime adjustment when it became a certainty that our family, part and parcel, would be moving from California to Florida. But, because of the single factor of a pet embargo on airlines during the summer of 2000, precisely the time when we had to make our journey across the continent, some of us would travel by air, and others by land. True, Natalia at ten would have loved to see the great expanse of the southwest, the ever-changing desert, a Godmom in Austin, and all the rest, but it was decided that a vehicle breakdown in that "great expanse," say somewhere near to a not very big place like West Casa Blanca, New Mexico, would have been bad for a long walk with a short wheelchair. So, Mom flew with the girls who would help her begin to set up our new house and our new lives, while the guys would have the opportunity to live through days they might never have seen, and bond as they never had before, along the way.
The dynamic events of what we did in our "before we go" mode came to a surge with the Dr. Seuss 8K "Race for Literacy" through San Diego's beautiful Balboa Park, one of the finest in-city parks in the world. Sebi, my high-school distance runner, and Natalia, in her front-extended-third-wheel handbike, along with Dad, took on the meters in the last opportunity we had for such fun and frolic in our home of ten years. A San Diego Union-Tribune reporterette was alert enough to see Natalia sprightly roll across the finish line, followed by her big brother, and turned her human-interest article from one about the participants in the race, to making the race a blurb in the life of the Barneses who were squeezing the last bit of everything out of Southern California before their time was up. It was a lot like the recent "Titanic" movie where the plotline was able to hold your attention because, unlike the unsuspecting travelers in the story, you were aware of the excitement in the background of the great ship going down. Here, the 6000-plus-peopled race became the backdrop for our story which, for us, was as large as our very lives.
Then came the day when Ariel, Natalia and Mom mounted the jet and flew away from us. A last evening's breath of the San Diego clime gave us pause and a final interrogatory: What is it really like up there in the gondola of a hot-air balloon?
Only a few hours later, we learned the answer, and it was one we hadn't even dreamt. It is the silence while aloft which stirs the heart. There is no wind, for, suspended in your craft, you are floating within it. You are the wind, and the billowing of the sail and up and down are the only motions you feel. As the four of us hung tethered beneath the massive droplet, we cast our gazes eastward to where we would drive the next day, and the ones after that. It was then that we knew, from so high above it all, that our trip had already begun. This last peaceful moment was, at the same time, our crescendo from . . . here today . . . to . . . gone tomorrow.
You might know that San Diego's temperature remains as constant as anywhere in the world. This only means that any movement toward somewhere else would change all of that. Weather reports told us the best time to travel would be during the night, so we were ready to trade the heat of the day for the coolness of the evening, but had to endure its high beams and low visibility. As four in the afternoon crept up on us, it seemed like a good time to begin our first ten-hour trek. Also, it gave us one last shot at El Cajon's Yogurt Mill, the best yogurt in the world piled high and deep, just like the line of people outside at all times waiting to have their own, and all of it "double-dropped" into an even larger styrofoam cup from the bottom of which no spoon, no matter how long and narrow, could ever get the last spoonful. It was well worth the wait because, as long as we were counting "lasts," this would certainly be our last San Diego dessert. Who would have thought it would last most of the way into Arizona?
So, we went from a mild 75° to 105° in Tucson. Though we had a timetable of sorts, we couldn't imagine not actually seeing some of the U.S. of A. along the way, so we picked very carefully when we would leave the straight and narrow of Interstate-10. The boys each had new 35mm cameras (the expense of digital ones we knew would come at a later date), and they practiced right away. Framing the new Tucson library with or without trees, green branches fringing the photo, or canting the viewfinder at a giant metal sculpture gave us a good first lesson. But, it was Gavin who created the day's photographic gem when we toured the city art museum and discovered a stainless steel park bench on the cobbled grounds. It looked innocent enough, but how long do you think it would take a person wearing shorts to realize he had just sat on a polished metal bench that had roasted in 100-plus degrees all day long? Not all that long, it turned out: Gavin only burned the tip of his finger as he touched the bench gingerly to see "if the flame was hot." Then he began his cross-country acting career taking a still, yet gymnastic, pose as an unwitting traveler, yelping for relief, who had, ostensibly, just found what could really be described as a "tourist trap."
It is probably worth noting that our large 1990 Chevy van had not just the four guys, with Dad, Sebi and Thomas alternating the driving duty, but also four four-leggers. Cirus, our prize giant blond Golden Retriever, and his wife, Halley, mother of their five litters, panted their way across the desert, even with the air conditioning on full. But it was Ariel's two cats, tabby-and-white Honest, and the cross-eyed white Ruby, who showed us that felines can pant, too. We knew they would come in handy for some humorous moments and the first occurred when Ruby propped himself up at the side window with Arizona speeding by in the bright afternoon. He had an exquisite look of surprise on his face that said, "I don't understand it. I'm sitting still, yet I seem to be moving . . . ."
New Mexico was good for at least two sets of Denny's Grand Slams, but it gave us our first real nighttime dog and cat walking. The pictures we took bear this out, but walking a cat is a lot like living in a still photograph. Dogs will sniff and add their own contribution where the last 2000 dogs have peed, and I am sure each one has his own particular scent. But, cats have absolutely no sense of urgency whatsoever. They will meow in the car and you know they want to go, but once outside in a parklike setting where they can smell the roses and swat butterflies to their contentment, they figure, "Why should I pee now when I've got all day?" It is only when you put them back in the car that they realize they may have missed a bladder-draining opportunity. But all of that cognition fades away when their padded tootsies, again, touch terra firma. It makes you want to tear your hair out and pray they learn to use a scratch box in a vibrating van at 75 mph.
Of course, late . . . very late, night arrivals give you just as late arousals each morning, such was the schedule we had set for ourselves, always wanting to be fresh to drive and for the van to motor through as little swelter as possible. One motel on the outskirts of Midland, Texas, claimed a continental breakfast until 10 AM. Not wanting to waste even one wink of our dearly needed sleep, we rolled out of the sack at 9:45, firemanned our way into yesterday's clothes, and bolted for the buns and hot chocolate by 9:55.
At the restaurant, an unappealing lady, part waitress, part heifer, eyed us suspiciously as we swung wide the door and mouthed loudly at us, "Y'all can't come in here, cuz we're fixin' to close."
These were not the words which would please four hungry travelers who had been promised Texas vittles, even if they were only pastries before ten bells when nary a chime had begun to toll.
She made a second effort to dissuade us, but between the bulk of our six-foot frames and our looks of determination that signaled we were not the kind of folk who would take "no" for an answer, and not even a "cuz we're fixin' to close" as a "no," we managed to scarf down more calories in the next five minutes than all the other customers had for however long they'd been sitting there. We had become absolutely talented at inhaling apple turnovers.
Later that same day, completely enmeshed and absorbed in the highway's wavering far-off mirages in the Lone Star State, we dismounted at another I-10 exit for a real Texas meal as was touted for so many miles on enticing, if not downright campy, billboards. When the meal of ribs finally arrived, Thomas made the call for barbecue sauce, surely the best their state would have to offer, given their sworn advertisements. But, it was not to be. "Sorry, we're fresh out!" was the explanation. So, sadly, our ribs went bare.
Our single real bout of poor orienteering came when we took a curious turnoff to follow a state road that looked as if it would be more efficient that the wider-bending Interstate. We drove through what backwoods Texas had to offer and, down the road apiece, came upon Eden, Texas, the pinhole which is in the very center of the state if you cross lines from all four "corners." Having written a short piece years before about our most recent home called "The Eden of Solana," and the human mind being what it is, at that moment it occurred to me I had forgotten to advise the Solana Beach Post Office of our change of address. Whether this almost-a-burg would have a post office of its own was a question mark, but before we could interview a local, from around the bend a most beautiful and newly constructed post office came into view. "I won't be a minute," I told the boys and hopped from the car. Twenty minutes later, Thomas came prancing through the door, steaming only a little from his ears at the wait in the sun, and was followed closely by his brothers. Well, I had needed change-of-address cards for every family member and there was no way to duplicate all the from-and-to information mechanically. The chief-cook-and-postmistress was alone minding the fort on the other side of a broad serpentine cordoned-off, although empty, waiting line. She was happy to see just about anybody in her cavernous establishment and offered her own variety of southern hospitality in the form of sodas "from the back" at twenty-five cents apiece. This latter note changed the boys' tunes and, slurping their refreshments, they began an impromptu interview.
"So, how many people are there in Eden, Texas, anyway?"
"Jest about twelve hundred, but that's if you count the prisoners."
"The prisoners?"
"Yep, there's a state pen inside the town limits and there's 'bout eight hundred of they-em. It makes the town look a might bigger than it really is. They's about double the size of the rest of us. The only thing they's good for is gettin' the town a bit more federal money, cuz the gub'ment don't know they's prisoners."
That was good enough for us and, hey, I wasn't really on duty.
The next day we entered another eating establishment and, without wanting to risk sounding too very nasty, let’s say that the waitressly uniformed person who ushered us in had to be the ugliest duckling that never became a swan. It wasn't her weight, which was severe, or her features, which made you fear you would turn into stone on the spot. It was the messiness of every part of her, the hair on her head, the fibers jutting from the wart on her nose, the slab of extra skin pendulously swinging like a pork roast between her armpit and elbow . . . all of it together made you want to shrink back for fear you would be the next one to follow the last Hansel-and-Gretel-like children who innocently stopped by and were ushered straight into her hot oven.
But, what she lacked in looks, she made up for in a smile which somehow pierced through the misarranged globs of her being and asserted the greatest pleasantness of anyone we had ever met. Such a turnaround, and in only a few seconds, we had never witnessed. Maybe it was so many years of just being herself which had taught her this most powerful defense mechanism.
She took our drink orders, Pepsis around, but for Gavin, who thought he would live dangerously and experiment with a Dr. Pepper. When the beverages arrived in their clear glasses, there was no color distinction between the one for Gavin and all the rest, although our waitress thought she knew which one it was. When she had set his down, she suggested it might have mistakenly been filled with root beer instead of the requested Dr. Pepper. As she turned to go, Gavin quickly doused his straw into the mystery brew, and our inquiring glances required a verdict. He seemed embarrassed to whisper that he couldn't tell the difference between root beer and Dr. Pepper. Everyone laughed and Thomas burst out with, "You mean, you can't tell the difference between Dr. Pepper and a root beer?"
Our receding waitress, surely embarrassed all her life at comments about her appearance, thought the derogatory words had been aimed at her, not knowing it was Gavin's unskilled tastebuds which were the target of Thomas's barb. She spun around to face us, completely reddened, and burst out in Texasese, "Ah daun't know, cuz ah didn't drawl eet!"
Quickly analyzing what had happened and wanting to right the misunderstanding, Thomas shouted back, "No, I didn't mean you," pointing at her. Then referring across the table to Gavin, continued with, "I meant him!"
She seemed ever so pleased not to have been the brunt of ridicule, and was now embarrassed by her own immediate and sharp retort. But, it was obvious she also felt for Gavin whom she thought was hurt as much as she had been. But all she could muster was a whispered, "Oh!"
The dear lady will never know how many times throughout the rest of our trip one of us, for no particular reason, would let loose with, "Ah daun't know, cuz ah didn't drawl eet!" along with other now well-worn phrases as, "Y'all can't eat here, cuz we're fixin' to close!" and, "Jest about twelve hundred, but that's if you count the prisoners," and "Sorry, we're fresh out!"
We visited Godmom, Auntie Elizabeth, in Austin who showed us the sights then took us to a real Texas barbecue place that had vats and vats─actually troughs and troughs─of the sauce Thomas had so coveted earlier, and he finally had his fill of it.
Though we missed Godbrother Chris, the boys hacked into, and overtook, his computer, leaving him a homemade video CD of themselves from the camera over his monitor. They commented on the hole in the wall he slept in, (actually a pretty neat alcove), and, after having seen a number of photos of him with his girlfriend, explained that he was lucky she had not met the likes of them, first, or he would really look silly standing alone in all of those picture frames. It was nearly a half-hour of sit-down and kneeling comedy and good fun by three goofy guys for a dearly missed cousin of sorts, something Chris will surely always treasure.
And, how did we manage to find hotel rooms with, not just our four big guys, but two cats and two dogs as well? It was a dear friend who told us of pets.com, a website which provides all the hotels and motels that will accept your animals at no extra charge, or for just a little bit more. It turns out that beyond the names of the pet-accepting establishments, you also get the best-discounted rate of the local travel agency which brings you these names. So most of the time, the rate with the pet, or for us, four pets, was better than the regular rate for humans only. And that is how we whisked our way across the country.
With this website in mind, Thomas brought along his whole computer, the monitor, printer, keyboard . . . the works, to set up each night just to make the best inroad to the next road to be taken. Without having to stick to any one brand of motel, it gave us variety and specific destinations to shoot for.
When we arrived in New Orleans, we headed for the Ambassador Hotel, a pets.com special, and found a turn-of-the-century classic building on the fringe of the French Quarter. It was truly an extraordinary place with ten-foot-high ceilings in the rooms and ancient-looking brick walls with grooved-out mortar courses. There were even all sorts of dog-walkable parks right down the street. Gavin had become particularly veterinarian-like is his ability to toss doggie-Valium down the back of the pooches’ throats, and for the cats...well, Valium would pretty much be redundant. At least, that is what we had always thought until we prepared to leave for the evening. Ruby was stationed on the back of an upholstered armchair not far from the wall and eyeing something near the high ceiling which none of the rest of us could see. His front paws moved rhythmically. His form tensed, body coiled, ready to lunge in an instant at whatever it was that had so caught his attention. Then, it happened! Ruby shot through the air onto the wall and scampered straight up using all the footholds like a skilled rock climber, but much faster, only to arrive at the ceiling where . . . there was absolutely nothing. We inched forward and peered up at the, now, silly looking cat suspended nearly upside down, way up there, with his claws trying feverishly to dig a purchase into unforgiving brick. Then we saw a familiar cat look on his face which said, "I don't understand it. I thought there was something moving up here, but now that I am here, everything is standing still . . . ."
With our zoo finally settled in for the evening, we shuffled off for the beckoning bright lights and wrought-iron balconies.
Ever since I had passed this way when I was a lad, I pictured doing just this, sharing the knowledge of a first-time experience, a nonclassroom bit of education which cannot be duplicated by reading a book or watching a video. We walked right down Bourbon Street and sliced our way into the tiny yet enduring edifice of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band where we saw some very old, and very talented, black men play their music. It was in those moments, squeezed in between other perspiration-laden out-of-towners, you first heard the sound which made N'Orleans what it is. You see the men at work pumping out the basic tune and hear their notes wind round the room. Then in sequence, each one, a virtuoso in his own right, stands and toys with that tune the way he, and his particular instrument, see it, stretching the musical envelope with each escaping burst. You see fingers that have pushed the buttons on the trumpet or the sax, guided the trombone slide or tickled the piano keys only several million times until the point where their fingers end and the instruments begin is only a figment of the imagination of the enthralled crowd who know it doesn't matter. What they hear is mandatory side-slapping, toe-tapping and head-nodding-to-the-rhythm stuff, and it happens in that little wooden room each day as surely as the "Old Man River" down the street just keeps rolling along. The second-timers revel in it; the new-timers become hooked on it. In the backs of their minds they swear that they, too, will bring their sons back to see the next generation of aging black men who will keep rolling along.
When it was over and the sampling of Americana had subsided, the boys strutted back down the street and saw more ladies of the evening than they ever thought existed, and, of course, now have bragging rights to tell their friends that they passed by "that close" to more brothels than most cities even have. We all slept well, with the garish lights, the over-rouged cheeks and dixieland jazz dancing through our heads.
The next morning, there was only one course of action. After all, if you pass through Louisiana once every ten years, Brennan's is where you spend your loot for breakfast. Of course, you pocket a complimentary set of matches and a menu, then have your waiter take photos of the smiling tourists. Now you also exchange e-mail with the waiter, because he is the one who made flaming Bananas Foster at your table, right in front of your very eyes, and you will never forget it.
Seeing the bill from our one-night stay at the Ambassador brought another surprise: $86 for the total! The gentleman checking out beside me peered over my shoulder and compared it with his bill for the same night: $216! "How'd ja do that?" he asked incredulously.
"Have you heard of pets.com?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
"It's simple," I told him. "Next time bring a pet."
Just then Thomas walked by with all 113 pounds of Cirus. I glanced backwards and so did the man beside me.
"And," I added, "the bigger the dog, the less they charge!"
I would love to describe his reaction, but my innards were laughing too hard to catch it all. Then Gavin passed behind us with Halley in tow, followed by Sebi who did the same, nonchalantly carrying two cats, each in their carrying cages.
Seeing that the man was still incredulous, I thought I'd take it a step further. "And, if you don't have a big pet, then just bring more than one to work your bill down further. Every animal helps just a little bit more."
Mere words fail to convey his combination of shock and awe at what he thought he had been missing all these years.
Our last adventure on the road came in the wilds of western Florida. Dad was behind the shotgun passenger seat which held Sebi, with Thomas driving. For an uncertain period of time, two damsels, not in distress, at least not yet, and of about late high school age, had inched up on our right and kept their front bumper in line with ours. Soon, it became clear that this was not a coincidence. It was a Parcheesi rolling roadblock, but their sideways glances at my young'uns up in front brought a smile to my face. I could only think of The Eagles classic song from Winslow, Arizona: "It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin' down to take a look at me…"
Sebi, quick-witted, and just as quick with a pen, produced a blank paper and black marker and wrote out a mostly-legible sign. He held it flush against his window facing the girls.
"IS THIS WHAT GIRLS IN FLORIDA DO FOR FUN?"
"YES!" came back a quickly scrawled sign of their own, followed by a flipping of the page and, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"
They had to have seen our California tags, which may have started whatever yearnings they had in the first place.
"SAN DIEGO!" Sebi-the-scribe shot back.
Then, in what could only be described as the most modern influence of today's youth, Sebi broke the crucial ground with the roving maidens when he held up his next sign.
"WHAT IS YOUR E-MAIL?"
Apparently, they had run out of paper, or just didn't have one long enough to write it all out. So, after two unreadable attempts which left Sebi shaking his head, they finally flashed up
"PULL OVER!"
I will give Thomas credit, at this juncture, for not swerving into other traffic on the road, and also for consulting with Dad, ostensibly, reading his book in the back while all this had transpired, even though Gavin's half-giggle, half-laugh, at the involvement of his older brothers in this "project," would have been hard to miss.
We pulled over into an abandoned gas station in the middle of who-knew-where, and joined two very pleasant young ladies who presented themselves well, and probably had parents who would have died if they had known what their children were up to.
We gave the conversation about ten minutes for the two juniors from the local high school, who, self-confessedly, had absolutely nothing to do in the summer in what, pre-e-mail, might have been called "nowheresville." After yet another impromptu interview, it did not seem as though the girls did this to every passing car with eligible looking kids inside, and not even every one with three like my sons driving a machine with California tags. My three guys seemed to make the girls’ day, and the girls even made the boys feel good. It's nice to be given a feeling of uniqueness, even if it comes rolling down a west Florida highway at sixty-five miles per hour.
Our next stop would be our new home, and the trip which had begun with some trepidation, was ending with a newly grown perspective. I told my sons of my father's admonition that most of the days you pass will be gone by morning and never return to your thoughts. Pick any one from three or five or fifteen years before, and see if you can recall what happened on that day and it will mystify you. But there are certain other days in your life which, if it doesn't involve something illegal or immoral, (although he sometimes described this as "put you in jail or make you lose sleep"), you should grab the opportunity, whatever it might be, shake it by the throat, and never forget that you lived through that day. For us, six of those days were the ones we had just spent. I know that each one, and all the vignettes within them, are strung together in our minds like a beautiful set of pearls which will adorn our memories forever.
Years from now, when I am long gone, at least three of my grandsons, the kind who, I hope, will seize opportunities for what they are, and shake them by the throat and get out of them whatever may be there, will be taught by their own fathers, just as they had been taught before them, and be brought up to say and do good things. This will include a trip across our land and visits to some of the old stops where they will hear a father tossing out stories and quoting, ". . . cuz we're fixin' to close," and ". . . ah didn't drawl eet!" and ". . . if you count the prisoners," and hear about the silly face on a cat looking down from a ceiling high above, and about an even sillier man learning that “the more pets you have the lower the price.” If they are very lucky, they might one day crowd into a small wooden room which simply cannot hold in the music. There will also be junkets to new places which will help compose the few days which they will remember, always, because their fathers, who bonded with them amidst their journeys, will have told them of their great-grandfather, John, an orphan who had to make it on his own, but understood the concept of days and times that matter, and who passed it on to me—along the way . . . .
Brandon, FL
12/15/00