funny how things work sometimes--a song comes up on shuffle just as the alcohol's starting to work its dark magic, a blogpost is born which sets off a train of thought... and thus, last night's post leads to this one.
since moving from austin to los angeles i've made that long, bleak drive back and forth across the desert many times, but never more memorably than the trip from hell that took place exactly 20 years ago this night.
i blame myself, of course--if i hadn't abandoned my GM ethos and bought a goddam ford, the whole thing never woulda happened.
whatever--here's the story:
after arriving in los angeles in the fall of 1989 with little more than my graduation-present bmw and the clothes on my back, i accept not only a job with a celebrity architect who would ultimately use and abuse me, but also the ungrudging hospitality of rick and laura, who freely offer up to me the couch in their small one-bedroom pacific palisades apartment until such time as i manage to get on my feet.
[rick's generosity i sorta understand, him being my best friend from architecture school and all, but his new wife laura loving me from day one is a total fuckin' fluke which in my idiot youth i accept without question.]
after almost two months of enforced proximity during which they never even once bitch about my intrusion into their lives, i save up enough money not only for my own place, but to haul all my shit from texas out to the west coast.
it's christmastime and we're all flying back to texas--i suggest that in lieu of their paying for a return trip, they save a little money and drive back with me in the bright blue ford truck i just bought long-distance to drag a u-haul full of my shit from texas back to california. hell, it'll be an adventure!
they agree, their only proviso being that i get 'em back in time for the new years eve party they're committed to down in redondo beach.
[idiots--if they'd only known.]
i fly back to texas, enjoy christmas with my family, pick up the truck, try to ignore that it doesn't look as good as it did in the pictures, rent the u-haul, load it up with everything i own, pick up rick and laura on the afternoon of the 30th--plenty of time, i tell them and myself--and we head west.
by the time we hit fredricksburg about 70 miles out, we know we're in trouble--the truck is smoking--but we're young and dumb and high-spirited so we press on.
halfway to el paso the oil light comes on and we're like, what the fuck? we stop at a 7-11 in some podunk west texas town and it takes six quarts into the smoking crankcase to even register on the dipstick so we load up a few cases in the bed, figuring that as long as we add a quart every hundred miles or so we'll be ok, right?
somewhere between el paso and las cruces it gets bad--it's dark and we're climbing in altitude and the truck's sputtering madly and losing power and not rising to the challenge and we all just know the thing's about to die, and laura [at the wheel, scared shitless], turns to rick and me and says, "should i pull over?"
shivering, huddled together for warmth [did i mention the heater didn't work?] we both yell, NO!, she floors it and the motherfucker somehow keeps going.
it was that way all across the cold, dark desert that night--white knuckles on the steering wheel, any minute that piece o' shit coulda died and taken us with it, and we all knew it.
but that wasn't the point of that night--or this post.
the point of this post--and what i've never, ever forgotten--is that no matter how dark it got that night, and no matter how cold and scared we each were, rick and laura and i stayed strong, gritted our teeth and smiled for each other, and that made all the difference.
[and in case you're interested: yeah we made it, and rick and laura ultimately made their new years' eve party in redondo just in time, while all i was capable of once we safely landed was kneeling down, kissing the LA asphalt and collapsing into their bed.]
4 comments:
Well, I never knew about the truck.
But, as someone who met Rick and Laura and actually know exactly where they were going in Redondo Beach that New Year's Eve -- although I myself would not meet the full cast of characters until that Thanksgiving of 1990 -- I can say they were fearless and fun and crazier than a pack of dogs with rabies.
If you will remember, Laura was Johnny's friend...and that, if you will, is all how I came to meet you and how you got lined up with Paul and Royce and your instant Los Angeles living situation.
I also have a few memories of that Lincoln and you forgot to mention it was the ugliest shade of brown you ever laid eyes on...that color never would have sold in Los Angeles 'cause it was very much a Texas sort of color. If only you'd have put a big set of steer horns on the hood and a good coat of wax on it, it would have sold for top dollar in Houston. That was your market.
But, just so you know, I myself arrived in California in the Fall of 1989...but it was in Northern California. I rented a U-Haul and got it for $1000 one way. It was quite a bargain then and probably now. Since I was coming from the Midwest, I took the Northern route. I did not know then that I would make California my permanent home and just how much I would learn to love it.
I had debated what to say , but it all sounded either too eager or too sad .
It was a warm experience despite the cold , it seems . There seems a lot more underneath it than just surviving an adventure . What did those two really mean to you ? Who were they really ?
noblesavage: ah, memories, memories. and yeah, it was an ugly color--"tobacco brown metallic," i think they called it--but it was a hell of a car.
byzantine boy: what were rick and laura to me? they were two friends who were there for me during a tough transition in my life, with no agendas or hidden motives--and how often do people like that come along?
oh, and welcome back--it's been awhile.
Rick and Laura really were a story by themselves...from beginning to the bitter and backbiting end.
They had a sense of style and were such an amazing couple from before the Las Vegas wedding all the way through the d-i-v-o-r-c-e. They were each interesting and fun and were one of those couples where they just never fully gelled together. Which is a shame, because what might have been...
And, just so you know, Laura was Johnny's sister's roommate from college. If I remember the story correctly, John's sister introduced them as sort of a way of setting up John with Laura. Ha. John's sister was quite oblivious, but Laura wasn't. No straight guy made made an omelette that good in the 80's.
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