Not there yet due to a late start and fatigue. Tomorrow morning fer sure.
Right now I’m in front of the Wills Fargo Motel (not a typo) in Baker California off Route 15. It’s mostly quiet but for the people in the next room who I’m guessing can’t sleep without the TV on. This condition indicates a genetic weakness best treated with a bar of stout iron behind the left ear.
The Wills Fargo has wireless internet within 50 feet of the front office, sometimes more if the wind is right. It has two-prong electrical outlets, recently upgraded with a single three-prong adapter. It’s the only motel I’ve ever seen that has cigarette burns inside the dresser drawers.
It’s got character, is what I’m saying.
On the way here my local LA radio stations turned to static so I started auto-searching the dial. It is fair to say as soon as I hit Route 15 that Country was King. The further North I drove toward Barstow the more Country ceded the crown to Mr. Jesus and His spunky minstrels. No lie, I had to scan through ten different stations before I found one that wasn’t Christian Pop. My favorite was one that, without a hint of self-consciousness, repeated to its listeners “We’re the S.O.S.”
Anyway, the trip so far has been short and uneventful. I left later in the day than I planned, but much earlier than if my friend Richard hadn’t taken my kids for several hours while my wife and I loaded the car with all the stuff that we either forgot to give to the movers and/or didn’t want to take on a plane.
It was a lot.
I had a nice visit on the way out with some friends in Glendale, so nice that my departure got late enough that I seriously considered turning around and sleeping back at the apartment. Why not save a night’s hotel costs and have breakfast with my family?
But that would have been wrong for lots of reasons, not the least of which is how stupid I’d have felt for yanking everyone around for nothing. People in LA get enough of that already.
So I drove out the 134 to the 210 to the 15 to Baker listening to old pop music. Of course I noticed when “Don’t Look Back” by Boston came on as I finally merged onto the freeway heading East.
I thought about how I was leaving my home of nine years, the friends I’d made who turned out to be dearer than I could have imagined, feeling it bad, knowing I’d see them again but really not knowing when.
I ignored Boston and checked my rearview mirror, noticing the sky still lighter behind me than what I was driving into.
I briefly considered it all a juvenile metaphor, me leaving the light of friendships and a certain set of possibilities behind for this darkness and loss ahead of me.
But I corrected myself. I am headed East to my families of blood and marriage, my hometown and other sets of possibilities.
I am driving into the dawn.
