A Trip to California

There was one thing we did on the road that still surprises me. The white nurse in our van was sitting in the front passenger side and noticed a black hitchhiker. This was in the Midwest and it made me wonder how he ended up in an area where he could have been picked up and jailed as a vagrant. There was some argument about stopping the car for him (not a general vote, but not much support on the nay side). There were six of us, if I consider myself as a potential combatant (Natalie alone could have talked him to death), and that was also on mind. But we still wondered about what would happen for the rest of our trip.

He was very dark, thin, and tall and had a friendly and open look. He told us that he was trying to reconnect with family (or friends; he was not precise about this). He had spent some time in the Midwest with people he did not know very well. Stuck without any money – he had been dropped off by another car a few hours earlier – he was tired but not worried or stressed out. I do not remember talking to him for too long or too often – he napped in the flat area at the back of the van with his small satchel around his chest – and I realized just how silly my concerns for our safety were. He was exhausted and, as my mother discovered, very hungry. She told me later that she had seen him take a doughnut from a box of them that we had with us (I never saw this happen, but I would not have blamed him if I did). I liked having him there. He seemed to be another sign of America’s greatness for me: we trusted him and he trusted us; and we were both on this journey to the West. He only stayed with us up to Nevada (Las Vegas or Reno was his stop), and I regret now that I have no photograph of him (even his name has stepped out of my memory). I hope that he is well and living with a real roof over his head.

And then we made it to California. After three days in a van, a part of me expected a real revelation in that well-known state of the union. I knew Hollywood and Disneyland; Ronald Reagan was president and I knew it was his home state (at that age, he was my first real experience of an American president, so I was well-informed). I had heard of Los Angeles, San Francisco, the redwoods, UCLA, the 1960s counterculture, Laurel Canyon (through references to it in the same era’s music and art) and its idea of celebrity and glamour. Very little of what I knew became any sort of reality.

We travelled through the desert of Death Valley to more desert in southern California. Ontario was a dry and burned out and spare town in the middle of expanses of dust and dirt. I never forgot how the patches of dirt were strange next to all of those expensive homes. Front lawns were a true rarity (they seemed to belong to every fourth home). After our stay, we travelled through Los Angeles to reach the airport to take us home, the vision was just as bleak (more so with the poverty and the haze of bodies). This return trip passed us through East LA and I remember it as a film of sepia and human traffic on every available space on the sidewalks and roads.

And then there was the one moment that I wish I could forget.

I was almost killed at one point. This happened on my first night in Jennifer’s home. We were sleeping in a spare room, a room that I think was reserved for the husband (Jennifer had her own set up with a bed designed just for her needs and with other apparatuses for more mobility). The house was a one-floor mansion with sliding doors in the living room leading to the front yard and the back yard. I remember that those doors were opened with the screens locked in place and the curtain slightly open. It was still humid (the temperature was 38 Celsius) and we all decided to go straight to bed after such a long trip. But there was one thing I forgot to do before turning in: use the facilities. I had seen the bathroom when we were shown around the house and knew that I would have to walk across the living room to get there. I was quiet as I stepped along the floor, but I still managed to startle Jennifer’s husband. This remains my sharpest memory of the stay; not Disneyland; not the ugly malls we visited; not even the man-made lake we visited where I was made acquainted with a large group of Nathalies (as fake and as irritating as that lake). Remember, I was just a child in a new country that I did not really understand. Nothing else lingers in my memory like that moment.

His hand clearly held a gun. There was some light in that living room and he woke from his sleep with his hand on the barrel of what looked like a weapon Clint Eastwood would have been proud to use in his next Dirty Harry film (they were still making them then). When he saw it was me, he dropped his hand, screwed up his face and asked what I was doing. There was no doubt about me needing a bathroom break now. And there was no apology. I did not mention this to my mother for the rest of the trip and nothing more was said after that night.

So, would I go back? I would like to take my own family on such a road trip. I would also like a place in the sun that did not belong to dead earth, dead heat and a mentality that avoided intellectualism and deep thought. California belongs to Californians (at least of one generation); America belongs to anyone brave enough to cross it, live it and enjoy it (even an adolescent coming to terms with his new life without a father). And I am still grateful for my mother’s gift of travel and discovery.