My Longest Road Trip

El Camino de Los Contratiempos

The car was a "loner" from my friend Gary's gas station. I think it was a Chevy Chevelle or something like that. It was blue with a white "landau" roof. I don't remember exactly but I'd say the car was probably about a mid- 1970's model.


We took the trip in 1980 I think....I honestly don't remember. It was me and my then-boyfriend Mark and my friend Gar and his girlfriend Lisa. Lisa was my best friend at the time. She was a little bit of a thing; a ballerina. Gar wasn't too much bigger than she was. Together they could lie across the back seat and stretch out to sleep. Mark and I were tall - we didn't fit so well together back there - literally and figuratively.

Inside the car we managed to fit 2 surfboards that stretched from the front dashboard to the back. They divided the car in half. For some unknown reason we didn't try to tie them to the top of the car.

Our destination: Mazatlan, Mexico. It was a 36-hour drive from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, if you drove straight through, and that was our plan. We started out great - early in the morning with a full tank of gas and plenty of cash to last 10 days. There were two little tears in the landau roof, right at the front edge, about eight inches apart, and the paint was faded. But otherwise the car was in pretty good shape.

It was a hot day and as we drove we discovered that the air-conditioner didn't work. Windows down, we crossed the border into Mexico in northern Baja and worked our way down to the east side of the Sea of Cortez. Somewhere along the highway about mid-day we arrived at a checkpoint. It was very crudely set up, unpaved with a small shack and low cement walls creating bays for the cars to pull in. Soldiers were going to each car searching the interiors and trunks of the cars. It was August and brutally hot outside. The wind blew the dirt all over us with all the windows rolled down.

We sat for at least half an hour, waiting for our turn to be searched as they moved slowly in the blazing heat. Suddenly Lisa started to panic. She realized that she had a baggie of pot in her purse. Mark and I yelled at her from the back seat - "Are you insane? Why on earth would you bring that on this trip?" She had forgotten it was there.
Trying not to attract too much attention, we squirmed around the car trying to figure out what to do with it. The federales were in the bay next to us, going through the car with a fine tooth comb. Gar finally decided to pull out the panel on the driver's front door and hide it there. It seemed like too obvious a hiding place to me, but I had no better ideas, so that's where it went.
The soldiers came to us, glanced at our suitcases in the trunk and told us to go on our way...absolutely no search of the inside of the car or our bags or luggage. Panic abated, we moved on.

Much of the road was new so the drive went much better than expected. We took turns driving so we could alternate sleeping. Lisa and Gar slept like babies napping in the heat, stretched out comfortably, but Mark and I were a tangle of legs and arms trying to find room under the surfboards.

It started to rain during the night and we discovered another small problem with the car; the windshield wipers didn't work right. They stalled in the middle of the window and stayed sticking straight up for the rest of the ride. About 3 a.m. I needed to get something out of the trunk. I don't remember what was so urgent at that hour, but we pullled off the road into a thick patch of mud and I turned the car off, or so I thought - I took the key out but the car kept running. I stuck the car key back into the ignition, afraid the car would explode if it kept running without the key. Baffled, I trudged through the sludge in the dark opened the trunk and promptly dropped the trunk key into the mud - never to be seen again.

I stayed up with Lisa while she took the last night shift of driving and we nearly ran out of gas. But the sun came out and we arrived in a town that had a small service station that saved us from the wrath of Gar and Mark. During our stop, we noticed that the little tears on the landau roof had become longer and we had a flapping white flag on the top of the car.

Gar took over the wheel and we continued on. Along the way at every town, little kids would stop us to wash our windows. Filthy water smeared over the stuck wipers left a miserable mess. Everything went smoothly

until we noticed the flashing lights of a police car behind us. We must have been quite a spectacle with the flapping roof and the windshield wipers stuck upright. As we attempted to pull into a space along the street we discovered yet another small problem with the car; it would not go into reverse. So Gar kept driving until he could find a spot to pull into head first. This clearly upset the federales and we had a lot of explaining to do once we finally came to a stop. Thankfully we were able to charm them out of giving us any kind of ticket. Once again we were spared.

Finally we arrived in Mazatlan at the end of the day and found a cheap hotel a few blocks back from the beach. We had to use a screwdriver and a big rock to open the trunk, since I'd lost the key, and the force of the rock knocked the whole key pad out an into the trunk, leaving a big hole. It was at this point that Lisa decided it was time to get rid of that bag of pot hidden in the door. We'd made it all the way through the checkpoint and the pull over and now that we were settled, she didn't want it anymore. We didn't argue. We didn't want to find out if our luck with the federeales was running out.

It was an uneventful ten days in Mazatlan, not worthy of telling. But it should be noted that by the time we headed home to L.A., the white landau had completely split so that the fabric was flapping from the top of the back window like a wild tail. The car would still not go in reverse, the windshield wipers were stuck straight up in the middle of the windshield and there was a small screwdriver sticking out of the trunk. We arrived at the U.S. border crossing in Nogales late at night and were told to back into the space for inspection. We circled around the lot , sputtering, until we could maneuver the car into the space properly. By the time we stopped the car, the Customs and Immigration agent felt so sorry for us, she just laughed and waved us on.

Somehow that little blue car with the flapping white tail got us through unscathed.

My Most Memorable Birthday

Mother - Daughter Druggie Duo

Cells
My most memorable birthday was my 30th birthday. Of course, at the ripe old age of 29 we all dread turning the Big 3-0, but I really didn't care. I told people that with all I'd been through in that past year, turning 30 was the least of my worries. I'd been dating a horrible guy and had to take the bar exam a second time. I finally passed the bar, dumped the rotten guy and was living on my own in peace.



I was working at a fun job with the L.A. County Public Defeneders office, handling misdemeanors which were crazy. They made for the best cocktail party stories - junkies, hookers, petty theaves and drunk drivers with every excuse in the book. Not the usual people this white, freckle-face girl from "the valley" was used to meeting.



On my 30th birthday I had the pleasure of being assigned to represent a lovely woman in her 20's who was accused of being under the influence of heroin. She'd been arrested along with her mother...another charming lass. Together, they sat in the dimly lit lock-up in skimpy cotton gowns provided to them by the women's jail. They looked like a couple of refugees from a tornado; hair matted, black smudged eye make-up, dirty feet and fingernails.



When a person is arrested for this charge and if they are brought to the courthouse within 24 hours, they have an opportunity to provide evidence that there was not, in fact, any illegal drug in their system by way of a urine sample. The sample must be taken in the presence of a sheriff's employee of the same sex. On this day, my client requested a sample be taken but there were no female sheriff's deputies on hand so I had to witness the sample.



I slipped on a new set of rubber gloves and handed her the little cup. She tried to give the sample in the toilet in the back of the lock-up, but it was blocked by a wall so I told her she had to pee in the cup out in the middle of the cell where I could see her. Luckily it was only her and her mother there, but what a scene....she pulled down her panties and tried to squat over the cold concrete floor and pee into this little cup. Needless to say, she peed all over her hand and the floor, before getting anything in the cup. Her mother was flipping out - cursing like crazy and calling her an f-ing idiot for spilling urine all over the place. The girl was crying and pleading with her mother to stop calling her names. I stood there outside the bars, mouth wide open, staring with amazement and disbelief at this mother-daughter scene - heroin addicts floundering together in the world. Damn! Why hadn't my mom bonded with me in such an interesting way?



At last she managed to get some of it into the cup and I was able to take it from her, urine dripping down my rubber gloves, label it and write it up just like at the sterile doctor's office. I handed it off to the lab driver and with this final step, I left the courthouse to celebrate my birthday..... after a good long shower.



I don't recall what became of that mother-daughter drug duo, and I have no idea what I did to celebrate.....but I know I had much to be thankful for that year. Except maybe having such a boring mother.

A Book that Changed My Life

The book that turned me into a reader

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan was the first book I read as a maturing person that inspired me to read more. I never enjoyed reading but this book was so "out there" that I soon gobbled up every book he had written. I had found a new world of writing existed that could keep me inspired. It was 1971.

My 10th grade teacher had a face like a bird and a personality like a porcupine. She required us to have our books pre-approved before we could read them and write a book report. I didn't do that; I just read it and wrote the report (such a rebel teenager I was!)

She gave me and 'A' with a note that said, "I would never have approved this -you did a good job on a difficult book." Guess she wasn't that bad after all....and I became a reader in her class from her encouragement.

Thanks Mrs. Whatever-Your-Name-Was.

Me? An Entrepreneur?

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Italian ceramics

Many years ago I fell in love with Italian ceramic pottery. The art was stunning; every piece caught my eye and I wanted to buy it all. I decided to start my own business importing and selling it. I figured I would be able to travel to Italy, shop in all the ceramics stores buying all my favorite things and be surrounded by all that beauty without overstuffing my home.



But I had no business education or experience, so the idea just died.....until one fateful day when I mentioned it to a mom I had met through my sons' preschoool. She jumped on the idea and before I knew it, we were dashing around Italy in a rented Lancia station wagon ordering pottery and learning words like "invoice" and "inventory" in Italian. (We also learned the words for "rubbing compound" when we took out the side of the car trying to maneuver the narrow lanes of Sicily.)



One of my partner's "great" ideas was to purchase a huge urn as a focal point for the decor of the shop, also offering it for sale. It cost us about $700. Another ideas was to purchase a type of ceramic-covered indoor heating stove, similar to a Franklin stove. She was convinced this would be a unique item that we could make big money on. The smallest model cost us $7000 and we arranged to be the "West Coast U.S. Distributor" for the stoves. She chose fire engine red as our display model. We paid a 50% deposit on the stove when we ordered it. Between these two purchases, we had used up a pretty large chunk of our entire budget.... and I was very skeptical about the stove.



But she had so many ideas; so much energy that I got swept up in the excitement of renting the shop space, painting from ceiling to floor to make it look Italian. It was spectacular to look at and when the shipments of pottery started to arrive, my head was spinning. Our shop was beautiful. We had a wonderful grand opening feast or Italian cheeses, wines and pastries. All our friends and families came and some bought things. But then the days and weeks went by and no one came to the shop.



We had very little money for advertising; our location was not visible from the street and was in a small plaza few knew extisted (that's why we could afford the retail space on our limited budget.) My parntner didn't like staying at the shop if business was so slow; she closed early, especially when it rained; she had more and more ideas for decorating, arranging and advertising - but absolutely no follow through. I became discouraged after only a few months.



And the saddest part of all was that I stopped loving the beautiful pottery. I realized that opening a retail business was not about loving your product; it was about SELLING IT. I could have been selling widgets for all that mattered....I needed customers and I didn't have any. And I was spending more and more time in the shop to make up for her absence.



Then the ax fell....the big red stove arrived at the Port of Los Angeles a month before we expected it and we had no money to pay the balance. Without the final payment, we could not pick it up and get it through customs. What was my partner's response? "Screw the stove....let's just not pay for it." We had paid $3500 up front and spent a fulll day of our week in Italy negotiating the purchase and the "distributorship" agreement. Now she wanted to abandon the whole thing! That was the beginning of the end.



We tried to sell it on eBay for the balance of the cost; we posted signs in the shop for the trickle of customers we did have. When I finally told her I was bowing out, we had no choice but to liquidate. We brought in a few new customers who were looking for bargains but the large urn and the stove did not draw any interest. In the end, we split up the remaining items and parted on very bad terms. Of course, she took the large urn and I took most of the remaining inverntory, which I sold piece by piece at house parties and by word of mouth.



Valeria, the representative for the stove was quite distressed with us. We did have to pay the final payment per our contract, but we never picked up the item at the port. We abandoned this expensive piece because of the extra cost of transporting it to our homes and the complicated assembly. I didn't want the darn thing and for some reason, either did she! So there it sat until one morning, six months later, my phone rang at 5 a.m. It was Valeria calling to tell me the stove had been shipped back to Genoa and was there for her to pick up. I had never thought another thing about the poor thing once we'd decided to abandon it. She was so angry - why should she have to pay to transport it back? I told her to sell it - she said no one would ever buy a bright red stove (duh). Finally I had to tell her - since we had paid for it, we owned it. It was not her property and she had no responsibility to pay for it and could likewise abandon it. She was so upset, but I never heard from her again. Thank God she didn't sue us!



Will I ever own my own business again? HELL NO!