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.
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