The best way to appreciate L.A. is not to drive. Every other time we have tried Lost Angeles, we have had a vehicle disaster. The first time was in the Clark, the RV that Cheryl and I bought, over the internet, right after we got married. We picked it up in Albuquerque and drove it straight to Josh and Arlene’s in Pasadena. Well as straight as possible with running out of gas in the middle of the desert would allow. When we got there, we realized all the tanks were broken, first the water tank, then the fuel tank. Needless to say, we did a lot of work in the street below their house.
The next time we went through, the Mercedes wagon we were driving started dragging it’s rear end. I figured it had to be the load leveling control valve, so Josh took me out to the Pull – A – Part yards, where we found one. I got it installed, but couldn’t get the thing to work, so in desperation called AAA to tow us to a foreign car garage. The guys there had if fixed in a half hour (the part worked, I just hadn’t bled it out right) but the roll-back driver busted out one of the lenses on my backup lights setting it down on the pavement. I insisted on the price of a new lens, he said he’d give what it’d cost in a junkyard. I told him fine, just to go pull it and put it on I’d wait thank you, then sat there until he paid me off just to get the hell out of his waiting room. The cash covered the mechanic’s bill and the old 300TD was still missing a clear lens when I sold it.
Anyway this time we were not going to have that problem. The train pulled into LAX Union station just before 9:00, and Josh was already there to meet us. Amtrak uses a three letter code to denote the cities it stops at, and LAX is Lost Angeles. But it isn’t the airport, it’s Union Station. Again. Very pretty Union Station, this one, old, not refurbished recently, but with these great huge Art Deco seat pedestals in the waiting room, and old stone floors with big colorful chips that make it look like some sort of raw Italian head cheese.
We drive up to Pasadena, where they live but in a different house than last time, and unload in the Garage, which doubles as the guest bedroom and Iris’s art room. Josh had taken the day off, and we set to the busy task of sitting around, drinking coffee, eating, and catching up. Josh and I are old, like grade school old friends, in the sort of way that doesn’t require us to talk to each other all that often. Neither he or I are regular communicator types, so we don’t spend a lot of time chatting, but we’re always glad to get face time. And Arlene I’ve known almost as long, like high school as long.
We play our token gig that (Friday) night at Scissors, Paper, Rock, a hair salon a few blocks from their house. Cheryl’s second-cousin-in-law Jennifer put the thing together for us, including a film crew with a fancy new camera they were trying to make a reel on. We did Girls Upstairs at least four times so they could get plenty of coverage. I really enjoyed the gig, everyone was attentive, but casually so I didn’t feel like we were preventing people from doing what they would do naturally.
I always feel like a folk fascist in “listening rooms” that insist people face forward and not talk. I guess I have difficulty doing that myself, so why torture others. But this was great. It was a salon, so people weren’t getting drunk and yelling “Freebird”, and Yolande wasn’t doing nails, so we really were the most entertaining thing in the room. She even gave me a blue shirt (17×35) with white rick-rack on it that was on the consignment rack. How nice. I guess it was all that my insisting people tip so I could buy it that clued her in that I really wanted the shirt.
The next day we did a lot more eating and then went out and hike some canyon up to some falls. I can’t remember the name of it, but it really was pretty. For L.A. It was funny though, to be out on a trail with Josh, whom I have hiked with for many a mile, and see all the city slickers freak out stepping on rock to cross the creek. High drama. Or the couple who, after we informed them that if they kept going upstream in the canyon (with steep walls and no trail going up the sides) they would see the falls, stepped across the creek then asked which way to go. Upstream. The only trail. We had a good time.
And the next day, between meals, (I just have to say right now, as a fair warning to anyone else we’re staying with, that Josh and Arlene have set a very high bar on the culinary front. Simple, delicious food that was prepared for us, and then they even did the dishes too. Just so you know….) we drove out to Malibu beach. A perfect beach. Sunny, surfers, an area reserved for surfers, cold pacific water, a pier to walk out on, a surfer selling hand printed “Fuck BP” t-shirts, even a car wreck to rubberneck. Great day.
It was good to catch back up with old friends. You realize how rare that is. There are friends you make in your adult life, and those friends seem old if they last five or ten years. But then there are the people whose influence on you never will wane, that transcend a move to a new city, a family, a totally different life. I’m at the age now where you ask the questions that old people tell you to watch out for in high school but you were (I was) too busy too listen. Now I’m that guy wondering about the future, and looking for a post, a mark, a reference point by which I can measure where I’ve been, and look to where I’m going. And its nice to have such a sure marker. People I love that may be in a different place, with different baggage, but who are are on the same journey, with the same destination.