24 July 2024
On Saturday, 20 July, I decided to get out of the house and go for a spin, somewhere. I specifically wanted to take my Caddy wheels on the freeway (I-80) at about 3 p.m. as a way of declaring victory over the hate-filled years in America that have so virulently persisted since, according to media accounts, 2016. The hatred toward patriotic Americans has been an ongoing effort by the enemies of America for decades. The fact that those enemies are within isn’t new either, at least not to me.
Originally, I’d planned to drive east, which is, from my locale, up into the Sierra Nevada. As I neared the freeway, however, I glimpsed the heavy stream of vehicles, motor homes, RVs, campers, trailers, bicycle racks, kayak carriers, boats, canoes, jet-skis —
bound for their destinations in Reno, Tahoe, and various campsites, lakes, and vacation spots that, each summer, attract the Bay Area refugees like swarming locusts.
Almost without thinking, I turned right and steered the Caddy onto the west-bound ramp, headed in the opposite direction from my initial destination.
Dear Husband was in the passenger seat. He’s gotten a lot better when driving with me. No longer do his out-stretched fingers clasp his knees, as did the slightly perspiring digits of Cary Grant with Grace Kelly at the wheel in To Catch A Thief. He twiddled his fingers between his knees, and asked if I knew that I was going in the opposite direction from my original plan.
“Yes,” I said triumphantly. “And I am going to see just where this ride takes me.”
We were in the far-right-hand lane, the slow lane, bound for Auburn, the Placer County seat. Whenever I type, or say, Placer County, I recall the time, sometime in 2007, when I e-mailed Brian Wilson of Fox News to inform him that this proper name is pronounced Plah-cer County, not Play-cer County. He thanked me profusely, and I replied that it was a pleasure to inform him of the proud heritage of this place that was — and still is — the place of plah-cer mining in the Gold Country of California.
Most of the time it’s not a pleasure for me, dealing with people who treat this region in northern northern California like a backwater stomping ground on their way to the Real Destination of Reno or Tahoe. My neck of the woods is NOT drive-through country, in the way that Delaware was a drive-through state for me on my train-trip from Washington, D.C. (where I was attending university) to my home state of New Jersey.
I took the Nevada Street exit, which was formerly a very frequent destination on my way to the county home-study office. Directly ahead of me, I saw the sign, FREEWAY TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP. To which I sing the lyrics of the Stephen Foster tune, Camptown Races, Do-dah, do-dah. as did my dearly departed resource teacher. A clever person, or persons, scrawled those words onto the metal traffic sign, no doubt in the dark of night. The funny-ism stayed for a couple of years, until some humorless crab had them removed.
Driving along Nevada Street, I thought of my classic-books-colleague, and paid homage to his keen desire for privacy and lack of intrusion from the educrats of the county home-study office. Many many a Friday night, he performed what he called Midnight Xeroxing of the copious forms he’d have to submit by Monday morning.
I’m trying to reclaim that phrase, Midnight Xeroxing, and return it to its original definition, and destination; but some connotations are hard to shake!
At the first traffic light, I stopped for the red. With the green light, I pulled off the road to my left. I parked the Caddy at the back of the parking lot of the Amtrak station, a place I’ve never been. I suggested we take a few pix of me at this scenic railway depot, for what I hadn’t yet decided, but somehow this setting was calling to me.
Jolene was in the back seat, panting. It was 100 degrees F outside. Mid-afternoon, from about 4, up until 6 or so, is the hottest time of the day in this region. It’s very unlike summers in the Northeast, where I grew up, where noon marks the peak hot temperature. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley, you add 20 degrees to whatever the temperature is at 9 a.m. and you’ve got a pretty good fix on the number destination of the ferocious dry heat.
We all got out of the Caddy, and I went to the “boot” or the trunk of the car, to get my hat. I lifted the door, forgetting that unless I raise it all the way, and forcefully, it’ll come down on my head. Which it did, knocking off my Ray-Bans to the blacktop. They didn’t break. My forehead felt stunned and sore, but wasn’t bruised or bloody. I felt foolish, though, for forgetting the number of times that I, or my daughter, had made the same mistake. And there appears no way to change this clumsy functioning of the rear trunk door.
Dear Hubby took the pix that I used for two new posts on this site. I’d not yet come up with the precise writing destinations, but I was working on them. Sometimes I need the graphic elements to elicit the content of the composition; other times I’ve got the words all ready to flow, and the pix come later. At still other times, I need music in my day to create the literary work at night.
My outing was fairly brief that afternoon, about 40 minutes. I nonetheless felt that I’d arrived at a destination I’d been seeking for a few years, or ever since I started the process of moving into my newly built home, Larkhaven. It’s been a long haul. I’ve encountered more complications and opposition to the flow of life, my life, than I’d experienced in many a moon.
If, during the past seven years, the goal of the nasty class of politicians in the USA was to make life as unbearably hard for the citizenry as possible, they may have succeeded in cooking their own gooses. The hardy individuals, the rugged individualists, such as myself, found newer destinations to get around their demonic destinations of holding on to ill-gotten and illegitimate power. Those destinations taught me fortitude, patience, perseverance, and how to pace myself through the rough times while I get ready for the good times.
The crisis-mongers wore themselves out, fast, while the steady-as-you-go types strengthened their backbones through putting up with preposterous and unconstitutional head-games, figuring out new ways to endure fatigue, and prevailing over the increasingly deranged attempts by the tinpot dictators to control what cannot be controlled.
When I arrived home, at Larkhaven, I took note of the progress that my Dear Husband and I have made in carving out a new residence from forested land that had been neglected and overgrown for decades.
We’re homesteaders!
We grabbed hold of a prime piece of real estate in 2017, and began a journey that may not yet have found its final destination.
It’s our Dream House, yes, but it’s more than a physical structure. It’s evidence of our willingness to keep our eyes on the prize, and of our determination to not be deterred or distracted by barking dogs. The howling and yipping coyotes currently grant us a bigger challenge, one that I’m helping little Jolene to surmount.
She’s very little but she believes she’s big enough to chase away those varmints. That courage is a destination not only for summer, but for every season of the year.