Another Day in the Car

This past Tuesday was a rough day for me. I was released from the vast majority of my work day to attend the funeral of someone I knew, whom I worked with. They took their own life, and we're all trying to work through to the other side of the darkness in these moments. I've thrown myself into my Immolation Productions projects, whatever that means (Keep an eye out for Phase 2!).

I'm involved with many groups as part of my job, and one of them, as a support, sent a swag package that I didn't get until after we returned from Texas. Inside was a book:

Tucked inside Emergent Strategy was a bookmark for reparations.club, a book store/lounge that branded itself black-owned/woman-owned here in LA somewhere. After checking out their website, I found a book I wanted to purchase, and in lieu of a shipping charge, I realized I could go pick it up, and when I realized that I was going to have a day without work or kids in the car, I thought I would add picking up the new book to the list of errands I was going to do by car that specific Tuesday.

My errands were boring, for sure, and had me travelling from Long Beach to Redondo Beach (the funeral) back to the RPV peninsula (the burial), then back to North Redondo (to pick up a birthday present), then up to the Reparations Club to get my recent purchase (if you know: Crenshaw and I-10), and then down to Anaheim (for special comics).

If you know driving in LA, you're probably saying: LB to Redondo to RPV to Redondo to the 10 to Anaheim...EFF THAT! And you'd be right.

But, on the way to get the book I was listening to NPR. There was a pre=recorded interview with Louis Gates, the Black intellectual, author, and host of the "Finding your Roots" show on PBS. But before they returned to their talk after a station break, they mentioned that afterward the conversation would continue with a discussion of the just-released new "classic," The Final Revival of Opal and Nev.

In my car, in LA traffic, I perked up. What? 

That was the book I was going to pick up right then:

The description reminded me of Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, which was enough. Written by a Black lady, rad. I'm about 60 pages in, and am always curious when I can carve out some time to drop everything and chip away at it...it's so good.

After three days of driving, I spent another day in the car. That part was a bummer, but only in the context of a world when you're not headed to a funeral for someone you cared about.

Why are cars from 1971 so beautiful?

I'm not making the case that 1971 was the high point for beauty in automobiles. Um...maybe I could, though? 

When I was looking through pictures the other (eh...day?) time, I kept seeing 1971 as being a holder for some of my most favorite-for-their-beauty cars ever. I mean, I've mentioned a few times my feeling for the Datsun 240Z:

And I know that the 240Z started a few years back, but mine was a '71, and now that's fifty years back, and I got to looking around at other STUNNING cars from that same calendar year.

How about the Ford GT40:

Now, for full disclosure, this isn't my favorite year for the Ford GT40, but it is still a striking car.

How about maybe my favorite Corvette, the '71 Stingray:

I used to think that I liked the earlier Stingrays, with the split window and the older-fashioned front-end, but that was wrong. In my heart, this smarmy 'Vette was always my favorite, and they looked like this for a similar timeframe as my Z-cars.

In a book I thumbed through once, I put eyes on a Ferrari Dino from the late '60s or early '70s and said to myself: That's IT. That's the most beautiful car ever. Up to that point, my favorite car was either Magnum's exotic red beauty (the 288 GTO) or the yellow Lamborghini Countach from the poster that adorned my bedroom wall. (I was proud that I could spell Lamborghini, but favored the red Ferrari from Magnum PI.)

Once I saw that Dino, I thought: that's an easy compromise. Here's the '71:

But of course THEN I saw a different car that took over as THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CAR EVER. And again, in my own opinion, the earlier Ford GT could make a claim here as well, but my heart lies in Italy.

Behold, the 1971 Lamborghini Miura, quite possibly THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CAR EVER:

Obviously I'm not enamored with American muscle cars. I liked Bandit's Trans Am, and I liked the Dukes' Charger, and I liked specific Cadillacs from the '60s and '70s, and the Galaxie and Impala, but c'mon!

The exotic curves and mid-mounted V-12 engines...what else is there to say?

Sojourn at the Farm

We needed to get way for a bit, and we're lucky to have that ability. We have both the Farm (in panhandle Texas) and the Cabin (in the northern reaches of California), but at this time of year, the Cabin is not ready for guests. The timing worked out for us...

Two weeks at the Harrison Farm. It was Camille's second visit, and she was a fan right away:

The drive in was planned to be a three day trip, but Cass was adamant about "going to see Poppy,", his name for Grandpa Ron. As we pushed on through on that last day, arriving in the wee hours of a Sunday, Cass, asleep, coughed and whimpered. As parents, and as humans with some life experience, we could tell he was sick with something, something we wouldn't have brought him here had we known about it while still in California.

But we were just arriving, and that was that. 

We're all still recovering.

The kids loved Poppy's truck...

One day we walked in a large, sweeping arc, covering grasslands that I once thought were rattlesnake haven. It isn't, and the views are awesome:

The farmhouse complex is visible on the right above.

Below, we followed a deer path for a stretch:

Cass had some character building moments with his older cousins. Here, we see him with his 11 year old cousin Colton:

And here his pants have been changed by those cousins, and a cap put onto his head:

We weren't on that trip, in the old farm truck---Ol' Blue---down to the spring area. We did walk down to the spring, but most of the Ol' Blue trips were during supper-fixing times, and I was staunchly embedded in a leadership role at those times, so I missed out.

Camille started exhibiting new things---a new fierce independence; a laughing violence towards her brother---but took a while to warm up to people. Well, not that exactly, just when it came to being picked up and/or held. Eventually, it was Poppy who was the first winner:

The turkeys were out near the end of our trip:

I would whistle, and torment the turkeys. They'd dip their heads and gobble-gobble angrily. Silly dinosaurs...

We left on my birthday and made it all the way to Albuquerque, which isn't really all that far. The next day we drove to Flagstaff and payed for a while, then drove on to Kingman, AZ for dinner, and then on still to Needles to stay for the night. We mobbed it home Sunday.

Any trip to the farm is a blur of family and laughter and hard conversations under the stars. After returning, it starts to resemble a dream (as any trip does).

Always wonderful and relaxing.

Rerun, Ten Years in the Making

Happy Birthday to me. 

Exactly ten years ago today, on April 9th 2011, I took Corrie to the airport in Austin to fly out to LA to start looking for an apartment. Then I went at got the trailer hookup and hitched up our Saturn, and Corrie's mom Carol and I started the drive from Texas to Southern California, as part of my promotion. Carol was driving our wagon.

We were moving back to California.

What a difference a decade makes. I busted my femur, changed careers, won awards for the new career, kept travelling, have two kids, and returned to the forefront of promoting radical change.

We leave Texas today, the same as ten years ago. We'll be staying west of Albuquerque this decade instead of in Ft. Stockton. Let's see what this decade holds...