From the Road Trip Journal:
DAY 4
Destination: Flagstaff, AZ to Gallup, NM
Date: 7.11.97 (Friday)
Mileage: 19,700 to 19,888 (188 miles)
Bar(s): Panz Alegra
Imbibed: 2 margaritas
Mr. Goodwrench is borne. After a vodka-impaired, restless night of sleep, only to be awakened by a BLARING train whistle at 6:45 a.m., I got up and showered — P. would've been proud — [and] rode my bike over to the joint rated best breakfast in town. After a damn hearty meal I return to the dirt and rock parking lot where my beloved red beast is parked and commence with a fitful 5-hour valve adjustment, the 1st such mechanical procedure I've ever attempted.
By 3:00 I was ready to crank her up. Okay...here goes...hey, what's that weird noise? I've never heard that before.
So I call a local foreign car repair guy, who tells me he probably couldn't get to it until Monday. The fact that I got lost on the way to his establishment only confirmed my fears of a lost weekend in Flagstaff.
So I bolted.
At 4:00 I pulled back onto the highway, headed towards Santa Fe. But first, a stop at the El Ranchero motel in Gallup, which was built by D.W. Griffith's brother as a place to house the stars when they were shooting nearby. And damn if I didn't get the Bogey room. The seance is a bust, but I get a barely digestible steak and lobster dinner up the street at Panz something or other (it's on the video) and get 2 hours of journal writing in. Taming a hangover with 2 margaritas.
.
..
...
Today's quote from the Road Trip Journal:
No other man-made device since the shields and lances of the ancient knights fulfills a man's ego like an automobile." ~Lord William Rootes
.
..
...
From the Pocket-Sized Notebook, written during my pit stop at the Panz Allegra restaurant and bar in Gallup, NM:
I'm staying in Bogey's old room on 7.11. If there were any night to test my resolve, to wrestle my demons on paper, this one's looking pretty good. Not that I've met anyone who's been enough to let my fantasy life run amok. Although technically I can tryst and shout, it would be in poor taste to do it on the day I talked to P. on the phone and soothed her when she broke down crying. Even I'm not that much of a heel. At least I hope I'm not.
It was quite a sight, I tell you. Me riding my mountain bike down the dusty Gallop street, Mexicans and Indians — people of color that wasn't mine — cruising by in their trucks and beat Impalas blasting some Snoop. And me, the paranoid white guy from L.A., who's lived through race riots and a kamikazee substitute teaching stint at a junior high in South Central L.A. — you, motherfucker, are suddenly terrified. In your 501s, flannel shirt and Melrose-bought cowboy boots. You look like a fucking idiot.
But then your paranoia is squelched when you walk into a crowded restaurant lounge and you realize they're playing Boston — "More Than a Feeling." How appropriate. You peruse the bar. The usual suspects. Tourists. Local lonely hearts. And there's the ESPN, reminding you you're still in America, boy, and it's not such a bad place. Even the salad served in the same faux Hawaiian wood bowls we ate salad in during the [Sgt. Stepdad] years in El Monte, a place where you used to hang with lots of people like the people here in this place. So get off your high horse and smell the guacamole.
Even my waitress has a little bit of a Geena Davis thing going back when her hair was frizzy. I would have taken her for a naive, but cute, bumpkin were it not for the ankle tattoo poking out the top of her white sock, which nicely sets off the black patent leather shoes, short black skirt and white T-shirt. Not to worry. She's shown me nothing close to warmth yet, her perfunctory politeness aside. And the radio station is now playing, I swear to God, Sammy Johns' classic '70s kitsch hit, "Chevy Van." You know, "We made love in my Chevy van and that's alright with me."
So I do the only thing reasonable: order a margarita. "No ice," I fumble to Geena.
"Did you mean 'no salt'? Because I've never heard of a..."
"Oh, yeah. No salt. That's exactly what I meant. Oh, and I'll have the steak and lobster dinner."
And when the radio station plays Styx's "Come Sail Away," I truly am back in high school. Eating bad food after a Friday night basketball game. It doesn't matter that the "steak" takes 43 chews per bite before it's ready to slide down my throat.
Sorry, Geena, but this is the worst steak and lobster I've ever had. But you were still worth that 23.6% tip. Live long and prosper.
Post-mediocre meal, I retire to the "lounge," margarita "no ice" in tow. I park my ass at a shiny varnished wood table with swizzle faux leather chairs. Tonight it's all '70s tunes. Bar music is great for zapping you into the time machine. Back to that high school, where you played Bob Seger on the 8-track in your Pinto. To hear "Main Street" in a restaurant bar in Gallup, New Mexico is to go back to pre-dawn, pre-2nd period typing surf sessions down to Huntington Beach with Tom, who was driving a baby blue VW bus a little nicer than yours now.
And that's when the Bob Seger reverie is broken by the sudden realization that you're driving the same car your best friend drove in high school. And now you feel there's a royal purple "L" for loser tattooed on your forehead.
But there's A.J. Foyt smacking Arie Luyendyk on one TV and Jay Leno enduring Howie Mandel on the other box. And, hey, isn't that those adorable Hansen brothers singing their precious new hit song? And next to the neon Bud sign hanging on the brick wall is a framed b&w of Bogey. He's everywhere! I think I'll have a seance tonight back in the room. Maybe that sweet, kind Lauren Bacall will show, too...Oh, that's right. She's still among the living, as her painfully forced smile at this year's Oscars attested.
...So how much does Budweiser spend on giveaway neon signs?
Now I'm getting surfing highlights on ESPN. The fates are laughing at me right now, serving up irony after calm shattering irony. I'm the only person in this place — 1 of maybe 15 — who gives a rat's ass that there's a surf contest on ESPN now. I'm at an I-40 off-ramp burg, seeped in raw desert ambiance, watching perfect head-high tubes in Hawaii. Bartender, get me another margarita.
Unless you've surfed, you can't understand. That's not being snobbish. It's the truth. Until you've paddled into black 4-foot glass before dawn, until you've longboarded peeling San Onofre peaks with your best friend and your brother, until you've been humbled by echoes of booming North Shore shapelyness, you can't know what it's like to stand on a plank of fiberglassed foam and slide along one of the most majestic of God's creations.
I was introduced to surfing at about the time I was learning to read the sports page. (A habit that hasn't endeared me to any of the women of my past or present.) After my parents divorced when I was 6, the bi-weekly weekend visits my younger Brother Deke and I took with our Dad often included 1-hour drives to Doheny — Killer Dana (for Dana Point) as it was known then, so Dad could take his trusty Wardy longboard out into the crowded surf. (I would later assume temporary ownership of the old school, 2-ton Wardy in high school, after my beloved Robert August shortboard, purchased with my hard-earned Tastee Freeze money, was ripped off out of our garage.)
In high school, with a driver's license, a root beer brown Pinto and a colorful coterie of Covina surf cronies, I surfed a few times a week, never mind the 45-minute drive to the nearest surf spot. After UCLA, I moved to Manhattan Beach and surfed anywhere from 3 times a week to once every 3 months. Now that I've moved to the fringes of Hollywood and Beverly Hills I get into the water only sporadically.
But surfing is something I'll never give up. I always had the fantasy of falling in love with a girl who surfs.
Now I'll settle for someone who'll tolerate my occasional ill-advised surf trip.
It's always sort of infuriated me, the typical Hollywood depiction of the Spiccoli surf dude. I know plenty of decent, intelligent, kind people who surf. I hear Tom Hanks, King of the Hollywood Good Guys, surfs.
A few years ago I somehow wrangled an interview to be editor of Surfer magazine. I was told it came down to me and one other guy, someone eminently more qualified than I. [Steve Hawk, brother of Tony.] At the conclusion of my interview with the magazine's publisher — after which we headed off to paddle out in pumping overhead surf at Upper Trestles — I was given the name and number of a former editor at Surfing, who'd traded in his Quiksilvers for a laptop and a crack at writing for Hollywood.
At the time [this guy] was just another anonymous script scribe developing pilots for NBC. But I'd remembered his name for a brief essay he'd penned for Surfing, a recollection of a sandy San Onofre camping trip tryst with an Orange County high schooler who grew up to be Belinda Carlisle.
So I called the guy and reminded him of the story. We had a laugh and talked about how there has yet to be a definitive surf movie. "I'll do it one day," he told me. "But first I've got to do something else that'll give me some credibility in Hollywood."
A few years later, Chris Carter created a little show called The X-Files. I wonder if Hollywood is ready to hear his surf story [now]?
.
..
...
It's 12:25 on a 7.11 in Gallup and I'm gonna head back to room 213 and summon Sam Spade. I didn't talk to anyone about love tonight. But that's okay. I can't hit a home run every night. Last night was bountiful and I paid the price this morning. Pacing is everything. Solitude and 2 $3.00 margaritas, on the rocks, no salt, is hitting the spot just fine.
Especially when Bob Seger comes back for one last encore of "Main Street." Goodnight, John Boy.
Share
