Memories

It's late afternoon. I'm driving down a very long road with an eye-popping expanse of Pacific Ocean to my left. To my right as I pull off the highway is an old Spanish mission. All Spanish missions are old, of course. I think this mission is San Juan Capistrano. It has to be near LA because my hotel room is in Santa Monica and in my memory I'm driving up the coast from the south of LA. Of course, the mission I see in my mind's eye might be north of LA, in which case it might be San Buenaventura or even Santa Barbara. No, I know I turned onto the 101 and drove through Thousand Oaks then took the Ventura Highway back to Santa Monica. Or did I do that on a different day? This memory is fifty years old, and as I handle it in my mind it begins to tear into pieces shaped like question marks. Why don't I create new memories? Why do I hold onto the old ones? It's like they (the memories), for as long as I can hold onto them, verify I've lived a life. I was here, I remember. I was there, I remember. Maybe time doesn't exist and a part of me is still there in this moment and that part of me is communicating with here-and-now me, showing me a glimpse of a life that is long gone.

I remember Montana. I remember Glacier Park. How many glaciers are left? Are there any at all? Helena, the capital, in August—hotter than a furnace. I remember Wyoming, Yellowstone Park, Old Faithful, the Artists' Paint Pots and the boiling hot springs. I remember the hitchhikers I picked up along the roads. Where are they now? Alive? Dead? Their children would be middle-aged, their grandchildren would be adults, 20-somethings and 30-somethings. 

I traveled with my friend John and my dog Shadow and John's two dogs (their names long forgotten) and whatever hitchhikers we had picked up that day—and sometimes the hitchhikers' dogs. We were a rolling zoo. No, those are other memories of California. The trips overlap in my mind, blurring one into another. There was the road trip in the camper van. There was the business trip in the rental car, and that trip was much shorter because it began and ended at LAX. In a way, I'd like to do it again, but not in 2023. No, I want to do it in 1974, but I don't have a time machine. I don't think I'd enjoy doing that trip in 2023, with the increased auto and truck traffic we have now. Even if I flew to LA and rented a car, there would still be the highway-clogging traffic of LA. Of course, that's the way the traffic was in Chicago fifty years ago. Bumper to bumper, move and stop, move and stop, and that was on the interstate. We got off the interstate to go to the terminal at O'Hare to pick up a topographic map but they didn't have one, and when we got back to the van (our three dogs had managed to set off the van's alarm—we could hear it halfway across the parking lot) and got back on the interstate, the traffic was bumper to bumper, stop-and-go.

From a distance, even the bad parts of a trip are remembered with fondness. Time has filed away the ragged edges of the trip, like a sharp blade made dull with use, the memory no longer has an edge. It has become just a memory of a memory. 

Nuria just asked me what do I want for lunch? My choices are hamburger, pizza, or a sandwich. "Pizza sounds good," I tell her. If you read through all my previous blog posts, you will find references to these and other trips. I should've gone on more trips. I guess they got old pretty fast. 

The phone just rang and I answered it. A woman's voice said, "Hi, this is Ellie. Would you like to sell your house?"

"Yes, after I die," I replied.

"And when will that be?" the voice asked. I hung up.

Now it has begun raining and thunder is rolling across the sky. We're supposed to get severe weather. The forecast calls for hail. 

The oven is hot and Nuria says that in fifteen minutes the pizza will be ready to eat. I'm going to click the Publish button. Enough reminiscence for one day.

Later...

The pizza was good. So was Nuria's homade German chocolate cake. It's raining hard now, testing my roof for leaks. I've got my fingers crossed.