A NEW LOSS OF INNOCENCE

It started with the atomic bomb. I was just a child when I learned that our U.S. scientists had figured out how, with one finger on one button (or maybe several buttons), to drop a bomb out of an airplane and annihilate half a country.

The knowledge got to me. For years I had childish nightmares, woke up sweating because I’d dreamed that the world around me was exploding in a mass of flame.

Ever since, I’ve argued with everyone, including my husband, that this was the worst sin any country could commit—developing, then using, a weapon that had the potential of destroying half the world. “But it saved endless American lives,” Rob said, “maybe even mine. All the men who would have died invading Japan.” 

Nevertheless.

This week it happened again. Suddenly my computer screen came alive with horrifying news. “A Malaysian passenger jet has been shot down over Ukraine.”

My first thought: What was a passenger plane doing, flying that low? 

The awfulness arrived in stages. Within an hour we learned it wasn’t THAT LOW.  The plane was flying at 33,000 feet!  Then another brutal fact:  298 Souls On Board.  (An NTSB term)

The final stage arrived several days later, via the Los Angeles Times. The missile developed by Russia can reach a target at 70,000 feet!  Higher than any passenger jet ever flies.  

Is this terrible news common knowledge? I wondered. “Did you know that such a weapon existed?” I asked Rob, who reads everything, and all the time.

“No,” he said. “I only knew about shoulder launchers that could catch a plane on takeoff or landing. I’ve worried about them—how easy it would be.”

“You know what this means,” I said, and all my warm feelings about the NTSB and TSA and how they constantly protect airplanes began sliding away. “No plane, anywhere, is safe from its enemies.”   

“That’s about right,” he said. And neither of us mentioned our airline tickets, already purchased, for flights over Europe. When you lose your innocence it’s a hard thing to talk about.        

Suddenly Pandora’s Box is once again wide open.  (For just a second, there, I felt like dropping an atomic bomb on Russia.) 

TEMPEST OVER TEMPERATURE

       The other day, late June, I came downstairs from several hours in my office to find Rob sitting in a sauna. Well, it was our family room, supposedly, but I could almost see a  pile of glowing stones in a corner. It’s a wonder the windows weren’t fogged up from his overheated breath. There sat Bob in his chair, oblivious . . . perfectly content, apparently, that the ceiling fan was still propelling hot vapors over his body. But the cats were lying under the fan, their legs splayed out to catch whatever moving air was available--even air that was seemingly out of an oven.

            I stood at the threshold, incredulous.  How long had Rob been cooking in his chair? And the cats nearly comatose under the fan? When, if ever, was Rob going to make his way to the air-conditioning switch in the next room?

I didn’t have to think long. The answer was never.

Rob likes most things hot: Caribbean beaches, coffee, his car, and women.   

I prefer everything cool or cold—like skiing in Sierra blizzards, where I was often the only nut on the chair lift. For me, bedrooms should be frosty, maybe 55 degrees. (Rob would prefer 80.) Since childhood I’ve reasoned, You can add extra clothes when it’s cold, but how far can you strip when it’s hot?     

When it comes to vacations, Rob studies brochures that feature palm trees, tropical seas, and blasting sun, while I read about overcast skies and alpine villages. Usually Rob wins. I once talked him into an Alaskan cruise, thinking “Ah!  Sweaters!”  But he prevailed anyway. When we arrived, Fairbanks was having a heat wave!    

How does a marriage accommodate one person who sweats, is constantly wet, and thus remains cool, and the other who doesn’t sweat at all and accumulates heat like a black car left in the sun? 

            Until this summer we mostly accepted what California had to offer—a few cold nights and lots of hot nights. And then we got air-conditioning in the bedroom, and our marriage took on a nasty blip. After I turned the air to 70, Rob growled, “I was cold all night. I can see right now--we’re going to have a bad summer!”

            Oh Lord, I thought, summer in California is forever. By August we’ll be divorced.  I changed the air conditioning to 74. Neither of us is perfectly happy--but at least we’re still sleeping in the same house.    

"Perfect" Family Vacations

“Perfect” Family Vacations

Hollywood has figured it out.

Take something that’s supposed to be perfect, like a vacation or a marriage, and tell the truth. You’ll end up with enough dramatic scenes to satisfy Steven Spielburg.

You’ll also end up with comedy. Woody Allen would have loved our Hawaiian vacation. 

Well, actually, so did we.  But we had our moments.

Thirteen of us went to the Big Island on Hawaii—and get this: the youngest was nine months, and the oldest was eighty-seven—four generations. Some of us were divinely married, some were simply married, and some weren’t married at all. Some of us had perfect health, some had spotty health, and one had a health problem so serious he shouldn’t have been there. For that one we brought a wheelchair—and happily never used it.      

Okay, Woody Allen, here goes:  The setting, you’d have agreed, was perfect. The multi-level Hapuna Hotel near Kona, where breezes blow (or work themselves into minor hurricanes), where the nation’s number-one snorkeling beach is right out front, where the meals are gourmet (but don’t fit every pocketbook), and where an occasional Asian tourist arrives wearing a mask.  (Go figure). 

First, the baby: When you’re still taking two naps a day and your night ends at five a.m., you do not give your parents a perfect vacation. But when you break into a wide grin with the first glimpse of a family member, you definitely add points everywhere else. And we added points too—by clapping and cheering every time he stood alone.

Health problems should have loomed larger than they did. The family member with a brain tumor might have kept himself and wife at home. Somehow, Brad did fine—walked more than usual, ate full meals, even swam in the ocean.  An outsider wouldn’t have known. Turns out I was the health headache. I blew apart with inflammation—with a wrist that swelled into a baseball glove (at two a.m., nobody wants to hear you groan.) Luckily, our son, Dr. Chris, was right next door—and had the right medicine. The girlfriend with a bad cough never slowed down.  

One night we played card games—and finally chased away the two disrupters, who preferred another glass of wine to learning the rules.

The temperature dispute in bedroom A was never resolved—the wife who cherishes air-conditioning versus the husband who adores a sauna. “We’re going to have problems this summer!” he growled, but she left him to simmer in his sauces and went elsewhere—suspecting after 65 years of marriage they’d work out the summer, too.   

Meals were a compromise between super-rich and super-poor . . . the outrageously-priced dinners offset by peanut-butter-and-jelly lunches a la Costco.

As a family, we worked out problems: baby Corbin could have wrecked some dinners, but never did. To accommodate him one night, we moved the entire group into an unused dining room, ordered room service, and let Corbin wander off to dig his fingers into nearby planters. Our group was loud enough to sound like a whole dining room.  

Three boxes of Sees Candy could have blown up into a family fight: instead, two members ate an entire box in one twenty-minute sitting, and the others shook their heads in amazement. Finally our patriarch Rob, parceled out the rest in little dabs.    

It was our Natural Born Leader who persuaded us, spur-of-the-moment, to enter the ocean for a group Photo Op —and never mind that some of us were fully dressed.  

The highlight, for me, was when Dane’s girlfriend said in amazement, “You’re a big family—but you all get along so well!”  Well, we don’t always.  But we all want to make our big family “work” and so, most of the time, we do.   

 

IDIOT ENGINEERING -- (Expanded)

IDIOT ENGINEERING

           

I love and respect engineers--my brother is one of them--but they seem to come in several flavors: the guys who put men on the moon, and those who are unable to design a public bathroom that makes sense.

Sure, among the populace are a few slobbish souls who walk away with nary a backward flush. So engineers have designed self-flushing toilets that respond without input from the user. I’ve heard them in public places—The Lonely Commodes, toilets in empty stalls, flushing away over and over, flushing themselves hoarse, as though for their own entertainment.

I’ve had nasty encounters with another variety—the Premature Evacuators. They wait until the seat cover is nicely placed, then flush away the cover just as you’re unzipping your pants. Many a time I’ve heard a suspicious noise and whirled around, throwing my palms onto the seat to save the cover. These are the potties that demand you use them without wasting time pulling down your pants.

I’ve met the Nervous Flushers—the ones that sail into action two or three times, just for the hell of it,  before you leave the stall.

Why, we wonder, did engineers decide ninety-nine percent of women couldn’t be trusted?  That we were somehow unwilling to press down the all-important handle?  For one . . . and yes, only one, flush?   

A few engineer-designed sinks are no better. Okay, water is precious and needs to be conserved. We get it. So they give you cold water that runs only when your hands are soaped and under the faucet. (I’m okay with that). But in some bathrooms the sink offers only mini-squirts of warm water, not enough in one squirt to rinse one well-lathered hand, let alone two. For those I’ve had to retreat and advance my fingers seven or eight times, and in the end achieved maybe eight teaspoons of liquid—meaning the rest of the soap had to be wiped away on a paper towel.    

And speaking of towels. Why did so many bathroom designers position the paper towels across the room from the sinks . . . leaving us no recourse but to drip, drip, drip, on the way to drying off? Who, pray tell, mops the slippery gap between sinks and towels?  

Maybe things are different in men’s bathrooms. I’ll never know. But I do have one suggestion—that women engineers design the equipment for women’s bathrooms. Why on earth was this job entrusted to someone who, on most occasions, needs only one downward zip and one grab and he’s good to go?

XXXXX

P.S. I was reminded today that dubious engineering is not confined to bathrooms. Kirkland’s delicious “complete nutrition shake” comes with an attached straw—which is too short for the container. When you poke it into the hole, the straw drops into the liquid and disappears.  You wonder—who thought this was a good idea?

And Emily’s List (whom I love), provides a return envelope which is too small for the material they want sent back. No matter how you fold them, the sheets don’t fit.  

Last, but certainly not least—an article about cell phones declares that if you let them drop too often to zero, soon the battery will be so weak it won’t rouse enough to take a charge. (Mine is practically comatose). On the other hand, phones do best, they say, when charged to only sixty or eighty percent. So I ask . . . what nerd hovers over his charging phone to pull the plug at eighty percent? For that, you’d have to set your alarm for two a.m.

I’d buy a new phone—except I’m waiting for one that holds a charge for . . . how about two whole days?     

STILL ON THE ROAD -- The second half of "A Clown in the Trunk"

Promises. Promises.

I promised to post the second half of my chapter from "A Clown in the Trunk."

I never did it.  My daughter's husband developed a glioblastoma, and life took off in another direction.

As I prepare to post the second half (Chapter Two) of my story about The Ladies Road Trip, let me say first:  I HAVE NEWS.  "A Clown in the Trunk" is now an e-book, easily obtained from Amazon and numerous other e-book sites. 

Here, then, is the second half of my Ladies Road Trip: 

 CHAPTER  TWO

                 STILL ON THE ROAD

  

JUST BEFORE THE CAR went silent, the trip to Carson City had seemed magically back on track, with all of us radiating womanly bonhomie and a sense of feminine conquest . . . three triumphant women who’d thrown away their aprons.  We are an amazing foursome, I thought, and found myself basking in woman power and friend power and granddaughter power, and thinking, Who needs men, anyway?      

     Then it happened—-a carbon copy of the earlier event. The car stopped running, flat-out quit, and now it was Betty-Jo who had to muscle the dead machine off the road.  As the car came to a stop, Christy turned to her mother and said in encouraging tones, “We went much farther that time!”  I guess she thought hop-scotching down the road is what travelers normally do.   

     Betty-Jo turned off the key and pushed open her door.  But Carol and I shouted in unison, “No!  No!  Close it!  Don’t let in the heat!” 

     Betty-Jo slammed it shut.

     Carol said, “Didn’t the mechanic tell us we just had to wait thirty minutes?” and I said that’s what I remembered, so we all looked at our watches and began the countdown. 

     The Seville had come to rest this time in the high California desert.  Since it was now almost noon in late August, our once-air-conditioned Cad slowly heated up like an Easy Bake oven, and in ten minutes sweat popped out on our brows.  Within fifteen minutes we could hardly breathe.  None of us felt like mentioning the fact that we could all possibly suffocate while we waited thirty minutes for the fuel pump to cool--which, considering the outside temperature, was an unlikely event.      

      After a mere twenty minutes, Betty-Jo said suddenly, “I can’t stand this--I’m opening the door!” and she flung it open and hot desert air poured over us.  The heat was a jolt to my bare arms, but at least it was moving.  Then something caught Betty-Jo’s eye and she squinted up at the sky.  “Do you see what I see?”  She was trying to stay calm.  “Look up there!  Vultures.” 

     “My God!” cried Carol.  “Are they coming for us already?”

     We all tittered nervously.  Years ago I’d noticed that when men are threatened by the revolt of circumstances, they swear.  Not so women.  When life turns on us, we laugh.    

     Our womanly reactions to disaster had just started.    

     Betty-Jo began taking stock of our liquids.  “We don’t have much,” she said, scanning the interior, “but maybe if we don’t have to wait here too long . . .” 

     Then Carol said, “Blame must be assigned.  But I haven’t figured out who gets it,” and for no reason we found this amusing, and nothing, not the heat, the misbehaving car, nor the vultures, could dim our high spirits.         

     At precisely thirty minutes Betty-Jo tried the engine.  No response.  Carol said, “Maybe we should give it another fifteen minutes,” so we did. 

     But the car was mortally wounded, and all we succeeded in doing was once more grinding down the battery.  

     Nobody wanted to say it, but we all knew what was coming.  “I guess we have to do something,” I said, so I got out and flagged down a car whose driver promised to call a tow company from the next town.   

     “How will I explain this to Rob?” I asked, and Betty-Jo said, “I’m glad it’s him and not Chris,” and Carol added, “Or Don.”  Suddenly our men were back in the picture. 

     With all the doors flung wide, the four of us sat inside, cooking and waiting.  I saw my Cadillac in a new light—-as little more than an expensive umbrella.  

     Forty minutes later, tow-truck number two pulled up, and soon we were watching an all-too-familiar routine.  Out with the chains and bars and up with our car’s rear end. 

     But this tow came with a new wrinkle.  The driver had arrived with two little blonde girls in his cab.  We stared at the truck in disbelief.  “You realize,” said Carol, “We’ll never get seven of us in that cab--no matter how many laps people sit on.” 

     For long minutes we stood there, wondering who should be left to fry by the side of the road--until the driver remarked that two of us could ride in the ailing Seville, that it wasn’t illegal if his cab was full, which it certainly was.  Carol and I exchanged looks.  We suspected it was both dangerous and illegal—-but the alternative was worse: waiting without shade while the sun reached Full Broil and cooked us perfectly for the vultures.             

     Gingerly, the two of us climbed into the Caddie’s back seat, now elevated like a throne. 

     All the way to the nearest town, which was Inyokern, we rode backwards eating potato chips and making lame jokes--the manic sounds of the near-hysteric.  Only once did we stop, when I said, “You realize, if we’d managed to close our windows (which we’d tried to do and failed), we’d now be suffocating, unable to let the tow-truck driver know.”  Yet even the thought of baking in the Caddie like slow-roasted pork only stopped our hilarity for mere seconds.  

     Carol and I were clearly dancing close to the snake pit.  

     Arriving in Inyokern was the desert equivalent of reaching Sitka, Alaska: one gas station, one rustic grocery store.  We were all wondering separately, How do we get out of this place?     

     The local garage mechanic, who seemed an intelligent sort, agreed with expert number one back in Victorville that we indeed required a new fuel pump . . . except it was now five p.m., and not only was his garage closing, so was the parts house in Ridgecrest, ten miles away in the wrong direction.  

     Carol took me aside and whispered vehemently, “Look, Maralys, I know how persuasive you can be--“ she threw me an evil grin-- “I’m on this trip, aren’t I?”  Leaning closer.  “Talk to that man and persuade him to let you speak to the parts house yourself.  I know you can make them stay open long enough to help us.”  Her confidence in my begging was directly proportional, I realized, to her lack of desire to remain in Inyokern.

     Unfortunately, my vaunted gifts of persuasion were never tested; nobody at the parts house answered the phone.   

     Calling another summit meeting, the four of us went off to huddle in private, by now our standard response to vexing situations.  We agreed we couldn’t sleep in this nowhere town, but on the other hand, how could we leave?

     Sensing our desperation, the mechanic finally asked, “How long did you go on that last fuse?” and when we said something under two hours, he said, “You could buy a box of four fuses, and that should take you to Carson City.”

     It seemed an inspired suggestion.

     However, when he tried to show Betty-Jo how to install the tiny fuse--somewhere under the dash in a spot you could neither see nor visualize--she found she couldn’t do it.  “My fingers aren’t strong enough.”

     I tried.  But even with my very strong fingers I couldn’t do it.  Carol tried next—-and failed.  The spot was mysterious and miniscule, not easily penetrated.       

     We all went a second round, and it became a competition –-who had the best fingers?  This time Carol, to my mixed admiration and jealousy, figured out how to angle herself off to one side, slide her fingers up behind the dash, and with great effort and her fanny mooning the sky, install the wretched little fuse.  The mechanic’s plan was now feasible.   

     “Of course,” Carol said as she practiced once more and then extricated herself from under the dash, “my fingers just went numb.”

     With that it occurred to her that four more fuses might not be enough, and in a survival frame of mind she insisted I buy eight.  Very soon, with Carol purchasing the town’s only flashlight, we were back on Highway 395.

     Thirty minutes later, to our horror, the Cad failed us again.  “This car has a lot of quit in it,” I said.  

     Carol sprang into action, which involved the following steps: duck under the long wooden stake; grab our roll of paper towels as a kneeling pad; recite aloud the fuse-changing procedure; with head deep in the dash and rear in the air like a stinkbug, install the fuse; then duck back under the stake.  It all took about seven minutes.

     Like a miracle, the car started immediately and we were off again, though with fading confidence.  We were all good enough at math to figure out that thirty minutes per fuse would not take us to Carson City, even with eight fuses.  And now it was growing dark.  Nobody spoke.  Our situation had become too fragile for words.   

     In a very short time the car stopped again.  A profound silence settled over us, broken only when Betty-Jo noted softly, “Ten minutes.”  But we still didn’t open the subject for discussion.  Instead, Carol gamely went through the six steps and got back in the car.  Silently I started the engine and we were off.

     The next leg was two miles.  Carol worked her magic again and Christy, the only person still talking, burbled, “Carol should always come with us on trips!”

     Our last jack-rabbit hop was good for no distance at all.   

     I wrestled the car part way off the road and this time Carol didn’t get out.  Instead she sat quietly, hands folded in her lap.    

     “One mile,” I whispered into the gloom.

     We looked around.  Though it was now dark, our ailing Seville had brought us next to--but not quite into--a rest area, whose lights and trees and stone lean-to looked at least somewhat hospitable compared to the dark, empty road. Betty-Jo, our map reader, noted calmly that the next town was seventeen miles away, and though nobody said it, we all knew that, fuse-wise, the town was as far away as Kathmandu.                

     “Well,” said Carol, “we might as well have a look at the rest area.”  But first, the four of us had to summon our combined girl-power to push the car off the road.  And thus we left our wounded steed lying on its back with its legs in the air.  “Don’t know why we locked the doors,” said Carol.              “Nobody can steal it.”  With Christy in hand, we traipsed off down the road to the rest area’s distant entrance. 

     There we found a cement bench and sat talking, while little Christy tight-rope-walked across a nearby retaining wall.  The night air was warm and we felt reasonably secure.  Overhead was a light.  Around us, grass.  Nearby, a drinking fountain and bathroom.  A few steps away stood a telephone which didn’t require money for emergencies.  The theme of our conversation was deceptively simple:  “Above all, we must avoid another tow.”  As if there was some punitive unwritten law---three tows and you’re out. 

     Rob would never understand this, I thought, and realized there was no getting away from a heavy-duty man like Rob; he was there even when he wasn’t.          

     Eventually a policeman came by and warned us that the area would not be patrolled again, and though we’d resigned ourselves to using a fifth fuse to get the car inside the park so we could sleep there for the night, the patrolman put a new light on our situation: suddenly the fear of being attacked by roving bandits loomed larger than the fear of explaining to Rob about three tows in one day.       Alarmingly, all the other campers and cars were now leaving. 

     We looked at each other. Should we be towed again? 

     Apparently yes. 

     I made the call. 

     When tow truck number three arrived the man said, “You’ve got a key problem, eh?”

     “No,” I said.  “That’s not why we called.  It’s an engine problem--the car won’t run.”      

     “Then you’ve got two problems, lady.  The keys are locked inside.”

     As one we chorused, “They are?” 

     He led us back to our disaster-on-wheels and began to get out his chains and bars.  Sure enough, inside on the seat were the keys—proving there’s no mishap so bad I can’t make it a little worse. 

     As the Cad’s rear rose toward the heavens once more, we caught each other’s eyes and found none of us could speak; we were all cramming back laughter.  Not that the scene was funny.  But all the tow stuff was so damnably familiar, and three times in one day suddenly felt . . . well, kind of stupid.  Don’t ask me why, but stupid can seem comical.    

     I’m the one who exploded and ignited the others.  After that we couldn’t look at each other without gasping and turning red and holding our sides.  Even inside the cab we couldn’t stop, and never mind that the driver was as solemn as peat moss and kept throwing us sideways glances.  He must have thought we were drunk or on drugs, but his opinion didn’t slow us one whit.

     Squashed into our tight space, we barreled down the road, and despite our driver’s disapproving profile we threw out quips, until Carol cried, “Oh my God, the fuses.  I left them on top of the car.”  Which set us off again. 

     For an hour the three of us carried on, until even our man got into the spirit and offered a small joke. 

     Carol said, “Maralys, I’m never going anywhere with you again unless we leave in a tow truck.  And even then I’d insist on being followed by a back-up truck.” 

     “Maybe the truck people will take the car,” said Christy. 

     We kept wiping away our tears.  “You realize,” said Betty-Jo, “we’re now being towed in the wrong direction.  I just figured it out.  In one day we’ve been towed thirty miles forward and forty-one miles backward.”

     “Which translates,” I said, “into running up and down Highway 395 all day without ever getting more than 200 miles from home.”  All thoughts of the elusive hang gliding meet had finally dropped off our radar.    

     “Right,” said Carol.  “I’m about to inherit a Cadillac from my husband.  I intend to warn him---I’ll never accept a car whose range is only ten miles per fuse.” 

     “After it’s fixed,” I said, “my car won’t know how to behave.  From now on, the thing’s going to back up to the nearest big truck and stick its rear in the air and wait, like a chicken in heat.”

I never knew whether the tow truck driver considered us amusing or merely noisome, but for keeping him awake until eleven p.m. he charged us a hundred and twenty-five dollars. 

     Our driver found the Cadillac agency and then dropped us at a reasonably good motel in Ridgecrest, a town that we learned was built around a Naval weapons center.  Just as I was falling asleep Carol nudged me.  “I was just thinking . . . the Cad is closer to the ammunition dump than we are.  In case of a Soviet preemptive strike, I’ll be consoled knowing the car will blow up first.”

     A minute and a half later, she was nudging me again.  “Get up, Maralys, and call the Cadillac agency.” 

     “You mean it’s morning?” 

     “Eight-thirty,” she murmured, and fell back asleep.  I struggled to my feet and called the Cadillac people, who yes, had found our brown tow-truck accessory parked out front and who no, couldn’t look at it until after lunch. 

     Instantly I began to moan . . . that NBC was waiting for me in Carson City, expecting me to appear on TV.

     “Listen Lady,” an irritable voice, “my mechanic’s out today because he had to take his mother to the hospital with her lungs full of blood.”  He paused.  “Two days ago his house burned down.  You’re not the only one with problems.” 

     I quickly got off the phone.

     I relayed his message to the others, which only served to set us off again.  We weren’t normal anymore; our whole approach to life was sick.  But the Cad had done it to us.     

     We looked at our watches.  Nine o’clock, and only one meal since yesterday morning and we were all ravenous. But not one of us said, Let’s go eat.  Instead, to a man, we said, Let’s get over to the Cadillac agency and hover.

     So we did, with little Christy as sunny as ever, and found to our amazement that a mechanic was already sitting in our car.  But he wasn’t one of the clean-cut, well-spoken mechanics we’d come to expect.  This one had long, blond, stringy hair which hung over one eye, a pale mustache, and a struggling beard.  With the added fillip of an unfocused stare, he gave the impression he couldn’t be trusted to put air in the tires.  Our sense of his incompetence expanded as he spoke.  “An hour ago I took the car for a run,” he drawled.  “I thought I was gonna have to walk home.  It took four fuses to get out and five to get back,” which already spoke poorly of his I.Q.  Why would he keep going four fuses worth?   

     Knowing things were hopeless, we went off to breakfast.

     When Carol and I returned, the drawling incompetent said our car was fixed.  “All it was, was a wire burned on the exhaust pipe.  The wire was hanging down too low.”     

     Unconvinced, I almost blurted out something about the fuel pump.  Maybe that’s not a good idea. 

     Carol and I turned to each other with disbelieving looks.  This . . . this unlikely person couldn’t have fixed the car when two intelligent mechanics had failed.  Clearly we’d been mistaking a close shave for mechanical brilliance.  Yet this man insisted the car was fixed and the charge was only thirty dollars.

     Carol was still in a survival frame of mind.  When the man turned away, she whispered, “I don’t believe him,” and she bought eight more fuses “just in case.”  For Carol our trip had become a defining moment: a number of years later she admitted she’d kept fuses in her purse a full two years.

     We retrieved the car, discovering that the mechanic had left two Cadillac trouble-sheets and a giant Cadillac manual on the front seat.  With a gleam in her eye, Carol said, “I’m keeping them!  We may need them!”

     I said I thought they wouldn’t help much, they seemed to be written in Sanskrit.    
     So Carol trotted everything back to the fat man behind the service desk, who merely growled, “I’m gonna kill him!” meaning our miracle mechanic. 

     We didn’t wait to see that happen.  We hopped in the car and drove straight to Carson City. 

     At last we were there—with eight unused fuses.  I looked around the flying site but it seemed deserted.  With my three companions, I stood near what must have been the landing area, bewildered that the grassy field contained only one yellow folded kite.  Finally a lone, jump-suited pilot appeared.

     “Where is everybody?” I asked. 

     “Gone home,” he said, motioning toward the distant mountain—-surprisingly free of butterfly sails.       

     “But why?  Wasn’t the contest supposed to last two days?” I held my tall “Manbirds” sign, suddenly feeling like a supernumerary carrying a fake rubber spear, fooling nobody. 

     “We intended to fly today,” he said.  “But this morning the wind came from the wrong direction and blew us out.  No point in hanging around.”  He seemed to notice my sign for the first time.  “You came to sell books, I see.”

     “Yeah, I did.  My friends are keeping me company.” I introduced them and made a face.  “Looks like I don’t sell a hundred copies after all.” 

     The man glanced at the sign and smiled.  “I’ll buy one.”  Then he added, “I’ve read the reviews.    Make that two.” 

WHY WASN’T I CRUSHED, I wondered as Carol drove us home.  At first this had seemed like a vital trip, a chance to begin making my name as a writer.  Now I was headed away from the hang gliding meet I’d never quite reached, a dazzling opportunity that vanished like a trace of perfume  . . . and somehow it hardly mattered.  

     Thanks to Carol, Betty-Jo—-and yes, even Christy--I’d already had one of the most exhilarating trips of my life.  Selling books, I realized, could never compete with two solid days of hilarity. 

Like Christmas, it was an event that restored the soul . . . though Christmas, that year, would bring its own amazements.   

     Naively, I gazed at my private crystal ball and foresaw that literary fame would soon trump adventure.

     How was I to know the crystal ball was a fake?  

WHEN WE RETURNED HOME, Rob said, “You know why that wire burned out, don’t you?”

     “No.  Why?”

     “Your rear was so heavy it dragged down until the wire touched the exhaust pipe.” 

     “I hope you’re talking about the Cad,” I said.

     By then I’d decided the real heroine of the trip was tiny Christy, who hadn’t uttered the slightest    complaint through our whole crazy ordeal.  I said to her in profound gratitude, “Christy, you’ve been so good I’d happily take you anywhere.”

     Christy thought a moment.  Then she looked at me solemnly, her blue eyes bright and candid.  Without a hint of rancor she said, “Well, I won’t go anywhere with you!” 

A CLOWN IN THE TRUNK: Chapter One

CHAPTER   ONE

                       1981

THE LADIES’ ROAD TRIP

 

     WITH ENOUGH CHOCOLATES, I swear, you can persuade anyone to do anything.   

      Which is how I induced my friend, Carol, to accompany me on a trip she should have avoided like a meerkat avoids a hawk.  A few days before the trip, I’d laid a path of chocolates from her house to my car, and when she came out the front door there they were, soft-centered and chewy, snaking down the path and across the sidewalk, and stopping right at my passenger door.  “Of course after that,” she said, “I had to come.”  Carol is one of those women who would surrender her soul for the right two pieces of Sees candy. 

     But then, so would I. 

     The fact is, that fall of 1981, I needed Carol to travel with me to a neighboring state to sell my first published book, Manbirds: Hang Gliders and Hang Gliding. In spite of the excitement, the thrill of seeing my name on a jacket cover, the cracks an author could fall into were suddenly becoming evident.  Quite casually, someone at Prentice-Hall mentioned a fissure big enough to swallow a whole new career.     Mine.         

     Just as I came aboard, the publisher found itself without a publicist—-their promoter of retail sales.  If I didn’t become the book’s nursemaid, its chief advocate, its gung-ho salesman, who would?  

     Until then, I’d been a peanut butter mom and casual tennis player living with my husband, Rob, and the youngest  two of our six kids, both in their twenties, on a half acre in Southern California.  From the street our property looked normal enough: sun-faded shingles on a ranch-style house, and a row of overgrown junipers that held up obliging arms to shield Rob when he ventured out in his underwear. 

     But the backyard still sported trappings from a wondrous era: a double-decker bicycle propped against a tree (reminder of our first son, Bobby, no longer with us), and lengths of aluminum tubing once used to create hang gliders for Bobby and Chris, back when our two oldest boys were U.S. champions and swept us into that awe-inspiring sport.  I remembered those days constantly—both the excitement and the terrible way they ended. 

     Now our definition of “normal” had changed.  No longer following where our children led, no longer streaming in the wind as tails on their unpredictable kites, Rob and I sought new ways to find excitement . . . and he more than I, for he was a restless man who thrived on stimulation. 

     Which is why he seemed a natural, at first, for my book-selling trip—-though he hadn’t actually said he yearned to attend a hang gliding meet in Nevada.  
       “All those pilots I’ve profiled in Manbirds will be there,” I said.  As always, we plotted and dreamed at the breakfast table.  “I ought to go, don’t you think?” 

     “Maybe.”  Lawyerlike, he considered me over his coffee mug.  “Seems chancy to travel all the way to Carson City, just to sell a few copies.” 

     A few copies?

     “You may find, Babe, after expenses, it’s a loser.”  (He’d called me Babe for so long I doubted he could spell my name.  Or that I’d recognize it if I heard it.) 

     “Then you won’t come?” I said.          

     “Don’t think so.  But go if you want.  You don’t need me.”  Once more, he was turning me loose to grow up.    

     My psyche drooped.  But I can’t go alone. 

     And then I thought of Carol and dreamed up my chocolate ploy.  We’d been close friends and tennis partners for years, a bond strengthened in spurts by Carol’s quips and my fondness for startling humor.  I never knew what she was going to say.  But neither, I suspect, did she . . . else how could she have laughed as hard at her jokes as I did? 

     Ready to go without him, I imagined Rob was pathetically wrong about the Carson City event.  I calculated the number of books sold as closer to several cases, a hundred books at least. 

     Over the years our marriage has been like that: I nurture rosy images of literary success--generous spending to make a good book turn into a bestseller, a la Danielle Steele, whereas Rob sees my promotional efforts as the equivalent of a kid’s lemonade stand in the rain.    

CAROL AND I needed another woman—-and suddenly I thought of the ultimate good sport, our son’s wife, Betty-Jo.  Always the bright spark attached to Chris’s escapades, she’d climbed mountains to film his hang gliding, perched on rocks reading books while he flew.  “Will you go, Betty-Jo? And bring Christy?  Five is a perfect age for traveling.” 

     Two days later she said they’d both come.   

     “Great!” I cried.  “An all-girl road trip.  What could be more fun?  Talk about adventure.”     

     “But a hot adventure,” added Betty-Jo, who radiates warmth and looks like everybody’s idea of a classy PTA mom.  “We go through some real bake-oven country.  I’m glad we’re taking your new Cadillac.” 

     “Why would we take anything else?” I said.    

     IT WAS ONLY LATER, the night before the trip, that Rob said, “Don’t take the new Seville, Babe.”  We were out in front of our blue house, hidden behind Rob’s junipers, with suitcases and book boxes stacked nearby.  “You’re crazy to pack that pristine trunk with all those heavy books.  Put the hard miles on the station wagon.” 

     For a moment I just looked at him.  “You actually expect a bunch of women to set out in that station wagon?  With its two hundred and eighty thousand miles?  When I have a dependable car sitting right here in the driveway?”   

     “Why beat up a new car?” he said, and I just shook my head.  The excessive miles weren’t the wagon’s only problem.  The air conditioner blew only on the left side, the horn blew whenever it felt like it, and the engine sputtered and popped after you turned off the key.  Rob had everything backwards--as if we humans existed to serve our vehicles.  I glanced at my brown Cadillac.  “Rob, I’m taking the reliable car.  Okay?”    

      He shrugged.  “Suit yourself.”  

      Then, proving he was a decent guy, he got up at five the next morning, loaded my four boxes of weighty books into the trunk and handed in my “MANBIRDS” sign on its very long pole; the pole reached from the dashboard to the back ledge and effectively blocked both passenger doors.  He watched Carol crawl in under the sign.  “Call me from Carson City,” he said. “I expect you’ll be there about noon.” 

     WELL, SWEET RELIABLE TOOK us two hours from home, meaning part way up the steep grade to Victorville, before it abruptly and very quietly died.  All at once I pressed the pedal and nothing happened.  There was no noise.  No fanfare.  No last, gasping cough.  Just a silent end to everything.  A T.S. Eliot moment.  It seemed the car had suddenly lost its engine. 

     Astonished at my useless gas pedal and all that thundering quiet, I said to the others, “Can you believe this?  The car just quit!”  I barely muscled it to the left shoulder, and there we were, at a quarter-to-eight in the morning, three women and little Christy, standing by the side of the road with this dead machine and no idea what killed it.     

     “What do you think the problem is?” asked Carol.  She was very pretty—-dark, laughing eyes, short raven hair. 

     “I haven’t a clue,” I said.  “But I suppose we should look under the hood.”

     “That wouldn’t do ME any good,” said Betty-Jo.  “I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.”  Of course she spoke for all of us. 

     “Well,” I said, “at least we’d know if something was steaming . . . or smoking . . . or pouring out on the ground.”  

     “But we wouldn’t know what that something was,” said Carol, and I realized nobody had said we needed a man. 

      Still, there seemed little else to do, so the three of us took turns grappling near the hood.  At last I found the obscure latch, and with all of us heaving as one person we managed to hoist the lid into the air—-like raising a barn wall.                    

     After peering down into the pipe-and-wire tangle and ascertaining that no liquids were dripping and no hoses perceptibly parted, Carol recalled that neither had the panel of lights come on with any of those helpful red messages like, “Engine Tired.  About to Quit.”

     Just as we were closing the hood, a California Highway Patrol car pulled up behind us and the officer offered to call a tow truck.  We held a quick caucus—-three women, with Christy poking up between Betty-Jo’s legs—-and we made a decision.  “We think we’ll let the motor cool and try it again,” I said. 

     Which I did, and ground the starter until the battery died.  When the CHP officer came back to check on us--and thank God he did--Carol said, “We’ll take that tow truck now.”

     He drove off, and after a while a tow truck--presumably ours—-struggled to climb the freeway grade on the slow inside lane, its turn signals flashing hopefully in our direction.  Just as we knew for sure we’d be rescued, we realized the man was foolishly trying to outrun a Maseratti, which of course he couldn’t do climbing a grade in a two-ton truck.  We turned as one to watch him flash by, still three lanes away, and    disappear up the hill.

     Betty-Jo said, “That was sure dumb!”

     Carol said, “Do we really want to be towed by anyone that stupid?” 

     “Maybe not,” I said, suddenly grateful I wasn’t in this alone.  With them standing beside me, this setback had a different feel, like a minor crisis in a light-hearted play. 

     About then the CHP officer returned; he was beginning to look like family.  He, too, was disgusted and said he’d call a different tow company. 

     Not long afterwards a second tow truck arrived and lifted my ailing Cad by its tail.  Soon, with all of us in the truck’s cab (Carol pressed against the driver’s thigh and Christy on Carol’s lap and Betty-Jo on the front edge of the seat between my knees), five of us rode like desperate hitchhikers to the Cadillac dealership in Victorville.

     The first thing the head mechanic said was, “We don’t have time to deal with your car.  Our mechanics and our racks are all busy.”

     All busy?  At eight-thirty in the morning? 

     Carol and Betty-Jo and Christy and I went to the waiting room for what would become a familiar conference.  We were all starving.  But our combined intelligence told us it would be folly to go off and eat.  “Let’s go back to the service area,” Carol said with a wicked grin, “and hover.  If we annoy them enough, they might find a way to get to our car.”

     I smiled down at tiny, tow-headed Christy.  “Do you suppose if I pinch her she’ll cry a few tears?”

     Christy looked up.  “Why would you pinch me, Grandma?”

     “Never mind, honey, I won’t,” I said, and we all hung over the nearest mechanic and it worked.  To get rid of three lurking females and a small, wide-eyed child, they lifted the hood and began studying the  insides  in earnest.  With that much progress, the four of us went to Wendy’s for a late breakfast, little dreaming this would be our last meal of the day. 

     An hour later, a confident mechanic told us we’d blown a fuse (now replaced) and the cause of the blown fuse was probably a failing fuel pump (not replaced).  He was an intelligent-looking fellow, neat haircut, alert expression.  In all seriousness, he also explained that if the problem was indeed the fuel pump and it happened again, we had only to wait by the side of the road thirty minutes to let it cool and our car would start immediately. 

     We realized later that he’d done a bit of play-acting equal to ours, at the very least concocting a scenario based entirely on our womanly ignorance of auto mechanics.  But he did succeed in getting rid of us.      

Cheerfully, we sailed out of the Cadillac dealership in our good-looking brown car and returned to Highway 395.

     It was now obvious I’d be getting to the hang gliding meet well after noon, meaning I could only hope that the pilots would fly until late that day---and all the next day.  Without the competitors, the trip had absolutely no purpose.  As we rocketed up the highway toward Carson City, I prepared myself mentally for some intense and truncated book selling. 

      As Betty-Jo took a turn and drove, I could see heat rising in shimmering waves from the pavement.  Thank the fates, I thought, for competent mechanics and reliable air-conditioning and a lovely, restored Cadillac.      

     My superstitious self should have known better than to offer premature thanks to anyone—-still miles from Carson City.  Suddenly the car, as it had done before, went ominously quiet.      

     I stared out the window in disbelief.  Why hadn’t I learned my lesson . . . you never thank Lady Fate in   advance.  She’ll find a way to yank your chain, just to prove she’s still in charge.