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Show PAGE 10 THE ZEPHYR AUGUST 89 3 Black Bears , Smog , and the Tijuana Jail still young and stupid" in the summer of 69 by Jim Stiles Katherine (Kitten) SeglsmontL They Tynes. and his relatives Henry and Mary home with a red tile roof and orange lived In a very stylish Spanlsh-ety- le trees (orange trees!) growing right there In the front yard! And behind an detest exclamation eight foot cedar fence, an Olympic sized pool! (I really to this. place In 1969, marks except In dialogues, but coming from Kentucky an I Is Justified.) Horn player In the L A. ' Henry was a brilliant musician, first French Henry Philharmonic, and a studio musician for a variety of performers. Mandril was he the most Henry thought professional, thought Sinatra was the but liked he the them raunchiest, cheapest He considered Jefferson Airplane hour. the and time lot of killed a by Henry got paid best because they Henry was also Italian, and he loved to make elaborate pasta dishes. Night after night, Tynes and I ate enormous meals while Henry and Uncle Rex gave us tips on gambling. Uncle Rex gave us advice about slot machines. "Always hit them on the fly, boys. On the fly. Don't hunker down on one machine and pour your blood Into it Walk the aisles until you see one that feels right They took us to the horse races at Los AlamRos, where Tynes and I had a foolproof technique for winning. Every Arne Henry won, he gave us half his profits; every time his horse finished out of the money, he ate the loss. "Henry, I asked, "dont you want some of our winnings back? "HI make It up the next Arne Jefferson "Forget It," Henry winked. records. Airplane Ifi hard for me to believe that It all happened eo long ago; yet even In the golden summer of 1969, my friend Tynas and I referred to our then, Journey out West as "The Big Trip." We somehow knew that In the years and decades to come, we might travel farther, we might experience grander and greater views, but we would never again quite capture the feeling of that adventure. Aldo Leopold had once said: am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young In. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map? To which, Terry Russell added In 1965: "Adventure Is not In the guidebook, and Beauty Is not on the map. Seek and ye shall find. With those words of wisdom etched deeply In our young and untested souls, we set out to find those blank spots, and a few busy ones as well always trying to find a balance. And a contrast July 1969. Armstrong and Aldrin, Chappaquldlck, Charles Manson and Woodstock, all names that were about to become a part of the lexicon of the 60s, lay Just over the horizon. Farther ahead we could not even envision And Watergate, VCRs and MTV, personal computers and call forwarding. President Ronald Reagan. All of that waited In the future. But for now, on this glorious first day of July, It was time to push farther West 1 We didn't know who we were. We dldnt know what we cfld. We were Just On the road. After a few days by the pool, Tynes decided It was Arne to search for his friend, McMurphy. Apparently McMurphy (who Id never met) had gone AWOL from file Air Force, and for some reason Tynes was convinced wed find him In the Tijuana JalL So we headed for Mexico. To this day, I dont know how we found that JalL Neither of us spoke Spanish, we couldn't read the signs,' and Tynes Is fairly Incoherent even speaking English. But somehow, through sign language and an unwavering determlnafion to find his buddy, Tynes weaved his way through the crowded i Franzen finally got an early start, and left Grand Canyon by 7 ajn. I was on my way to LA, to rendezvous once again with my friend fynes In a suburb called La Canada. As I was gassing up the car, a bald headed Hare Krishna-typ- e approached and asked me for a ride. There wasn't a lot of room but his pleading persuasive powers ruled the day. He was Just telling me about the good Karma he brings to people he meets, when my left rear tire blew to shreds, about ten miles from Rt 66. The spare In the trunk was under everything I'd brought along, so I piled my belongings beside the car and pulled out the Jack and extra tire. Finally I asked my hitchhiking buddy If he would get out of the car so I could Jack It upi "Cant you Jack It up with me In It?" he asked. I was beginning to feel like a redneck all over again, and my eyes must have revealed It So he grudgingly climbed out and found a I . ; place In the shade to rest When the new tire was In place, Hari got back In and we turned west toward California and the Golden Coast We got about sixty miles when a second tire blew, Just west of Sellgman. My buddy, sensing my bad Karma (I guess even his powers couldn't help me), decided to take off on his own, leaving me alone with two flats In withering 100 degree heat I lugged the two tires back to town, rolling them when I could. But each Hme I tried, they'd roll In opposite directions and kept bouncing down embankments, or Into oncoming traffic. Once, one of my prized wire wheels truck but emerged without a scratch. passed directly beneath an Well, who knows? Maybe some of Hart's good Karma rubbed off after alL I got the tires fixed and by 2 pja was on my way. I crossed the Colorado River Bridge out of Arizona and Into Needles, California. Lovely Needles. Gateway to the land of plenty. The thermometer at the local bank read 113 degrees, but Im sure It was much closer to about 180 or 190 degrees. Perhaps already delirious from the heat, I decided to take down the convertible top, to better facilitate the cooling process and promote better air conditioning within the vehicle's Interior. I roared Into the Mojave Desert, which appeared now distorted and twisted by shimmering transparent vertical waves of heat rising from the sun baked floor. The top was down, my shirt off, no hat, and as I recall, I was puffing on a cheap Rol-T- an cigar. If this wasn't better than staying home, working as a Janitor at Colonel Quicks Tuxedo Rental, I didnt know what was. This. I said to myself, was living. However, somewhere a few miles east of Baker and Yetmo, something strange At first, I felt Just a little fight headed, no doubt started to occur. caused by the euphoric cf my sttusfion. But then I noticed that the very 18-wh- eel colors of the landscape around me were changing. Changing drastically. It was Hke looking at the negative Image of a color photograph. When I found myself searching for shade by driving beneath a fast moving truck trailer, I came to my senses long enough to pud over under a concrete overpass. The heat was making me crazy. The sun was Bterally frying my brain. I was being shaked and baked on the Great Mojave Desert. In the shade of the overpass, I drank a quart of water and walted for my It finally did, and after raising the roof, I vision to return to normaL took off again. Somewhere near San Bernardino, I lost sight of the sun and blue sky and all things clean and unpolluted, and descended by stages Into the grim, gray quagmire of the Los Angeles Basin. I got caught In a wave of mechanized humanity (an absolute contradiction In terms), thousands of angry frustrated human hornets locked Inside their contraptions, which swept me a long the, freeway for mile after mile. We were all moving at breakneck speed, but we were barely moving at all, relative to each other. I grew accustomed to the sullen faces around me as we headed west to Ground Zero. I watched the names of towns that I roared past with my fellow swarm. like Cucamonga (I could say that name all day), Ontario Names that I knew (home of the Ontario Speedway), Whittier (home of Richard Mllthaus Nixon), on to Pomona, West Covina, Alhambra. Suddenly I aaw the Rosemead Blvd. turnoff, and rolled eight lanes to reach the exit An hour later, after a few wrong turns, I found La Canada, Uinta Avenue, streets, around Tijuana taxis, and spray painted Zebraburrow; and somehow we found ourselves In front of the local JalL Tynes was worried we wouldn't be able to get In. I was worried about At the next getting out The guard outside let us through the gate. checkpoint, we were again allowed to pass through. We kept getting forther from daylight as we headed down a long dark damp hallway. The walls were made of stone. Each ten feet or so, on both sides of ths corridor were small barred windows. And behind the steel bars, peering out haunttngly from behind them were . children? Was It possible? But I remember the young faces of boys that could not have been older than twelve or thirteen. They looked bored more than anything else. What was tt like, I wondered, to be twelve, and already living without hope? We came to the edge of "the tank," a large square room, dimly fit by a few bare Incandescent lights and a skylight that loomed far overhead. Cells of various sizes lined the perimeter of the room. An undescribably grimy cracked concrete floor sloped from all sides to a central drain In the center of the room the Tijuana lavatory. I had to wait outside, but an officer let Tynes In the tank to look for McMurphy. He walked from cell to cell, peering Inside each one for his He returned, looking friend. "Lets get out of pale and a little shaken. here, Tynes muttered. We bought a bottle of cheap tequila and crossed the border again. But Tynea was not ready to give up. We turned right on U. S. 80 from San Diego and drove east. From Tecate Divide at 4000 feet, we plunged Into the Imperial Valley and El Centro, which les below sea leveL the Even at 10 temperature became stifling. And the bugs. We were In a hailstorm pjil, of bugs. fhut off the engine and was trying to set a new coasting record, starting swerving all over the road. "What are you doing? I yelled. "Trying to dodge em," he explained. of dasperafion, Tynes made a big mistake. He turned on Heil,ul,nn URmW bugs. It was horrible. I pointed out to Tynes was zero. But he coufcdnt hear me; he was hanging toyjng to see the road and taking It directly In the face from all those oncoming Insects. to H Centro, I helped scrape . y 0 car bugs off Tynes battered mug and Tb ne3rt day, we crossed Into Mexico again, to Mexican, w couU not find McMurphy. Finally, Tynes gave up. We came to Bjt border at crossing Calexico, where a border patrol officer . W U, f1 ' lll (,'U |