August 12, 2008 – 12:52 pm
The cruise control grabbed 79 mph as me and Hammy pushed north past one million cows flanking the highway through Coalinga. We gave a shout to our boy Jeffrey Michael doing a life sentence at Pleasant Valley State Prison five miles back. Could there be a more ironic title for the most overcrowded prison in California?
I drove the whole way through the heat. We pulled into Novato and got a small bottle of The Goose. Mixed with Mandarin orange Jarritos and Squirt and a generous load of ice we slept before sunset. The next morning we rose early and worked near the McNear brick factory in Peacock Gap on the waterfront. Berkeley smiled from across the bay. After work, Hammy made an impulsive steer south towards Sausalito. He pointed to the fishing rods in his truck bed. A box of squid and I was pulling a 50 pound stingray towards the rocks as the gathering crowd cheered.
My mother picked me up in Novato and it was a long hug because I haven’t seen Joanne in eight months. Sliding through Santa Rosa my Nana joined us for a glass of wine at Traverso’s deli. We arrived at her house near Montgomery Village where she’s lived for fifty years to find her submersed in a mid-day nap. Nana is ninety-one years old. Brunson was pouring his VERGE label at the deli and I knew Nana would be psyched to see Bill Traverso. Nana’s two favorite words ‘free wine’ made her rocket out of bed and apply make-up. Within a half an hour we were sipping Mike’s phenomenal Syrah.
Tia and Enrique’s ranch-style home overlooking Rincon Valley reminds me of Tuscany. We BBQ’ed a tri-tip with garlic bread and stood slack-jawed watching all the blues and oranges and human sea of tai-chi masters that was the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.
Mike and Gayle Brunson brought a surprise to my uncle Lee and auntie Susie’s home off University Ave in Healdsburg. The porch light was out when I answered the door bell and I saw someone behind my friends and I actually extended my handshake to introduce myself. My old pal Darren Moffet appeared from the shadows and I pulled him in for a bear hug as I haven’t seen the guy in fourteen years. He is the mechanic out at Lake Sonoma. Shaggy hair and smiling eyes the guy hasn’t aged a bit even though you’d thinking climbing El Capitan’ three or four times would add a few lines to the face.
We connected from Healdsburg by way of Knight’s Valley and this is where the landscape towards I-5 is impressive. I couldn’t help thinking about how much I wished Jeff could escape his ‘Pleasant Valley’ for this one. The true heart of the wine country seen adorning the cover of Sunset magazine and Bon Appetit’, there’s a reason Joe Montana and Robin Williams live there. The valley looks like the Led Zeppelin album ‘Houses Of The Holy’ sounds.
Mom knows all the speed traps after numerous drives from Portland to Santa Rosa and she cruised past drivers speaking with CHPs on the road’s shoulder. I slept an hour or so and we let her old black lab Betty out for a piss at a rest stop. I did the driving North of Redding as that highway carved through mountains and over Clear Lake. Mt. Shasta is bald without snow. Safe as summer we drove over the mountains at the Oregon border. The sign welcomes but the winter punishes a vehicle without chains.
Roseburg, Eugene, then Portland traffic. Every major city has it now, I guess. I saw my twin nieces Lucy and Lyra and my sister Colleen and my bro-in-law Josh and my cousin Catherine. And yesterday I bathed in the sun in Yvonne and Trevor’s Oregon Country Farm backyard. And for two nights now I’ve slept over ten hours.
Some say when she’s alone my Nana is heard speaking with relatives from the past. A brother who died in The War and her aunts and co-workers who passed decades ago, even her ex-husband, the grandfather I never met. She repeatedly asked me about my tattoos and commented on their beauty. She’s now more in tune with children and birds and (my cousin) Cristina’s small dog Clayton who lives with Nana and her Fijian caregiver Soco.
Nana is blunt when she speaks her mind at the most inappropriate times and there’s morphine for the pain of two broken arms in that last two years; her only stays in the hospital since bearing children in her twenties. I laid next to her for five or ten minutes as she awoke that day for the wine tasting. She double blinked, clarity still twinkling from her Irish/German eyes. And the words she spoke to me were carried over from her dream she said. Nana said someone unknown to her wanted to tell me something from the other side. She said I should ‘pay attention to everything’…
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