The morning began with another little concert for Danny's Uncle Jim, who is no mean guitarist himself, though he favors the blues over "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "Go Tell Aunt Rhody." Cousin Amanda joined in on a pink plastic Stratocaster. We thanked Jim and Cindy for their ever-generous hospitality, loaded the car, and took off.
We usually visit our friends Danny and Nicole and their kids in Berkeley when we're in the Bay Area, but they haven't responded to phone messages or e-mails, so they're probably out of town. But for the Great American Road Trip, we felt we simply had to pay a call on the other "city by the bay."
On our way west, Debbie read a California guide book until she fell asleep, which was not hard to do on such a warm day. For the boys, it was Mad Libs and a game of checkers, which was played according to their own inexplicable rules and which ended up scattering pieces all over the car.
There was a massive backup in Oakland at the approach to the Bay Bridge, but it cleared as soon as we passed the toll plaza. What could be bringing so many people into San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon? Our first guess was simply tourism and the delightful coolness of the peninsula, a blessed respite from the infernal San Joaquin Valley heat. But when we saw the giant pink triangle on a hill and ran into a roadblock as we approached Market Street, it hit us: the Gay Pride Parade!
We watched the last half hour of festivities and then had lunch at Mel's Diner. I asked Tommy if he understood what kind of parade it was. "A political one?" he asked. He'd seen the Bush-bashing banners and floats (our favorite sign: "Ban marriage between church and state").
"In a way," I answered. "Do you know what a homosexual is?" He did. "Well," I said, "these people feel that a person should have the right to love and marry any other adult, regardless of his or her sex, and that they shouldn't be discriminated against." "Sounds good to me," Tommy said. "Me, too," Danny chimed in.
After lunch, we rode the Powell Street cable car all the way from Market Street to Fisherman's Wharf. The brakeman/conductor was a jovial fellow who refused my offer to pay him for our ride - primarily, it seems, because Tommy asked him if there were a restroom on the tram. The man laughed and told us that this was the first time anyone had asked him such a question in over fifteen years of operating a cable car.
Our search for toilets intensified at Fisherman's Wharf, where the only public facilities were closed for cleaning, but they finally reopened, much to our boys' relief. We then took in the view of Alcatraz Island, myriad boats and ships, Coit Tower, and the city skyline. The Golden Gate Bridge was shrouded in fog. Tourist touts and street performers were out in force.
We looked at the USS Pampanito, a World War II submarine, which is moored next to the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, a Liberty Ship, but the boys soon discovered the adjacent Musée Mécanique, a collection of hundreds of functioning antique coin-operated amusement devices that quickly ingested all of our quarters.
The cable cars were packed, so we rode a bus from North Beach through Chinatown and back to our car, then left for Southern California, recrossing the Bay Bridge. The bridge requires no toll for eastbound traffic, so the crossing was fast and free.
To reach Interstate 5, we drove over hills covered in golden grass. At the crests of these hills stood the whirling white blades of wind-farms, hundreds of electricity-generating windmills arrayed in long rows.
The boys amused themselves with a computer game called
Fate until the computer's battery was exhausted. Debbie then played a book on tape for the boys, one of her childhood favorites:
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg. This was an appropriate book for a number of reasons: it's about two siblings who take a trip to New York City, the boy in the story is the same age as Tommy, and they hide out in a place - The Metropolitan Museum of Art - that we can visit this summer. I asked Tommy if he'd like to go there, and he immediately replied, "Of course."
We also talked about one of my favorite films,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the climactic scene of which takes place at Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming. The boys wanted to know what a close encounter is and why there are three kinds of them. I explained that there were three ways that we might contact aliens: sighting UFOs, finding physical evidence, and meeting them, though I don't believe any of these things have happened. This nevertheless seemed to capture Tommy's imagination, since he loves to draw and speculate about aliens. He tells us he wants to be an exobiologist. The boys decided they were very much interested in seeing both the movie and the real place, so we put them on our itinerary.
Gas was still only $2.97 a gallon in Lost Hills, one of the many middle-of-nowhere oases that dot I-5's dead-straight route, offering gas, food, lodging, and, most importantly, toilets. Visiting any one of them - Santa Nella, Kettleman City, Grapevine - brings back memories of the many times I made this trip with my family when I was young.
My father was also named Thomas, as were four generations of fathers before him. He was born in Los Angeles and got his degrees in civil and aeronautical engineering from Caltech, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, a suburb of L.A. He worked for the Boeing Company in Seattle, where he met my mother, but they relocated to Southern California when I was only a year old. We occasionally returned to Seattle on vacation, and my father was forced to move us back there to save his job when I was in high school and the cancellation of the Supersonic Transport project put Boeing into a tailspin. He finally returned to work in the L.A. area, retired there, and passed away in 1995.
My mother Mid and sister Peggy Sue, a corporate communications consultant, still live in Pasadena and Altadena, and we visit them every year at Christmastime. Peggy and her boyfriend Bradley live in the house we grew up in.
At around midnight we made it to Altadena, which is nestled at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Peggy was still up, and she welcomed us as we carried our sleeping boys to their bed.
