ON THE ROAD

I'm on the road again rolling south through California on my way to LA My dad flies into LAX from Florida tomorrow for his cancer treatment and I will pick him up along with my brother who is also flying in from Sacramento I drove today from my brother's house in Chico and am now holed up in a $40 room at the Super 8 near Bakersfield I can hear the dull whoosh of I-5 through the drawn curtains and it smells like perfumed cleaners in the room but it's safe and comfy enough for the night As I roar down the highway I listen to On the Road the cult classic of travel writing by Jack Kerouac although I wonder if that's his real name since in the book he's called Sal Paradise So which is it I really don't know but I do know because it said so in the introduction that he wrote the entire book on one scroll of paper one long paragraph without punctuation like this one that I'm writing now for a lark really just to play with the words and with your head After church in Chico this morning I headed south toward Sacramento through Marysville where I past the big pond with all the ducks and duck poop that my children and I used to walk around when we visited Aunt Margie and Uncle Wayne in nearby Yuba City Then down into the great central valley past dull industrial towns like Lodi where I didn't get stuck but did give a panhandler $5 for burgers at the McDonalds where I'd stopped to pee and Stockton Modesto and Fresno I wondered whatever happened to my friends Sandy and Carlos who moved to Modesto years ago and disappeared and as I passed Atwater I pulled up the few memories I have of living there for a few months when I was seven And then I was past the towns and driving through a low-lying fog that reminded me of Brother Child's talk at church about how he used to live in this San Joaquin valley and one day took off in his little airplane into a fog so thick he couldn't see the line on the runway and how once in the air flying blind and regretting his stupidity he had to choose between trusting the altimeter which indicated he was banking sharply right or his body which felt perfectly upright and how that's often the choice because Spirit and sense rarely share the same air Long miles ahead blue sky beckoned and I followed the power lines hundreds of them marching parallel to the road like little Eiffel towers all lined up on the shelf of a Paris souvenir shop cows bunched beneath them or sometimes sheep The hills were green with exuberant new grass blades of glory that didn't know they were recycled and simply gleamed with joy to be alive Then the hills flattened out and the road stretched on and on one long thin line in the middle of flat fields that you'd call barren if you didn't know that much of your food comes from this vast valley Dark green groves of orange trees on either side of me thick glossy and round and speckled with bright fruit Other orchards with winter-stripped limbs appeared stretching in perfect rows into infinity One kind of tree figs perhaps with thick knobby branches and top-chopped crewcuts looked like inverted pyramids stuck on trunks I laughed at sight of them and deemed them my favorite There are no towns or cities really in this long stretch of highway just makeshift oases at certain exits with gas stations and cheap motels and fast food That's where I am now and can only expect to meet other transients on my evening walk past Denny's and Motel 6 and Chevron We're all huddled on a wire for the night heads tucked warily beneath weary wings and the hum of the highway constant and alluring