He was my teenage friend; part of the gang that hung out together on the playground to play softball (and talk to girls) at Burbank Elementary in the summers. That tradition started as younger teens and continued into the car years. Gary and I would go to the drags at Lyon’s Dragstrip and end up in the pits with the nitro fumes and the rubber smoke. He knew people there, and was friends with a guy who drove a *very* fast 1955 Chevy. Gary was an easy-going guy who, with his mop of blonde hair, looked like a California surfer dude, but he was pure motorhead. I had a cool car, a 55 Chevy with a small-block (283 cubic inches) V-8 and a Hearst floor shift. He had a cooler car; a 57 Chevy retrofitted with a big-block (348 cubic inches) V-8, with three two-barrel carburetors and a four-speed. It was a beast. His rear tires were always bald. We hung out together and listened to the car radio and talked cars. The last time I saw Gary I didn’t know it would be the last time. It was before I went away to the Army. When I came home on leave I went to see him again. He lived upstairs in the house behind the house, like the old neighborhoods are full of in Southern California. Convert your detached garage into living space and rent it, or build out a second floor with apartments above the garage and rent them out. It was after midnight when I decided to go see Gary, but that wasn’t unusual. Before I went in the Army I always got off work late. I’d close the gas station at midnight and, still wound-up from work, I’d go find someone to hang out with for a while before going home to bed. So this night I walked quietly down the drive past the house in front. I climbed the wooden stairs and walked the outdoor balcony down to his bedroom window. I called his name (in a loud whisper so I would only wake him) but he didn’t wake up. That wasn’t unusual. He was a heavy sleeper. Sometimes I had to climb inside and shake him awake. I tried to open the window but he had it blocked with something. It only opened part way. That wasn’t right. I called more, but he just wouldn’t wake up. I had to give up and walk away, disappointed I didn’t get to say hi to him. When I was halfway down the driveway, a man’s voice called out from the window I’d been trying to get in. “Who are you and what do you want?” Oh shit! Gary doesn’t live there anymore! I tried to climb into someone’s bedroom window. I could have been inside a stranger’s bedroom shaking him awake! I explained and apologized as best I could from halfway down the driveway. I am so lucky that whole thing didn’t turn out terrible. I never found out where Gary Scow moved to; never saw or heard of him again.
Pretty soon
Pretty soon we’ll take another trip. Then I can quit reminiscing for a while, and write about where we are and what we’re doing again. Next up is a trip to Corpus on Sunday in the bus. The Big Day is on Monday, so I may be quiet that day, but surely by Tuesday I’ll have plenty to say about how many birds we saw in one day!
The Cyclone Racer
A classic wooden coaster. Side-by-side tracks with cars on each. Every ride was a race against the other train of cars. An imposing first drop. I could barely get Judy to ride it, but once I got her on it I couldn’t get her off it. She loved/hated/loved it. The coolest roller coaster on the planet. The Cyclone Racer was located at the Pike. The Pike was built in 1902
The Pike had the Cyclone Racer, Tilt-a-Whirl, The Rotor, bumper cars, a double ferris wheel, a diving bell with sharks, U-drive-em boats, pinball arcades, house of mirrors, tunnel of love, funhouse, saltwater taffy and cotton candy. There were horse racing games, squirt guns and bb guns, and The Plunge. There was that apparatus you hit with a sledge hammer to ring the bell. (It looks like you have to be really strong to do it, but it turns out you just need a smooth rhythm with the hammer and even a skinny teenage kid like me can do it.) Fun for all ages. The Pike was first a place where families could take kids, our parents took us there, but later it devolved into an unsavory collection of shops, arcades, and characters that we were forbidden to visit as teenagers. As a teenager it was one of my favorite places. It remains the only place I have ever been arrested and jailed. (A cascade of poor decisions on my part, in the middle of the night long after all the attractions at the Pike were closed, resulted in a night spent in the drunk tank.) Am I right, Cousin Ed? (Honorable mention, but no thanks, to an older brother who had advised a younger me that if I was going to drink, drink Vodka, because cops can’t smell vodka on your breath.) (Although ironically, it would be that same brother I called in the wee hours of the next morning to come bail me out, not realizing that cousin Ed had spent the whole night downstairs in the police station waiting for me.) Right up the road from the Pike was The Plunge.
The Plunge was special. It was a giant indoor salt-water pool right next to the ocean. It had a fountain you could climb up on without getting in trouble! One of the great achievements of my youth; getting big enough to make that climb. Dog whistle pitch
When I was young, I used to be able to mimic a dog whistle. I discovered that if I blew air just right between my top teeth and bottom lip, I could make the sound. It’s that high-pitched whistle that only dogs are supposed to be able to hear, but I could just hear it. I already had a dog whistle to help train my Samoyed dog Queen. You could blow it to produce a lower audible pitch, then turn a knob which would drive the pitch up out of range; so I recognized the sound a dog whistle made right at the edge of human hearing. It was a subtle thing, and inconspicuous; it didn’t take much effort to produce. It’s a hard sound to locate, so it helped me pass the time in High School classes watching other students frown and look around for the source of that annoying noise. I don’t know if I ever told anyone about my talent. After a few years though, that talent faded and I went on to other things; my dog-whistle career over. Fast forward to now though. Walking in the woods the other day with my fancy new birding ears headset on, enjoying all the bird and bug sounds I have been missing for all these years, I suddenly thought of that dog-whistle sound. Could it be? I gave it a try. Yes! All these years I thought the dog-whistle was gone, it was *me* that was gone! I still have it!
The doctor may have been right
I’m taking the antibiotics and I *am* feeling better. I’ve got a little appetite and the weight free-fall has stabilized. I wouldn’t mind continuing to weigh in the 150s, but I’ll probably gain my weight back now that I’m eating again. In fact, I felt better enough yesterday to tackle a small motorhome project. I had gotten the wrong bay door pistons that hold up a couple of the outside bay doors when I open them. The pistons were way too stiff, and I could hardly get the doors closed. I had ordered new ones, but they didn’t get delivered before we left on our Arizona trip, so they’ve just been sitting here at the house waiting to get installed. All I had to do was figure out how the end-clips worked. I had heard it was easy. It didn’t take long before I was stumped. I could almost see how the clip worked, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it stay open. I’m an analytical guy though, and I don’t stay stumped for long. I knew exactly what to do in a situation like this. I called my brother Tom. Tom knew. He explained how the latch worked. I was trying to figure it out by looking at the new piston that wasn’t already attached to the door, and figure out how to get the latch to stay open, but it turns out that one doesn’t even need to be opened. All a person has to do is get the spring-loaded snap on the old piston to open just enough to allow the end fitting to snap off the ball it’s mounted to. Once the old piston is off, the new piston just pops on, no problem. So, mission accomplished. I did something. Now I’m working on getting all the bugs scrubbed off the front of the bus. If you get them at the end of every day, while they’re still soft, they come right off with a soft brush and a bucket of water. We came back from our last trip, parked the bus, and just collapsed though, so now a couple weeks later the bugs have “matured”, and are immune to the soft brush and water. They come off one at a time with a non-abrasive scrubber and a bucket of water. It’s not one for one; one scrub, one bug either. One bug at a time, and maybe many scrubs for each bug. A significant time investment. Lesson learned. Again. No matter what, scrub the bugs off every day or pay the price. The house is habitable again so we moved back in last night. That whole experience was so terrible. The pest control guy is so enthusiastic that he had to describe every step. When he came out with fifteen pounds of possum in a bag, he announced that as bad as it smelled, he figured the whole possum would be liquefied, but it was only dripping from the anus. AAAGGGHHH. “Did we want to see it?” AAAAGGGHHHH GAG GAG GAG. No thank you, please.