Busted flat in San Jose, about to miss my plane. I was feeling nearly as faded as my jeans.
Well, we hadn’t exactly busted flat, but from the driver’s shop-talk lingo, I couldn’t tell exactly how our car had gone from 75 to zero miles per hour on the old Highway-17 North. I was, however, feeling in the same state as my pants – neither of us had met a bar of soap in the last two and half weeks. So I figured I had perfect rights in belting out one of Janis Joplin’s hits and, of course, adding my own personal touch.
The 17 doesn’t run exactly through the most populated areas of Northern California. We were frankly in the middle of nowhere. For the past little while I had been living on one of those oversized trampolines in a friend’s backyard in Santa Cruz while finishing a general education requirement I had neglected before transferring to UCLA.
But a lack of showers and a stereo wears hard upon the simple university student, and through the convenience of modern day transportation and my parents’ kindness, I was being offered an escape. An escape whose prospects were rapidly dimming as I realized that with only a tiny wad of ones in my pocket, an uncharged cell phone and no time to spare, the only logical thing I could do was sit down on the roadside and sign my heart out over the rush of afternoon traffic.
Much to the pleasure or annoyance of the driver who was pacing up and down the length of the burnt out, green Saturn, I did. By the look on his face, it seemed as if my voice was only tragically reenacting the recent death of his car, but it was somewhere in between the first verse and chorus that I had an ah ha!
“Ah ha!” It caught his attention, well, mildly.
“Your phone works now?” He looked so hopeful, but, silly boy, it was a miracle that my phone hadn’t worked. Otherwise I wouldn’t have channeled such a great side-of-the-highway wisdom tidbit.
“Nope. But listen. Remember when summers were just nonstop noise? Remember when school would let out and it was just rock ’n’ roll all the way to September?” He looked at me a little disappointed. Perhaps we had had different childhoods.
“Um, I guess.”
“Well, that’s all coming to an end now. I mean, pretty soon we’ll have degrees and 40-hour weeks, and we’ll be easy-listening addicts just to cope with 5 o’clock traffic.” The guy was obviously unready for facts; he resumed his pacing, and I resumed with the second verse.
But you know, soon enough everyone comes around. He certainly couldn’t pace himself out of the situation. We plopped ourselves in the adjacent field, hung long pieces of straw from our lips and proceeded to read aloud from Billie Holiday’s autobiography, “Lady Sings the Blues,” in near screams in competition with the loud cars racing only 10 feet away from our toes.
After a lifetime of always knowing where the next year leads, of always knowing that such-and- such essay will be due on such-and-such day, that such-and-such road will lead to such-and-such destination, that such-and-such major will shoot us off into such-and-such career, it felt plain good not to have any idea where I was, where I was going, or how I would get there.
Because, baby, freedom ain’t nothing but another word for nothing left to lose, and with my homeward plane flying somewhere far over my head, I think I knew what that wild-haired hippie girl was talking about. Oh, come September I’ll get back on track. I’ll eventually catch that plane. But until then, may your summer be an endless escapade with the right background music, of course.
Since trampolines don’t have mailing addresses, e-mail Glass at eglass@mail.media.ucla.edu.