Day Twenty-Six (Thursday, July 22 1971)

Jocko and Antonio were decent stock. They liked to chitchat about travel, towns, sports, and music. They marveled at the trip we were taking and asked about its delights and foibles. Jocko even knew how many states he had—38. Ten year-old Jose was a wise ass, but Antonio, tattoos and all, was a loving dad to his son. He and his boss, Jocko, had been doing this for six years.

“We look for help in each new town and hire on the spot. That makes more sense than to take another guy on the road,” Jocko explained as we finished up.

I liked the idea of being inside a private house in California. It gave vibrations of being “on the inside looking out” rather than the other way around. The owners were coming from Joplin, Missouri.

Twenty dollars each was major; it increased our coffers by about a fifth. It was almost like being a millionaire. It was a profitable side- spree. Jocko dropped Otto and me off in Santa Clarita near I-5. I picked out a splashy restaurant that had open courtyards and palm trees next to its tables. I ate steak and eggs with hash browns, pancakes, and fruit salad, served on a heavy square plate, and drank chocolate milk. Otto ate steak and eggs and ordered “muffin mania,” intended for families. He ate six.

“Check out the bathrooms, Roger. It’s like you’re walkin’ through a rain forest. The walls are dark blue and the mirrors are curvy. I’m gonna disappear in there; do some contemplation from the throne.”

“I’ll be out here looking at these paintings of the Tejon Pass and Pyramid Lake.”

Hitchhiking at 2 p.m. was easier said than done. Like yesterday, the “on” ramp was intolerably long. With its sharp curve in the distance, you couldn’t even see the interstate beyond the mountain. Did rush hour in California start this early? Cars—cranky and resentful—charged at us from two lanes. They came in smatterings of twelve or sixteen, malicious for no reason; aggressive, road raging; trying to get somewhere they weren’t.

“What’s the glitch, folks? Come on, you dumb Californians! You can’t drive past without dealing with us. Stop!”

“I thought these people were supposed to be hip.”

“They would be, if they gave us a ride.”

“Look at that tall guy with a bow-tie.”

“Hey, Fred MacMurray, smarten up! Your three sons wanted you to stop!”

This simpleness dragged on for more than two hours when a little Mexican kid, driving a crumpled up, rebuilt Volkswagen, came whirling past in the outer lane. Screeching his brakes—jamming another car—he cut inside and skidded to a stop on the shoulder. The righthand blinker flashed through the dust.

The car was a mess—no bumper, fenders dented, license plate hanging. The refinish was some odd powder blue. I sent Otto to the back seat with one of my bags. The front seat was raw springs under a greasy towel.

The kid was tuning in a staticky FM station with his urchin hands, and offered no formal acknowledgment. But when the door closed, he checked the mirrors, threw the stick into gear, and shot up the ramp. He edged between two tractor-trailers, one of which broke its speed and honked.
Traffic was a circus. A hullabaloo. It was lurching ahead in knots and bunches, with concrete tributaries siphoning off cars and feeding them back on at about the same rate.

The urchin couldn’t have been much above the California legal age. Straight black hair draped his dirty, olive face. He looked like ‘Dondi,’ the wide-eyed Italian war orphan from the funny pages. He flicked on the blinker and sped into the center lane.

Hunks of new freeway hung suspended in midair. Cars funneled through an excavated rockslide area. A sign read ‘BEGIN: GOLDEN STATE FREEWAY.’

Houses and more houses assaulted the senses, increasing proportionately with exits, billboards, cars, construction, and a coffee- lemony smell. Colors and noise filtered across the canyon. Crime detective Joe Friday from Dragnet recited in my ear with a steady, authoritative voice, “This is the city—Los Angeles, California.”

Every tract of sprawl laid claim to some unique, distinguished feature. Swimming pools in the hills. Health spas and fast food emporiums. Muscle clubs in garages. Posh tennis courts and tea gardens. Cross streets jumbled in with traffic lights, town houses, billboards advertising Carnal Knowledge and The Last Picture Show, dinner shows, car rentals, offices, Thai restaurants. Fifteen blocks down or so objects disappeared into the smog.

“Where you going?”

“L.A.,” I told the urchin. The freeway expanded to four lanes, five lanes, six lanes, even seven lanes in each direction.

“That tell me zero, amigo. What section?” He raced into a faster lane.

I started to lose my wherewithal; lost in a flume of stimuli. I looked back at Otto, studying an embankment studded with flowers, bushes, and scrubs.

“That’s what we’ve got to figure out.” I adjusted my sunglasses over my bad eye.

“What address you got? Hurry, my exit’s coming up.”

“Hey Otto, what’re we doing, man?”

The urchin’s jaw dropped. “You got no address?”

Otto slipped his head through the seats. “Are there any big parks around?”

“Griffith Park. But you can’t go camping there. Camping anywhere in L.A.’s out. Say, what you doin’ comin’ down here in the first place?”

“Which way is downtown?”

He frowned. “Over there.”

Sitting across a broad, swampy wasteland, past sagging palm trees, stood a clump of tall, dark, shiny buildings pillared through the smog. I remembered Otto’s disinclination about mingling in big cities and lost my marbles.

“Hey Otto, we’ve got to talk about this.”

“What’s your gig, amigo? You coming down here without knowing no one? You don’t want no downtown. What you gonna do down there? You crazy?” His accent got stronger.
“What’s wrong with that park?” Otto said.

“Pigs. They patrol it all the time and would stop you when they saw your backpacks. They’s crackin’ down, lookin’ for people to bust. It ain’t cool right now. There’s lots of crime, rape, murders. People are afraid of gettin’ robbed. Pigs’ll search for dope. I hope you got no dope on you, man, and if you do, you better eat it up.”

Potential attractions were falling away as we talked—Hollywood Bowl. Los Angeles Coliseum. Historic Olvera Street. Dodger Stadium. Little Tokyo. Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

“By the way, that was my exit.” The urchin referred to a ramp, ‘EAST LOS ANGELES.’

“Where’s Hollywood?”

“We passed it. I’m telling you, homeboy. L.A. ain’t cool for a hitcher. It’s too insane. I gave up and bought a car.”

“Is Disneyland any good?” Otto asked.

“That’s Anaheim. Ain’t bad if you do that kind of scene. They got things to do and places to mellow out. You want to go there?”

The image of Disneyland flashed across my mind. Tinkerbell was flicking around the TV set with her wand, lighting up the castle with stardust. Pluto and Donald Duck beckoned visitors inside the magic kingdom. The late Walt himself was introducing this week’s episode of The Wonderful World of Color, always on Sundays at 7:30 p.m. on NBC.

“Hey yeah, Otto, Disneyland. That’s the solution.”

Otto turned to the urchin. “Would you recommend it?”

“Recommend it?” He smiled with sparse teeth. “It’s better than where you was gonna have me leave you off. You want me to drive you down?”

This kid was crazy, going out of his way like this. These distances were far. Santa Clarita and Disneyland must’ve been seventy miles apart.

“’Preciate it, man,” I said.

“Don’t bother me none. If I let you off down in the barrio, you’d never get out of there. You’d be road meat.”

The urchin cruised down South Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, a catchall of red and yellow flowers and solid motels. Palm trees branched out among ivy groundcover. Rows of hyacinths paraded in front of restaurants. The urchin stopped along a high mesh fence. This was Disneyland, he said (though you couldn’t see it).

“You weren’t gonna drag me around no downtown Los Angeles.” Otto brushed off his pant legs, standing on the pavement.

“Not since that kid knew what he was talking about.”

“’Cuz I wasn’t gonna let you if you tried.”

I tightened my belt. “No, Otto Omnipotent, I was in it long enough to decide we’re not going to mess with L.A.”

“Good. There oughta be enough fun down here.”

“I agree with you.”

“Look at the sky.”

“He-he—Tropicana orange.”

Can you believe the majority of Disneyland was a parking lot? Acre upon acre was filled with parked cars, thousands of them. The actual park stood a quarter-mile away, completely contained within the bounds of this outer lot, hidden behind foliage, mounds of dirt, and a barbed- wire fence. Only a silver mountain with a twisting rollercoaster peeked out from within.

“Walt should do a remote broadcast sometime.” I watched the elevated monorail shuttle passengers between the inside of the park and Disneyland Hotel. “Set up his camera right here.”

“Walt’s take on entertainment is a far cry from Palisades Amusement Park in Jersey, I’ll tell ya.”

It was too late in the day to enter, and sneaking in was not up for discussion. For fun, Otto and I hiked around the perimeter, following the mesh fence—probably a three mile junket.

“If there was an alternate way in, we woulda found it.” Otto tramped ahead.

“The fence is not only high, it looks new. Walt thought everything through completely.”

“You got any thoughts about bunkin’?”

“What say we go in style for one night and pay for a room?”

“Excuse me, Roger?”

“Just this one night, since we’re doing so well financially. Let’s go off message and splurge. After all, we’re rich. Can we?”

“Balderdash! Our rules are set in stone. Don’t you remember our agreement? We don’t pay to sleep. We don’t pay to ride. How you gonna hold your head up high if you don’t follow through on our pledge? No way. Ain’t gonna happen, sons!”

We settled for Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. We checked ourselves onto a soft, double-occupancy cushion of ice plants behind Mr. Johnson’s garbage shed, next to his parking lot and twenty yards behind his lodge. It was adequately secluded, but noisy. On the other side of a cedar fence, not five feet away, ran the Santa Ana Freeway.

“I’m trusting God no trucks overturn along this stretch.” I stuffed change in my shoes from my knees.