8-23-04

On August 25th, 2004, David and I will have lived in LA for approximately one year. It was about one year ago that we packed up our belongings into our respected vehicles and moved from our comfortable homes in Oklahoma to Hollywood. Hopes were high a year ago and neither of us had any idea of what to expect. We'd never been to Los Angeles, but we had our dreams. More importantly, we had our carefully saved money and a combined sense of responsibility to make it last. The odds were in our favor that we would survive and that was the first step.

Departure from Oklahoma came late in the day on August 21st. We had strapped everything we cared to call our own onto my old pickup truck and David's Blazer. We used two way radio's to keep ourselves company and settled in for a long drive. I worried that my truck wouldn't make it through the deserts, so we had planned to turn what normally is a two day drive, into a four day drive. However, David's car turned out to be the troublesome one. A few hours into our trek, David noticed that his battery was dieing. I become frustrated at David for some reason. Somewhere in my mind I justified the feeling that the blazer's need for maintenance reflected David's lack of devotion to the road. Why couldn't he just toughen up and drive?

We stopped at an O'Reilley's Auto Parts store where a surprisingly unhelpful man told us that the battery was fine. He kept going on about gator skin belts or something while never mentioning anything about the alternator, which, we assumed, was the problem. However, since this man was an active employee of the fine O'Reilley's Auto Parts company, we considered this man to be nothing short of a professional in the field of automotive repair. When he told us that the battery was fine and offered no other suggestions, we took that information as the optimistic news we were looking for and departed, having solved no problem. Of course, the battery continued to die and we were forced to stop at a gas station in Texola, just one mile short of the Texas border. An Auto Zone twenty miles in the opposite direction was our only hope to get back on the road that day. There, a much more helpful man offered a myriad of answers and did not utter one word about a gator skin belt. He even sold us an alternator and supplied us with the tools to put it in.

Our first test as adults on our own was to install, flawlessly, a new alternator into a '94 Chevy Blazer. If you have ever attempted this, you know it is one of the more simple tasks of auto repair. There is very little that you have to disassemble before unscrewing one thing and then screwing in another. Having never really worked underneath the hood of a car, we took careful measures. We took digital pictures of the old alternator, still installed, so that we could compare after we were done installing the new one. The intensity of this operation was like that of someone disarming a bomb. When we finished successful, we felt like men. Both of our fingers were smudged with an unnecessary amount of engine grease as we beamed with pride and smoked a victory cigarette.

The first day's sun set on our backs and we watched the Oklahoma fields fade into the darkness. The last setting sun we would see in an Oklahoma we called home. When it would rise again, it would find us not unlike nomads wandering an expansive desert towards a destination whose details were clouded by imagination and hope.

After dark and dinner, we jumped back on the road. While crossing the Oklahoma/Texas border shortly after, I radioed back to David, "Goodbye, Oklahoma. Over".

A silence, and then "What? Over."

"Goodbye, Oklahoma. Over." I calmly, repeated with the same sincerity.

"What Oklahoma? Over?"

"I SAID GOODBYE, OKLAHOMA! OVER!"

"Oh....yeah...bye Oklahoma. Over."

The rest of the trip went smoothly. Being in-between two homes and having communication with the real world cut off for three days allowed for every moment to echo as surreal. Nothing was familiar or comfortable and I couldn't help but feel like a ghost passing through dusty town after dust town. The long drives became longer as we traveled well into each night. The unsettling thing about this is falling asleep while having no geographical understanding of the town you're in. I would awake to a different alien desert each morning.

Dave commented that the desert was ugly and he hated it. He was tired of looking at dead grass and trees, preferring the lush landscapes of Oklahoma or, hopefully, California. I suppose I can agree with the aesthetic nature of the desert. The desert is dry, dead and dieing. A skin of evolution shed onto the earth, still trying to be anything. Nothing is attractive in the desert and the desert wouldn't have it any other way. Every organism is bent on nothing but survival. And there's something attractive in it's own way about that. Trees angrily sprawl on the sand and rock and wait for a drop of rain to live off of until the next drop of rain. A dry passion and a devotion to exist keep the desert from completely drying up and laying down against the west winds. To do whatever it takes to survive and not try to be pretty in the process is somewhat of an admirable quality.

There is something hypnotizing about the desert, as well. You don't even realize it's there until you're deep in it's expanse. Each day you cross every hill or mountain in hopes of spotting an end, and with every hill and mountain, you are disappointed. The vastness leads to hopelessness which leads to levity which leads to apathy. Desert in so many directions that it almost seems useless to even pick one and drive. Staying put almost seems like a choice. You want to just sit in the sand and let the earth move around you for a change. Then as obliviously as you were trapped, you find yourself escaped.

On the last day, excitement was high. It would be our last days drive and the first day in a new home. I envisioned a sparkling city nestled up against an ocean. I imagined sun beams shooting past tall buildings as the sun sets and sends warm colors to hug the curving earth. We raced towards the sun and stopped in a town called Benson to plan our insertion.

David and I had heard many cautionary tales about LA preceding our trip, but the ones that stuck with me were about the crazy Los Angeles traffic. One in particular was about a friend of a friend. She was driving on a highway during rush hour and found herself victim of a hit and run as a man in a truck merged into her lane and consequently her car. The windows of her car all smashed in as she was pushed into the dividing barrier. The truck drove off as if nothing had ever happened. It was this type of story that incited all sorts of assumptions as to what type of city LA must be. In my worst fears it was a bustling impersonal machine of tunnel visioned drivers set on getting from A to B at all costs. I planned accordingly.

Part II Next Week

Josh Gilpatrick