Is it age that tints the photographs?

I believe it was on Pricetown Road ("the Pricetown Road", in local dialect) that Jimmy and I spotted the junky blue camaro, but we weren't really that excited because it was in crappy shape and wasn't very desirable.  Then, Jim noticed (from 2,800 yards away) that it had a "12 bolt Rear".  ?.  Yes, all motorheads have the uncanny ability to look underneath cars sitting in weeds from 1/2 mile away and count the bolts on the differential cover on the back axle under the car in any lighting condition, instantly.  Strange that they can overlook doormats, birthdays, and pained-expressions with such visual acuity but let's just leave that and return to the scene.  We decide we will stop later when we are done with our pressing mission (moving a train shed?) but as always, it takes a little longer than we hoped and Jim and I show up at dusk...  okay, night has fallen, we can just make out the glowing field -lit by the moon, but definitely not a full moon- behind the hedge on our left as we approach the porch of the hunting-cabin-styled house. As we walk up the sidewalk, I see something move out of the corner of my eye, out near the hedge.  "Jim, did you see that? Did you see something move?" "No, maybe," he replies and a few steps later, "I think something is out there..."  We peer out into the dark field beyond the hedge, but all seems still.
 Being the camaro guy (Jim is a mustang guy), it is my place to knock on the door and ask the awkward questions; Jim is behind me to my left, a little closer to the house.  Like Mom's house, there is a long porch that you enter from the left and the entrance is straight in front of you as you walk (like you were entering the kitchen door of mom's) so you pass by the windows.  I knock.  A few seconds later, a rather large man in a red and black checkered flannel shirt opens the door.  "What?" he growls. "Hey, sorry to bother you but I noticed your camaro earlier, and I was wondering if you were planning on selling it or..."
  Out of the corner of my eye I see Jim dive toward the wall of the house.  Before I can even turn around, something is lifting me from under my thighs and propelling me forward to the right of the door.  I land and fall backwards on my butt just in time to see what looks like an exceptionally large purple ottoman run into the house.  Surprised, the guy holding the door throws his hands up, revealing that he had been holding a hatchet behind his back in his right hand.  He runs through the house cursing and yelling and knocking things over.  A few seconds later, he manages to chase a large, maroon sheep back out the front door, kicking it in the butt as it passes us.
  As you can imagine, I have no idea how the rest of the conversation went.  But as Jim and I were walking back out on the sidewalk, we realized the "hedge" was no longer there, they had all moved over near the house, hoping for (and one plucky member demanding) a late night snack.  It so happens that this came at a time when purple kale, purple beans, purple cauliflower, purple lettuce and even the occasional purple carrot were becoming more common in the stores.  Perhaps the sheep were getting a lot of these in their diet, or perhaps Jimmy and I were getting too much of them in our diet. "Where they really purple?", "They looked maroon to me...",

Dear Reed Family

From Timbuktoo (San Diego) to Kalamazoo (Rosarito, Mexico)

First of all, 1972 was the best looking year for the Fiat Spider, so I forgive myself for buying a Fiat Spider EVEN THOUGH I bought it in the gorgeous but failing light of dusk in San Diego (see previous post "Junky White Mach 1").  I paid $450 for this beauty.  Like many such vehicles, the person selling it to me acted as though the car had "jilted" them.  "It needs a new head gasket, or something..." the woman derided, squinting at the car.  Then she switched back to her 40-something-OceanBeach-Partygirl personality and added, "it's a totally fun car, I bet you would have soooo much fun in it!" She was sufficiently irritated with the car when I got it started, that I decided to come back and pick it up the following day (you can't dance off with someone's ex, right?).  I gave her the money, took the keys, and put a steering wheel lock on it; I didn't want any "one last night" impulses.

But my favorite story has nothing to do with such intrigue as is suggested here. Actually, it wasn't a bad car, and it was reliable enough (a pretty low bar in my auto realm) that I drove down to Mexico with Mary Ellen when she came to visit me.  My room-mate at the time, Jimmy-Joe, had a little cabin just south of Rosarito, Mexico, on a high cliff overlooking the Pacific.  Mary Ellen and I set off, it was a gorgeous day.  I can't remember whether Mary Ellen lent me her Revo sunglasses on this trip, or a previous trip, but in either case she gave them to me because I liked how the world looked through them so much.  They are dichroic blue and turn the world gold when you look through them, perfect for this trip.  We cruised down through Tijuana (did we stop at "El Gordo's" for tacos?), along the coastal road, just smiling and enjoying the day.  The road turns inland a bit to pass to the east of Rosarito, and I noticed a tourist ship docked on the far side of the town.  "Wow, that's a big cruise ship, " I remarked to Mary Ellen, "I don't think there's even standing room in Rosarito for that many people."  "That IS a really big ship," replied ME, "I didn't think it would keep getting bigger, but,..  it's F-ing huge!"  "How do they do it?  How can a town of 500 people accommodate 2,500 people getting off a ship?"  We talked at length about this, well, to be more exact, we talked the length of the ship about this because it took us quite some time to get past it.  It looked stylish and familiar, and did I mention HUGE.  "How do they even park a boat like that here?" I pondered. We paused taking a last look at the boat, now moving into our mirrors. 

 "Mexico," said ME, "it sure is weird!"  

And with that we never mentioned the boat again, I don't even think we acknowledged it on our return journey.  The dirt road to Jimmy Joe's cabin was insane.  I still remember calculating the parallel wheel tracks through the obstacle course and the Fiat making it surprisingly easily.  The road turned downhill so sharply as we came into view of the Pacific that it felt like going over the top of a roller-coaster.  ME had to get out, "It's not that I think you should die alone, and I don't even think you're going to die, but I just can't stay in the car for this part," she said.  It was definitely one of the steepest inclines I've ever descended in a vehicle of any type.  100 yards later, it leveled out enough for ME to get back in.  100 yards after that, we found the cabin, the caretaker, and a lovely view of the setting sun.  

Two weeks after this trip, my somewhat crazy friend Igor invited me to come down to Mexico with his girlfriend Melinda.  They were making another documentary film and they had heard that some Los Angeles Studio was "outsourcing" their work to Mexico because they could pay substandard wages and avoid unions, etc.  Since my friends Bryan, Anna, Mike, and Natalie were visiting, I thought it would be a great outing and a way to let my friends get to know one another.  I was very involved in the cubic foot of chocolate-covered almonds Natalie had brought (she worked for M&M at the time) and was hardly paying attention to the discussion about the Los Angeles Movie Studio.  Apparently, they had built one of the biggest sound-stages on earth, next to a giant pool they had contructed to film "The Titanic". It was an ecological and economic behemoth, especially considering this was all taking place in Rosarito, a tiny town in Mexico.

"Wait," I said, "This is in that little town, Rosarito, just south of Tijuana?"  "You know where Rosarito is, John, where did you think we were talking about?" asked Melinda.  "Oh, and they're filming the Titanic?"  "Yes, I already told you that!"  "Is the pool outside or inside?"  "It's the Titanic, John, It's a 10/11th's scale model; of course it's outside!"

"Oh yeah, I've seen that." I said. 

"And you didn't realize that was where we're going?"

"You know, Mexico, It's so Weird!"

Recipes for disaster, survival, and Thanksgiving.

Sometimes one needs a little distance to see how slowly we learn the lessons life tries to teach us.  I left my Fiat Spyder Convertible in San Diego and bought this the Toyota version upon arriving in LA.  You might be tempted to think "Well, at least it's a Toyota not a Fiat..."  but I'll just stop you there.  Almost nothing electrical worked on the car, including the pop-up lights, there was a pulley on the engine that wasn't turning, the rear suspension was bent,..  but there was just something about it! I offered the guy half of what he was asking. Actually, it turned out to be a pretty good car, turned out it had fully independent suspension with a transaxle (!).  I replaced the bent suspension component, but I realized that some damage had been done to the transaxle.  Following the Pennsylvania Dutch wisdom of "Ain't broke, don't fix it", I put off looking into it.

For Thanksgiving of 2002, Jenny invited us down to "Survival Camp" somewhere east of San Diego.  Esther and I were looking forward to it with a mix of eagerness and fear; what do they have for survival camp thanksgiving? and how are their table manners?  I decided that I would bring a turkey, and a large one at that, because if 35 people were there trying to collect enough wild hickory nuts for thanksgiving, there better be some big bones to throw around.  So, I have this...  I don't know, 48 pound turkey in my freezer, and somehow Thanksgiving sneaks up on me.  The night before, around 10 pm, Esther asks if the turkey is thawed out.  I spring into action, handily remembering the vogue recipe for "brine soaking" the turkey that I had heard from the science lady some days before.  To me, it seemed salty water at least wouldn't freeze when I dumped the sub-zero Turkasaurus into my giant pot.  Around midnight, the skin of the turkey had still not even thawed a little.  I thought, you know, if the water was a little warmer, NOT HOT mind you, it might help.  The pot was so big though, that I had to put it over two burners on my stove,..  and no sense waiting for the water to get warm, I'd turn it down once it warmed up.  I woke up to the sound water boiling over around 2:00 am.  Well,  it's nice to have the cover of an "accident" to do what you secretly want to do anyway.  I turned the stove off and went to bed thinking maybe this monster will thaw out by tomorrow.  Let's see, we have to leave at 11:00 to get there at 1:00 so I'll need four hours of cooking...  so I"ll get up at 6:30...  Great.  Off to bed.  When I finally did get up around 8:30 the next day, I got right back to Turkey preparations.  The Turkey was only thawed to about 1/2 inch deep.  With great hope, I turned stove right back up to boil the damn thing.  I pried whatever was inside it out of it to get some hot water inside it.  After an hour of boiling, the top 1 inch of turkey was thawed.  And i figured the water inside it had probably done the trick.  But I was running out of time if I wanted a golden brown turkey.  I threw it in the oven and set the temperature at 425 which I will admit is a little high, but it was such a big thing.  An hour later, I turned the oven to 600 trying to rationalize that if I could just get it hot enough, it would cook with the residual heat on the drive down.  Amazingly, at 11:00 I had practically managed to burn the skin off the poor thing (no, it was brown, but It didn't seem all that hot on the inside). I rolled it in foil and stuck it in a foil dish and threw it and all our sleeping bags, in the rather small trunk of the Celica.
  And the traffic was just horrible.  Unfortunately, in California there are only a few roads that connect certain parts, and what should have been an hour and three quarters turned into a four hour drive.  Well, actually, the traffic wasn't the only problem.  The afore mentioned transaxle had started howling on the way down and it smelled VERY hot.  I pulled over more than once to reach under the rear wheels and check on it and it was just burning up.  But what to do?  Onward.  We pull in to survival camp, Tom and Susan's place, around 4:00 - two hours after dinner was supposed to start.  And true to Thanksgiving form, everyone was just getting ready to eat.  I considered the various jokes I might make as we would hold the raw pieces of turkey over bunsen burners with our knives...  When I opened the trunk of the car, it was about 200 degrees inside, with the blankets all piled in behind the turkey.  Esther and I sheepishly brought it in and slid it onto the bar with all the other delicious looking food.  It looked,..  good.  Someone came by and sliced some off, "Smells Deeeeelicious!" and they proceeded to heap some turkey onto their plate.  We were right about one thing, they had underestimeated the amount of food necessary.  "I heard someone say "Man, this is the best turkey I've ever had" from the deck. Without offending anyone, and with Jenny and Esther as my witnesses, I have to tell you "It was."
  It was a totally awesome few days there, looking at itsy bitsy Nate, learning to make fire with sticks, walking around in the desert, trying to keep the deluge of water out of the interesting architectural structures that served as our shelter.  No one knew that Esther and I had a secret stow-away with us.  It was a magical time.  The turkey was proof.