New York: July, 1976

The memory, as I've mentioned, is a funny thing. I remember Gloria had essentially aborted the leisurely driving vacation to upstate New York and instead made it a necessary task to be concluded as quickly as possible. Pat, however, wanted to see New York City, the place where his football hero, Broadway Joe Namath, reached international fame. In his day, Joe Namath seemed to have it all. The quarterback boasted his American Football League team would beat the all-out favorite Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III and then willed the New York Jets to the unlikely upset. He became as recognizable as Michael Jordan would become in the 1990s, so much so that his endorsements didn't need to mention his name, despite the fact that he obviously wore a helmet that covered his face during games.


He was as brash and accomplished with women as with a football, and Pat admired him for that, too. After dropping off Gloria and unloading their trailer, Pat insisted on taking me to New York City.

As we headed south, I was intrigued by the rest stops with fast food restaurants in the wide expanse between traffic heading in opposite directions. It seemed more logical than having the lanes of traffic close together and then having restaurants on either side of a California freeway offramp.

I was gradually becoming accustomed to the unexpected trees lining the highway by the time we stopped at one of these Roy Rogers Hamburger stands. I was familiar with Roy Rogers from back in high school. Back around 1970, my friends and I would pile into Rocha's Ford Falcon station wagon or my old Plymouth. Jimmy Johnson would regularly offer to buy a dozen hamburgers to treat us, if someone would drive to the Roy Rogers on Beach Boulevard. I don't remember how much they cost in those days in Huntington Beach, but they made McDonald's seem kind of upscale.

It's not the price or quality of the Roy Rogers Burgers that I remember about the time we pulled over a few miles before reaching New York City. What I remember distinctly was how busy it was. In those days, Southern California hadn't yet reached its current congestion, but even by today's standards, the rest stop was crowded and hectic. It felt like being in an ant farm, and my mind boggled at the thought of all these strangers with all their individual lives heading in different directions. Now that I think about it, we just used the restroom and got back on the highway, because it was too nuts.

We pulled into New York City during rush hour, and traffic was at a standstill. Most of the other vehicles on the road were yellow taxis who cut each other off with abandon. Pat, driving through the big city in his truck, didn't cede any territory either, and at one point I remember diving down to the floorboard and putting my feet in the air to represent that I didn't want to see any more close calls. Eventually, Pat somehow found a parking space, and we sniffed out a pizza stand. That was the highlight of New York for me on this trip: the pizza. We were hungry to be sure, but this was the kind of pizza you could eat even if you had already eaten a big meal. Other than that, we were happy to get out of there. It might have been a great place to be for people with lots of money, but that wasn't us. Then again, Pat wasn't ready to head to his new home yet, so we drove over to the home state of his most recently acquired musical hero, Bruce Springsteen.