Bi-Centennial Road Trip: July, 1976

In 1976, the United States of America celebrated its 200th Birthday. The "Bi-Centennial" gave us cause to take pride in our country's amazing history, which gave some perspective to recent years of turmoil following the age of Nixon and Vietnam, an era when the music was awesome but the atmosphere was downbeat. For the future, ecologists predicted pollution would lead to a new ice age that would drastically cut food supplies with shorter growing seasons just as the population bomb exploded with billions more mouths to feed. Food riots would be erupting in the U.S. by 1990, so we decided to enjoy what could be the pinnacle of existence. Of course, we were right. It was the pinnacle of existence, up to that point, although none of us could have predicted the wondrous technology right out of "Our Man Flint" that would soon make our childhood fantasies that didn't yet have names like cellular phones, digital video recorders and plasma televisions all come true. Oh, and those futurists who predicted a dismal future turned out to be full of composted biodegradable human waste.

I loved growing up in Westminster, California. I had lots of terrific friends, many of whom passed in and out of my life several times. I originally knew my buddy Mike, who has joined me on many travels in recent years, as Dean, because there were three Mikes in our first grade class, so the teacher called him by his middle name. He moved to Corona in high school when his dad was certain real estate speculators had gone completely nuts to buy his Westminster house for $30,000. When we were about 21, Mike was stationed briefly close to my Mom's house. Mike, Sam and I would cram into Sam's Corvette and drive down to Belmont Shores, hoping to impress girls with our clever banter.

Sam was my bandmate in a band that never got off the ground, primarily because we weren't very good but also because we couldn't seem to find a drummer. I think we were better than Bill and Ted's Wild Stallions, but maybe not. Sam and I went on many shorter trips in that Corvette, strapping our guitars and a couple of sleeping bags to the back with bungie straps. Amazingly, we never got hotel rooms. We would sleep on park benches in Big Bear or lounge chairs in Las Vegas, saving our limited funds for real necessities like nightclub admissions. One of our mini-road trips took us to Dodger Stadium to see Elton John, Joe Walsh and some others in concert. It wasn't that far away, but we left the night before and spent the night in the parking lot. Before arriving, we had some adventures, following police cars at 90 miles per hour to a hostage standoff that ended about the time we arrived, and then going to the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, a jazz club where my son Jay now likes to go.

I had met Sam through my friend, Pete, who formerly lived two houses from my Mom's house. When Pete returned from his first stint in the Army, he worked for Sam Cracchiolo's dad at Gino's Delicatessan, and that deli is the source of a lot of other fun stories, but I'm already way off track, so I better not digress further. Pete and I used to go to Belmont Shores in the summer when we were about sophomores in high school, hoping to impress girls with our clever banter. Pete always had the gift for gab, so he and I had better luck than Mike and I did, either when we were about freshmen in high school or when Mike came back as an experienced Navy man. Those summer days at Naples Bay included lots of paddle tennis, kayaking and sunshine, not to mention the occasional bus ride to the Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach. I was honored to be the best man for Pete's wedding, and considering how he liked to chase girls, I am somewhat amazed to say that he is still married to Phyllis 35 years later.

I was also the best man for my friend Chris's marriage to his first wife, Char. Together, they had a son named Brian. When we attended Golden West College together, we discovered Monty Python's album, which we shared with many people, including Pete. Nobody liked it much to start with, but eventually, everyone was talking about the penguin on top of the television set. I always wondered if Brian was named after the character from the Monty Python movie that arrived a few years later. I'd guess not. Anyway, along with Chris and our friend Kevin, I enjoyed lots of high school adventures, including the infamous midnight battle on Garden Grove Boulevard when Braman's El Camino pulled up next to Chris's Ford Galaxie station wagon and the truck bed full of guys attacked us by spraying fire extinguishers in our open windows. Fortunately, when we stopped at the sock hop earlier, some of our girl friends from ASB had given us several boxes of cupcakes, so we mounted a surprising counter attack, bombarding them with cupcakes launched over the station wagon's roof by Chris and I, who leaned out the driver's side open windows so that the station wagon acted as a shield against the fire extinguishers. Victory was soon ours.

By our senior year, we were taking day trips. Sometimes, we would go in our beauty pageant contestant friend Leann's pickup truck along with other elementary school friends Paula and Sandy to someplace like Irvine Park, with the three girls riding in the cab while the three boys road in the camper shell. Another memorable trip was driving to Big Bear with a half dozen folks in Kevin's family station wagon to play in the snow. On the way back home, we became hopelessly lost. Our friend Pat, riding shotgun and looking at the fold-out map, suddenly yelled, "To hell with this stupid map," and threw the map out the window. Somehow, we found our way back to the 405 freeway and made it home. Kevin eventually migrated to UCLA to earn his BA in micro-biology and then to Utah for grad school. After a couple of years at Golden West, Chris moved to Sacramento, where he met Char, leading their aforementioned wedding. I can definitely say that for Chris, we had the best bachelor party ever. Drinking Tequila Sunsets (Tequila Sunrise plus a shot of Baccardi 151) at Granny's Attic while that amazing house band, Natty Bumpo, rocked the night away. For no rational reason, we stopped at Leann's house well after midnight to pay a social call. Kevin kept wandering down the hall and laying down in her bed, but we eventually got him out of the house. Pat, who had sensibly chosen to NOT drink Tequila Sunsets, ended up being the designated safe driver, which, if you knew Pat in high school, was something of a joke. In those days, you could hear Pat's hotrod Studebaker coming from a half mile away, and when he turned corners, he was often going sideways. We ended up pouring Chris onto the porch at his parents house, where he stayed the eve of his wedding, and somehow we all made it to the wedding the next day.

Meanwhile, as everyone grew up all around me, I was still living at my Mom's house, content as a clam.

Our erstwhile frustrated navigator Pat also married young. He married Gloria, a school teacher six years his senior, and again I was honored to be the best man. Pat had taken the game of Life route that didn't include college, and he made very good money working hard in the oil fields right out of high school. He had his own apartment at 18 years old, and soon he became infatuated with his neighbor who shared the name of his television fantasy girl: Gloria from "All In the Family." I often wonder if he would have been so intrigued by Gloria if her name had been Gladys Kravitz. For whatever reason, he and Gloria were having some trouble with their marriage, and they decided to move to New York in the summer of 1976 to get a fresh start.

At Granny's Attic (during the bachelor party for Chris), Pat asked me if I wanted to go with them to help with the driving, since they needed to move Gloria's Triumph GT6 as well as all of their household goods hauled behind his truck. I said yes, and we hugged in the men's room. Quite romantic, in a he-man way. With that, I was set to go on my first extended vacation as an adult. I had been on many road trips with my family growing up, but this was something new entirely.

In preparation, I became Pat's assistant rebuilding the engine on his pick-up truck. Pat always liked working on cars. The Studebaker I mentioned before had originally been purchased to be economical transportation for a high school student, but soon Pat had put in an engine so large that the hood wouldn't fit, so the hood had been discarded with less trepidation than the map he tossed out when we were lost coming home from Big Bear. Maybe he had headers, but I have a feeling he just left the muffler off to make the Studebaker roar. The fat tires on the oversized chrome rims might have been slicks, but most likely they were just worn down. In any case, he drove like a madman. Once in the parking lot of the Westminster Mall, Kevin gave Pat the keys to his Datsun 2000 convertible. I don't know what Kevin was thinking, because the next thing that happened was squealing rubber and a series of wild turns as Kevin watched horrified.

Kevin, Chris and I had rebuilt the engine on a Chevy Corvair when we were sophomores, which again is a long story, but suffice it to say that I had worked on cars before. Nonetheless, Pat definitely knew more about what he was doing than I did, so I was primarily a gopher.

When I had agreed to go on the trip, I actually hadn't fully considered my financial condition. I had two assets: a guitar and a Mustang. There was no way I would sell my guitar, so I decided to sell my Mustang to get money for the trip. My Uncle Bob, with whom I also shared many adventures, wanted me to go on this trip. He agreed to buy my car for....was it $250 or $350?...a fair price, and he would wait until I was ready to leave to take possession. A couple of days before we were to leave, I was driving home from Pat's apartment and dropping off Gloria someplace along the way. I think maybe we had her car apart too. Anyway, on the drive, the steering mechanism went out. When I tried to turn left, the steering wheel would spin with no reaction from the car. With the infinite wisdom of a 22 year-old, I kept driving. The Mustang had always pulled to the right for as long as I'd owned it, because the wheel alignment was way off, so I would simply drive slowly and correct only left. Using only right turns and subsequently driving in a rather circuitous route, I managed to drop off Gloria and get home. Looking back, I am lucky I didn't die in the process. I called my uncle with the bad news and told him not to bother coming for the car. He lovingly said he would buy the car anyway, and I know it was because he knew I needed to get away from home on my own, even if only for a short while. With that, I was prepared for my Bi-Centennial roadtrip.