I'll tumble for ya
In what could only be described as Asteroids Revisited, V and I traveled through the Central Valley on NYE dodging tumbleweeds the size of buffalo. We were in separate cars, so it was like playing doubles on the Atari console. We had braved hugemongous eucalyptus trees (plural) toppled across the freeway and oceans of water lapping the asphalt for miles, when lo, in a pastoral field north of Chowchilla, tangles of useless branches rolled by the dozens toward traffic. In front of me in his rental car, V braked and swerved. To the right of us in the field, the wind sent more our way. It was like they were queued up in lines.
We made it safely to a Carl's Jr. in the lovely Chowchilla, where we discussed how years of mastering video games gave us the prowess to evade the tumbleweeds without damage to the cars (ok, one did hit my small SUV... and the thing was about the size of the car... but no harm was done).
We spent NYE in the culturally fascinating town of Visalia, where V is on a project for work. While it was no SF, I must say the downtown area was not merely quaint, but interesting. And we had dinner at a great restaurant, Little Italy, which was more than quite good. The irony of ending the year in which we spent our honeymoon in Italy in an Italian restaurant in Visalia did not escape us.
The last time I stopped in or near Visalia was on my way to Woodlake Ranch Camp in 5th and 6th grades. Some of my best memories are of that camp. Most of the courses we had would *never* be offered to children in our present day. One was called Wilderness Survival, and they took us to a junk yard/dump by the camp where, in teams, we had to build shelter. My friend Rhea and I somehow dragged a porcelain toilet into our shelter, which if I remember correctly, had a plastic siding roof and a broken aluminum lawn chair.
The course sparked a certain survivalist phase for Rhea and me when we were 11. When we returned home, she and I built an in-ground bomb shelter in her backyard which we dug by hand, and we forged a secret lounge area in the bushes beside her playhouse that you had to enter through a hole in her toy refrigerator. We used chicken wire and plastic sheeting to create a waterproof roof in the bushes, poking branches through the wire to camouflage the area. We made it comfy with cushions, which, in one of those innocent life lessons, we Scotchguarded in the not-so-ventilated lounge area. The coup de grace was the water tube we ran from their Sparklett's water purifier into the lounge to ensure hydration in the event the world came to an end. We sat in there for hours, dreaming of buying a Jeep and forging through the wilderness eastward toward Nevada, living off the land like we learned at Woodlake.
On the way home from our last year at Woodlake, Deanna, Robyn and Rhea and I made up a song called "Mr. Bartender" to the tune of "Mr. Sandman." We sang with Men at Work, Culture Club and Phil Collins songs on the radio. I came down with the stomach flu that evening, after my mom picked me up from the school parking lot, and the next day she bought me my first bra. Which actually wasn't a bra, but a sort of tank top, which I called her on. I wanted a training bra with daisies on it, like DeeDee H. had, and it came in a box, and I had been very specific with her about it. And for one of the most pivotal events of my womanhood, she came back with a lavender tank top. Eventually we went to the Broadway and bought one of the daisy training bras in a very Are You There God, It's Me Margaret experience. At the time, I had a real tough time understanding the meaning of the "training" part of training bra. There were no instructions in the package, there was no Boot Camp, there was no certificate of completion, you just put it on under your Izod and went about the playground.
More than 20 years later, as I drove back up 99 amidst flood warnings, I thought back fondly to the complete horror and excitement and confusion and exhilaration of those days.
We made it safely to a Carl's Jr. in the lovely Chowchilla, where we discussed how years of mastering video games gave us the prowess to evade the tumbleweeds without damage to the cars (ok, one did hit my small SUV... and the thing was about the size of the car... but no harm was done).
We spent NYE in the culturally fascinating town of Visalia, where V is on a project for work. While it was no SF, I must say the downtown area was not merely quaint, but interesting. And we had dinner at a great restaurant, Little Italy, which was more than quite good. The irony of ending the year in which we spent our honeymoon in Italy in an Italian restaurant in Visalia did not escape us.
The last time I stopped in or near Visalia was on my way to Woodlake Ranch Camp in 5th and 6th grades. Some of my best memories are of that camp. Most of the courses we had would *never* be offered to children in our present day. One was called Wilderness Survival, and they took us to a junk yard/dump by the camp where, in teams, we had to build shelter. My friend Rhea and I somehow dragged a porcelain toilet into our shelter, which if I remember correctly, had a plastic siding roof and a broken aluminum lawn chair.
The course sparked a certain survivalist phase for Rhea and me when we were 11. When we returned home, she and I built an in-ground bomb shelter in her backyard which we dug by hand, and we forged a secret lounge area in the bushes beside her playhouse that you had to enter through a hole in her toy refrigerator. We used chicken wire and plastic sheeting to create a waterproof roof in the bushes, poking branches through the wire to camouflage the area. We made it comfy with cushions, which, in one of those innocent life lessons, we Scotchguarded in the not-so-ventilated lounge area. The coup de grace was the water tube we ran from their Sparklett's water purifier into the lounge to ensure hydration in the event the world came to an end. We sat in there for hours, dreaming of buying a Jeep and forging through the wilderness eastward toward Nevada, living off the land like we learned at Woodlake.
On the way home from our last year at Woodlake, Deanna, Robyn and Rhea and I made up a song called "Mr. Bartender" to the tune of "Mr. Sandman." We sang with Men at Work, Culture Club and Phil Collins songs on the radio. I came down with the stomach flu that evening, after my mom picked me up from the school parking lot, and the next day she bought me my first bra. Which actually wasn't a bra, but a sort of tank top, which I called her on. I wanted a training bra with daisies on it, like DeeDee H. had, and it came in a box, and I had been very specific with her about it. And for one of the most pivotal events of my womanhood, she came back with a lavender tank top. Eventually we went to the Broadway and bought one of the daisy training bras in a very Are You There God, It's Me Margaret experience. At the time, I had a real tough time understanding the meaning of the "training" part of training bra. There were no instructions in the package, there was no Boot Camp, there was no certificate of completion, you just put it on under your Izod and went about the playground.
More than 20 years later, as I drove back up 99 amidst flood warnings, I thought back fondly to the complete horror and excitement and confusion and exhilaration of those days.
posted by Michelle S. at 8:04 PM
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