January 2, 2006 - Sojourn into the Past

January 2, 2006 - Sojourn into the Past

Sojourn is a word with a melancholy sound to it, which makes it most appropriate for what my wife IM and I did the past couple of weeks. Outbound, Friday, December 23 around 8:00 AM, we ahead south on California Highway 101. We’re sitting in a red Chevrolet Trailblazer with 7642 miles on the odometer that we just rented from Enterprise Rent-a-Car on Pearl Avenue near Capital Expressway in San Jose, California—$300 for the week we’d have it, unlimited mileage which was good because IM and I were going to “see the USA in our (rented) Chevrolet.”

The traffic along 101 before the Highway 152 East junction was relatively light—we were south and heading against the northbound rush hour traffic, which was light because nearly everyone was off for the Christmas Holiday. IM and I were on a sentimental journey back home to my folks’ home in El Paso. It would be sentimental in that all sisters—including DD, who lives in Newtonville, Massachusetts would be home to celebrate Christmas with my mother and father—in their late 80s and the other in their mid-90s (good genes no?). We would also be without our two kids who would be celebrating the holiday with their own little ones—for the first time, since up to now our two daughters celebrated Christmas at our place. IM and I realized this year that we had crossed a passage in time—our daughters had families of their own and they were now the mommies and daddies and we were the empty nester grandparents.

It had happened the same way for IM and me early on when our two daughters were little. We had made the journey from Dallas to El Paso to celebrate Christmas with my mother and father. For the longest time out two kids thought of Christmas as being in El Paso until we moved from Dallas to San Jose in 1974 and celebrated Christmas at home in San Jose. That year, the cycle was broken and El Paso became something we did once in a while when I could get the time off to make the two-day drive IM and I were now embarked upon. The first couple of times we drove home with the kids from San Jose, we went south on 101 to California 46 and then headed east to California 99, south to Highway 58 east to Highway 395 then south to Interstate 15 south into San Bernardino where we picked up Interstate 10 east to Blythe at the California-Arizona border—usually around 8:00 at night. It’s a longer and slower drive but far more scenic than the route we were driving in the Trailblazer this time.

This trip was down Interstate 5 to Interstate 210 east through Pasadena to Rancho Cucamonga to Interstate 15 south for a couple of miles before merging onto Interstate 10 east. We had started taking this route in the late 1970s when the kids were older, but back then I-210 ended at San Dimas and we headed south of Highway 57 to pick up I-10 east. The idea for I-210 was to bypass the heavy commute traffic through Los Angeles, but back then as with this time, the traffic was congested as soon as we approached I-10 and stayed below the limit through San Bernardino. Our youngest daughter RD works for a home builder in Irvine and she keeps telling us that much of the new home construction is going on in the “Inland Empire,” a euphemism for Riverside, San Bernardino, and further east to Indio. After the slow-and-go crawl we experienced merging onto a plodding stretch of 101, we began to gain speed beyond San Bernardino through Redlands and Yucaipa. All along this stretch we began to see signs for home builders advertising 3,000-square foot homes for under a half-million dollars as well as the sprawling developments themselves.

In this drive through the past, IM and I were seeing that the landmarks of the past that we remembered were being obscured by unbridled growth that characterized the passage of time. When we made the drive after Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of U.S. had left office—renewable energy was his answer to the gasoline shortages of the time, the first of the windmills began to appear along I-10 around Palm Springs. Now, they were everywhere, capturing the wind and turning its force into electricity. Windmills have their own mystic, probably because of Cervantes and his beguiling character, Don Quixote and his quest. The lyrics to the song from the Broadway Play Man of La Mancha came to mind: “...I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest...” That about summed up life, a continuous quest, which accounts for why the Cervantes story has such staying power.

Passing this way, this many years after the windmills began to blossom in the Mojave Desert, I was struck by the swift elapse of time—both our daughters are the age we were when the windmills started to spring up. Beyond Palm Springs we pass beside the country club towns of Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert with their streets named after mostly deceased celebrities: Bob Hope Drive, Frank Sinatra Drive, Fred Waring (a 1940s orchestra leader) Drive, and even an aging president: Gerald Ford Drive. Of the four Frank will be the one that this generation of people and future generations will know when the name is spoken because his music continues to be played. Few of today’s and less of the future generation will know of Gerald Ford, Bob Hope and Fred Waring. Ex-presidents and old celebrities fade from the popular culture quickly. It’s a revelation I’m, reminded of daily as I explain names I mention in conversation with the younger generation.

The other attraction along I-10 that could not escape unnoticed was the Gambling Casinos luring motorist off the freeway to extract their toll for passage. IM and I ignored the call and carried on but we could not but be amazed at the number of these flashy Las Vegas-like edifices adorning the freeway: the Morongo Band of Mission Indians with Morongo Casino, Hotel and Spa, near the Apache Trail exit in Cabazon; the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indian with the Aqua Caliente Casino at the Ramon Road Exit in Palm Springs; and the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians' Fantasy Springs Resort Casino off the Golf Center Parkway exit in Indio. These were all the signs of change that had come over the landscape since our early travels through the region.

The wealthy neighborhoods south and east of Palm Springs gave way to the farming communities of Indio and Coachella with street names like Grapefruit Drive and Citrus Avenue. Due east from Indio, I-10 begins a climb over the Little San Bernardino Mountains and Orocopia Mountains heading for Chiriaco Summit and Desert Center—in between the 100 miles between Indio and Blythe. We began the ascent around 4:30 PM and the sun was beginning to set. Interstate 10 had narrowed to two lanes and the traffic along the span had thinned from that we had pass through heading into Indio, but we still encountered clusters of cars all laden with people and belongings. A great many were like us heading home from California to Phoenix, Tucson, some as far as New Mexico, and a few like us heading for Texas.

We exited I-10 at the South Lovekin Blvd. Exit just before 6:00 PM and made our way north under the freeway to E. Hobsonway—the main drag of Blythe. The intersection is the heart of the small town. At Lovekin, everything east of the intersection is East Hobsonway and vice versa. And everything north of Hobsonway on Lovekin is North Lovekin and vice versa. At the intersection, we stop at a red light. At the northwest corner are the remains of the Sahara Motel, where we had stayed on a few of our earlier trips with the girls. Across Hobsonway on the southwest corner is a restaurant that was once a Sambo's or Denny's or some such when we first started coming through. It's still in business but I neglected to look at its name. Blythe has changed over the years but remains a farming town. If you look at the town from the air, it' appears as a watermelon shaped oval of lush green from 10th Avenue north of Hobsonway for nearly 20 miles south bordered by the Colorado River on the east and the Riverside Mountains on the west. The town also caters to traffic on the Interstate, and fast food restaurants and gas stations clustered around each side of the Lovekin off ramp on both sides of I-10 testifies to the fact.

After checking into the Hampton Inn just west of Lovekin on Hobsonway, we grabbed fast food at the Carl's Jr on Lovekin and returned to our room to eat—not worth an appetizing meal but we hadn't eaten since midmorning and it quieted the hunger a day's worth of driving and listening to the audio book, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer, had created. We turned in early and prepared for the continuation of our journey on Saturday.