Teddy's route mapped him continuing southbound for San Diego to deliver supplies for a United States Naval base. I knew exactly where I needed to be dropped. As soon as Highway 5 South intersected with Highway 46 West dawn was breaking beautifully revered. No human being should ever discount this everyday event, sleeping in and ignoring such simple glories as we all take advantage naively assuming that there will always be tomorrow. That's when the journey ended with Teddy and his dark story, conveniently and metaphorically ending as the night's black void fell dormant. I hadn't slept peacefully in the much missed comforts of a bed in around a week now. Such simple luxuries that I had been taking advantage of my entire spoiled American life. I was beginning to catch an unwanted strain of homesickness. I fought that feeling with this ornery and stubborn outlook that I'd acquired, and since I hadn't had a drink or drug in a few days I was feeling again unfortunately. I believe that I was completely out of money at this point in time, although I am positive I found solutions in which to continue my smoking habit. I was on the brink of craziness, harbored native madness, from this unintentional several days sobriety. At minimum I would always figure out how to get some nicotine, finances be damned, and being under-age be damned. I was now on the same plain as that Mexican from the train station in El Paso, when he noticed the last of my cigarette that I had flicked high into the wind's current, beginning his chase along the grey gum and cigarette littered pavement.
Highway 46 is pretty much a straight shot towards the dreamy Pacific, interim lies Paso Robles, CA, which was my destination intentionally because of some friends that I knew lived there. These people were my last hope, my final option for shelter. Richard veered off the road and parked his Suburara Outback, surf board on top, alongside where I was walking. I told him that I was headed for Paso Robles, and so he offered to take me there assuring me that it was no problem at all because he was passing right through there on his way to the beach. The conversation was so quaint and sane compared to the those dang truckers. Mainly I recall him telling me that he was a P.E. teacher somewhere in that surrounding area, but the coolest fact that I remember him revealing was a little history about this highway we were traveling en route to both our westward destinations. Highway 46 (I double checked this and discovered it to be factual) was the final roadway James Dean sped down like a Nascar driver, being involved in his infamous fatal car crash as he drove a new Porsche 550 Spyder on September 30, 1955. He had been ticketed by a C.H.P. officer earlier that day before being called out later on to the scene of this icon's mangled muscle machine. James Dean was found dead (he was luckily killed on impact) leaned limped lifeless against the passenger's side door which has ever since sparked the controversy if he was even driving. There is the theory that after he got ticketed James Dean pulled over again and he let his friend take over to drive?
I was dropped in what seemed to be the heart of the Paso Robles' business district. I ventured over to a Denny's off 24th street, with my giant shoulder bag containing some clothes and books (I have lost so many great books throughout this journey and other travels I went on years later). The people I knew I had met camping with my running grandparents (a nickname I was told I invented as a child because when I tried to say "other grandparents" other sounded from my mouth as running and for some reason it stuck and my parents ever since I can remember referred to them as my running grandparents) in Tyler, TX at Whispering Pines R.V. Park every year the prior three consecutive years. They were here from California visiting their grandparent's that were acquainted with each other through the Sam's R.V. Club (old retirees camping club). It was called 'Grandkids weekend' and so every year I grew closer to this pair, a brother and sister, named Rustin and Lisa Jenkowski. Rustin was around my age, a bit older, but not by more than a year. Lisa was about a year younger than me, and boy did my little brother, Aaron and I have the biggest crush on her. Lisa had a beautiful dark olive complexion, matched perfectly with illuminating green eyes, and I have always been a sucker for chics with green eyes. Rustin is now and actor/model/musician in West Hollywood, no bullshit, but he deserves any blessing that bestows upon him because he is a very unique individual, not too cocky, and carries with him everywhere an air of confidence. When you are around him you feel like he can teach you virtues and wisdom that as a 16 year old kid you would never imagine he could have obtained such a great understanding, he seemed to know exactly what his place on this earth meant.
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Tyler is a beautiful east Texas town thriving with towering pines, and then there are the swamps, most are located a bit southeast of Tyler, but the entirety of East Texas has such a vast array of preciously proud landscapes. Each corner of Texas contains its own wonders, some more dear to me than others. Sulphur Springs is a very remote town in East Texas and is where my "running grandparents" migrated from to FT. Worth after World War II. My mom's side of the family own over 300 acres there in Sulphur Springs still and the majority of my family maintain dreams of settling back down on the old farm to peacefully linger in retirement. One of my Uncles has some cultivating plans for the rich earth the one time cotton farm covered spread like butter even and soft shifting rain soaked land. He knew the soil should yield good crops, at least it did when my grandma was just a girl, her parents (my great grandma Olive Webb I vaguely remember visiting on frequently as a boy before she died in an old folks home. I remember her funeral a bit, mainly the sole memory of her funeral was of my Runnin' Grandma balling her eyes out. I had never seen her so distraught and tore up before or ever since that day) were the last generation to simply live off that plot of acreage. It was so hilarious talking to my Grandma recently reminiscing her childhood out there in the fields in between rows of trees that marked particular borders and separated various fields, intermingled with dense thickets of forested lowlands, this wondrous canopy under which my grandpa and his brothers hunted deer and trapped wild hogs. My grandma found her childhood diary one Christmas family reunion, and in it almost everyday, every entry simple said something about how she woke up, went to school, picked cotton, and occasionally went to town with their daddy for candied apples if they had been really good girls. The farm was then and to this present day still is located far down a winding country dirt farm road with merely a few houses anywhere close or in a three mile radius. My 'Runnin' Grandpa lived on a dairy farm in one of those houses down the road with his four brothers, and he along with two of his little brothers ended up marrying my grandma and her two sisters. What a concept... friends usually tease me about this when I share it with them, saying it was weird, but as far as I know that happened quite frequently back then. At least they weren't cousins like was once an old tradition for centuries. Naturally these were the closest women around for my Grandpa and his brothers to hitch up with. I really respect this side of my family, our family reunions include the set of brothers and sisters in addition to numerous others from all over TX that come together on multiple occasions throughout the year . I am proud of my family's pine grained East Texas swamped 'cotton pickin' country roots.
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