Summer

I rode my bike tonight. I went out at 8:10, thinking I'd just ride around the block as the evening breeze began to cool everything down, be gone maybe ten or fifteen minutes. But I stayed out until full dark, until the streetlights came on, and I smiled to think of the summer nights when I was kid, when we stayed out as long as we could, reluctant to return to the stuffy house and bedtime and trying to sleep in the stifling air with mosquitoes buzzing everywhere.

If we were on her good side, Mom would let us eat a giant bowl of ice cream before we went to bed.

This night, as I pedaled around the park, I recalled those nights long ago of riding my bike or skating or playing hide and seek with the neighbor kids and my brother and sister.

It was a night much like this one when my brother found Lucky. We were sitting on the front porch, doing not much of anything and loving the activity, and suddenly Kevin said, "Hey. What's that in the street?" He went to investigate, my sister and I tagging along behind. Curled in a ball in the middle of our street was a young black cat. He picked her up, cuddled her, then marched into the house to place her squarely in our mother's lap. Mom was sitting on the couch talking on the phone, and I still remember giggling as he handed her the cat and we fled outside. Remember, back then our phones were anchored to the wall. He called back to her something about keeping her safe, and when we went back outside he told us just to wait. We did.

A long time later Mom ended her conversation and we heard her call "Kevin" through the screen door, stretching out the syllables in a tone that was both ominous and amused. We shuffled warily back inside. The little cat was now curled in Mom's lap, purring away as our mother stroked her fur and glared at her second-born son.

"We don't need a cat," she told him.

"I know," he said, "but she's lucky."

And that became her name. She was the first black cat in our family. And she was extraordinarily patient with my brother, who at times told our dog to chase her just for the fun of it, and once he tried to make the tip of her tail white by dipping it in bleach. (He succeeded in reducing the black luster to a dull orange. Don't get the wrong idea; my brother wasn't a bad kid, just bored. In those days, we had to find things to do. The things we found weren't always good things.)

This was the memory that flooded back to me tonight as I pedaled my bike up and down the streets of my little community. I have always loved going out on a summer night to ride my bike. It is a calming, contemplative venture these days, but it does still immediately make me feel like a kid again. Hard to believe I'll be 64 in two weeks.

Driving

I may have mentioned in an earlier post (or if I didn't, and we're friends, you've heard me whine about it) that for the past five months I've been driving The Youngest Granddaughter, Reese, to school every day and picking her up in the afternoon, a total distance of 120 miles per day, most of it on the freeway--10, 210, 215. (Please note that I did not use the definite article to modify those freeway numbers--because I'm told that "only in California" do we say "the 10 freeway.")

What a pain! Except... I've had the pleasure of getting to know Reese on a deeper level. She's a "step" granddaughter (oh how I hate that term! "Step" what? Step away? Step down? Ugh!), so I haven't been afforded the same opportunities to hang out with and bond with her as I have with Ben and Ellie. For that reason, driving times have been special to me because they've given us time to talk about the important things in life, including gun control, the devastation of the current administration, bad teachers, good teachers, the behavior of boys in high school, and What was that on the side of the road?!?

In reference to the latter, there is a whole list of junk we saw on the side of the road. Couch cushions seem to be a popular castoff, as are ropes, chains, ladders and gardening tools. By far the one that most interested us was the chicken.

We were westbound on the--oops, I mean--210 one morning at about 6:15 when my eye caught movement on the center median. I blinked, focused, and yes, my eyes did not deceive me; there was a tall red rooster pacing back and forth in the dirt, his toes--wait--talons?--stopping just short of the emergency strip. He clearly wanted to cross the road (okay, I had to go there), but feared the traffic, so he just walked nervously back and forth. Of course, I processed all that in a matter of seconds. Then I said:

"Was that a chicken?" to a teenager who seemed to be dozing.

"It was!" she immediately responded. "How did a chicken get there?"

And for the rest of the drive to school, that's all we talked about. How he came to be on this raised section of freeway out on the middle divider. Logistically, it seemed impossible that he'd gotten there on his own, so we wondered if perhaps someone had grown tired of hearing him cock-a-doodle-doo before dawn and had brought him out presumably to his doom.

Then I dropped Reese off and we forgot about him.

Until we saw him in the exact same spot the next morning, still alive, still pacing.

"WHAT THE...????"

"OH MY GOD!"

I don't remember which of us said which, but we both exclaimed simultaneously. He was still there because he couldn't really go anywhere else, but how had he survived without getting hit? And by now the poor guy must be really hungry and thirsty, we thought. Had there been more room, I would have pulled in and tried to catch him, but that scenario seemed precarious at best. What if I frightened him into traffic and caused an accident?

But what to do?

I dropped Reese off, went home and called the California Highway Patrol.

"California Highway Patrol. How can I help you?"

"I'm sorry, this is your weird phone call for the day. There's a live rooster on the westbound 210 about a mile east of Waterman. He's been there for at least 24 hours without food or water."

Long pause.

"He's alive?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Well, I guess that chicken just needs to get across the road."

Yep, she went there, too, and then we were both just laughing but also expressing sympathy for the poor guy.

"Okay," she promised, "I'll call animal control and we'll get someone out there right away."

And then we had to wait 24 hours to learn the fate of Mr. Red Rooster. Driving to school the next morning, we were all eyes, intently staring out over the dashboard before we ever came in view of the spot where he'd been. Finally we came up on it, two sets of eyes searching frantically for any sight of him. All we saw were two orange cones. No rooster. No feathers. No blood (which would have been awful).

"Yayyyyy!!!" We both broke into cheers. Red had been saved!

I made a mental note to call Animal Services in San Bernardino as soon as I got home to ask if they had him. ("I'm sorry, this is your weird call for the day, but did you happen to impound a rooster off the freeway yesterday?") We wanted to know the rest of the story. Was Red okay? Would he be placed for adoption?

Alas, things got busy when I got home and I never did make that call. Perhaps it's for the best. In our minds, Red is safe, well fed and hydrated now, waiting for his forever home.

Last week Reese graduated high school. Our driving adventures--at least on the roads to school and back--have ended. She will head off to Cal Poly University in August to study Engineering. I hope she always looks back fondly on those hours we spent driving, talking, bonding, and making the world a safer place for at least one rooster.

Bobby

"My thanks to all of you, now it's on to Chicago and let's win there."

I still can't recall the words without tearing up.

On June 5th, 1968, I stayed up late to watch the primary election results. I was only 14--certainly not old enough to vote yet. But there were two strong influences in my life at the time--no, three--that motivated me to watch the news, to follow the campaign of the young and charismatic senator. The first was a passionate history teacher. The second was the Civil Rights Movement. And the third was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. just two months before. The world, it seemed to my young eyes, was a cruel one. (Keep in mind, we were daily seeing images of the war and devastation in Vietnam.) I desperately needed hope. Bobby Kennedy represented that hope of change for me.

It was after midnight when he gave a brief speech in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, ending with those words I've quoted above. I remember being tired and thrilled as I got up to turn off the TV and go to bed. This man who ran on a platform of racial justice and social change might just have a chance, might really have a good chance, of becoming President. I went to bed happy.

I woke to the radio alarm at 5:00a.m. The newscaster's words invaded my sleep at first, so I thought I'd been having a nightmare. But no. As my brain came fully awake, the reality of the report sunk in--like a searing iron branding my heart: He'd been shot in the night. All the thoughts and prayers in the country could not save him; he died twenty-six hours after being shot.

Has it really been fifty years since that day? The older I get, the more I see how the events of those days directed my life.

My appreciation for journalism began that day when I retrieved a copy of the L.A. Times from our front porch and realized it was filled with far more information than I was getting on the radio about what happened. I pored over every story, trying to make sense of it all, hoping to find hope in the details. Sadly, there was none.

And I was angry. Or, I should say, angrier. The assassination of Dr. King had rocked my world pretty hard. But then, people thought (and some even whispered) it was only a matter of time. As a strong, brave Black man standing up to the White establishment of the time, he made himself a marked man, and he knew it. Still... I was already seething at the injustice and cowardice of shooting a man down in cold blood because he stands for fairness and equality.

Then Bobby... No one saw that coming. For a long time, I couldn't watch the news any more, didn't care what happened in the world. I was coming down with mononucleosis at the time, so I spent that summer sick in bed, depressed, isolated and absolutely despairing. I hated the world I'd been brought into.

There are times now when glimpses of that despair flash across my memory. We live today in equally perilous times. Occasionally, still, I need to turn away from the headlines and wander off into Nature to reflect, to appreciate, to heal.

What I know now is that stopping a single person--JFK, RFK, Dr. King--does not stop a movement. Progress goes forward in spite of tragedy. Others take up the sword and run headlong toward the battle. We should all be so brave as those men.

No News?

As if I didn't have enough grief in my life in the past few weeks, here was a scene that elicited more tears: As I sat at a Carrow's restaurant in Upland waiting for my truck to be serviced, I sipped a cup of coffee and watched these guys take down two newspaper boxes and haul them away. I took these photos through the window--and through actual tears.

If you're thinking right now, "I get my news online anyway," please know that you should never say those words aloud to me unless you want to be subjected to a line of loaded Socratic questioning that begins with "What's the difference between a news story offered online and one offered in a print newspaper?" Do your homework first. Be prepared to answer.

If you'd like a hint, here's one: Space.

The average online story has a word count in the hundreds--a couple paragraphs, maybe. The average word count in a print newspaper runs into the thousands. Why is that important? Because you get the whole story, including all the salient details, not just a brief summary of what happened.

Here's another hint: Sources

Exactly how are those news stories coming to us online? When you click on a "trending" story, where does that take you? To a reputable news source that you trust? Or to a page with multiple graphics and pop-ups so you can read two paragraphs about a possible Yeti sighting while being barraged with advertisements? So is the point of that story to inform the public? Or to sell anti-wrinkle cream?

And speaking of graphics: I've had folks tell me they like to read their news online so they can "see pictures and video." Oh lord help us, really? I'm pretty sure I can read an article about the need for further gun control legislation without having to watch terrified teenagers running from classrooms yet again.

Sigh. Journalism as it is presented online is not the same as Journalism which is crafted for long-established and reputable print media outlets, and any journalist worth her salt will tell you the same. Ask one... if you can find one. Most local newspapers have narrowed their staffs from hundreds to handfuls, and those few over-worked individuals have little patience to discuss the merits of brief news versus complete news.

Yeah, it's clear; I feel pretty strongly about this. In my file cabinet I have copies of front page news stories--from the day Barack Obama was elected President... from September 11, 2001... from that day in 1968 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. I was only 14. But I knew that story was important. So I kept the newspaper from that day. Sometimes I imagine my grandchildren telling their kids, long after I am dead, about a time when the news was actually printed out on papers, and everyone bought one so they would know exactly what was going on in the world... for real.