Gigantic.18
Homeward
In a covered wagon, autumn would be insanely late to head across country. In an ’85 Celica, it was just about right.
I was driving with Melinda, it was her car. I’d met her at the Central, she’d heard us on the radio and come to check out the show. The voodoo stick that Curtis had pointed at the studio monitors and got our song onto KCMU was still influencing my fate.
The plan was to stay with people we knew in odd towns and fill in the blanks as we went. First stop south of Seattle was Salem, Oregon, where Melinda had a friend. We played pool in a bar and got a good night’s sleep.
The next stop was supposed to be San Francisco, but we got a late start and wound up camping in the Redwoods. About the time we were pitching the tent, San Francisco was struck by a 6.9 earthquake. We proceeded there anyway and spent several surreal days in the city as it began to recover.
In Los Angeles we stayed with Jen, who I knew from college. She’d just gotten married, which was a bummer, but somehow she and I managed to ditch both her new husband and Melinda. Jen took me cruising on Sunset Boulevard in her Alpha Romeo convertible, a singularly memorable evening.
My health was still perpetually compromised, I wound up feverish on Jen’s couch for days beyond what’d been planned. Melinda accused me of pretending so I could stay with Jen. I was actually sick, I wasn’t faking. But twenty years later, I moved to Los Angeles and married Jen. So I guess Melinda was right.
At any rate, I recovered sufficiently for Melinda and I to hit the road again. Somewhere in Arizona, I picked up a cassette of Hank Williams’ greatest hits and began listening incessantly, alternating with Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. The combination of these tapes with being on the road in the American West had a profound effect. It would change my listening habits and ultimately influence my own musical output.
A couple of cheap motels later came Las Cruces, where Melinda’s friend Jim lived. Jim’s superpower was that he knew Juarez and was prepared to be our guide. We parked in El Paso, got some pesos, and crossed the pedestrian bridge.
I’d been eating what I thought was the best Mexican food for the last several days, so was surprised by the simplicity of what we got in Juarez. A little joint with three tables, I watched the cook grill a few small chunks of steak which she put on a soft tortilla, handed it to me, and that was that.
Jim’s real expertise came later that night. He led us down an alleyway to a plain wooden door, marked only No Menores. Behind the door, the backroom bar was crammed, hot and heaving, propelled by alcohol and live music.
The word mariachi doesn’t do it justice. I’m not recalling horns, and they wore street clothes. What struck me was the utter lack of pretense. The guys in this band didn’t give a shit whether they had a record contract or not. They were playing the people’s music, the people were dancing, it was all part of one sweeping gesture.
Imagining scenes like this all over Mexico, I envisioned myself in a band like this someday. Not the style of music, but the fluidity between band and audience, the shared experience more important than the fame game of the American music scene.
We didn’t stay late. Not everyone was happy about the gringos crashing their scene. One woman openly bodychecked Melinda as she walked passed. This was not an indie nightclub in Seattle. I would not be punching anyone and getting away with it.
The trip continued. Working our way up from Texas, a string of motels later, I found myself temporarily stranded in Pittsburg, where Melinda was from.
A bar on the South Side with a live country band gave a similar impression as the band in Juarez. The singer was probably 80 years old. He, the bass player and fiddle player all wore matching western outfits. The drummer was wearing a dirty t-shirt. Maybe he was filling in that night.
Eventually I made it back to New York. Seattle had transformed me into a guitar player, among other things, and the trip back across America had fixed within me some kind of photographic emulsion to be developed later.
But in New York City, I was just another guy who had to start all over again.
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