Some people are calling it ”The I-5 World Series.”
Baseball should sue.
– – –
Int. Hwy. 5 and Int. Hwy. 10 intersect in Los Angeles, somewhere above Whittier Boulevard and and Boyle Avenue. I-10 changes there, or near there. West, it`s the Santa Monica Freeway. East, it`s the San Bernardino Freeway.
I-5 changes there, too. South, toward San Diego, it`s the Santa Ana Freeway. North, toward Oakland, it`s the Golden State Freeway.
Below, it`s the barrio.
”It`s 100 percent Mexican,” says the man at the counter of the OK Market.
Not always. The man at the counter, a young man who says his name is Lee, is Korean. ”South Korean,” he says, emphatically. His father owns the store, which, he says with a that`s-the-nature-of-the-busine ss shrug, gets robbed about once a year.
”This isn`t so bad,” he says of the neighborhood, predominantly little houses, little stores and large-auto body shops. ”A block away, across DeSoto Street, I hear it`s pretty bad.”
Baseball fan?
”Yeah, kind of,” he says.
Much interest in the Series around here?
”Yeah, a lot. They like the Dodgers.”
They. You?
”Yeah, me too.”
Who`s going to win the Series?
”The Dodgers.”
Around the corner, in a store with used television sets in the window and the door open to catch a breeze on a warm afternoon, a small man named Manuel is repairing a videocassette recorder. He speaks little English, is friendly but wary, even when the stranger says he only wants to talk baseball.
”Investigation?” he asks, fingering a Chicago Tribune business card.
”No, no,” he is assured once again. ”Baseball.”
”Beisbol,” Manuel says, and he smiles. ”Doyer. Doyer.”
Near Raul`s TV Sales and Service is Connie`s Mexican and American Food. That`s what the sign says. Inside, it`s Connie`s Restaurante, and the food isn`t Mexican but Salvadoran.
There are six tables, covered with red oilcloth. An old man with a brown, weathered face waits for his lunch. Three teenage girls are served fried plantains, which look delicious. On the walls are calendars, El Salvador travel posters and one sports poster, of the 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers.
Daisy Rivas, the waitress, picks the Dodgers to win it all. Why?
”Because they are good, yes?”
Everyone near the intersection of I-5 and I-10 seems to know there`s a World Series happening. Everyone says they watched the games, or at least part of the games. There are no apparent Oakland fans. No one wears an A`s cap.
But no one wears a Dodger cap, either. On Rodeo Drive, folks wear Dodger caps with their Ralph Lauren shirts and their Ralph Lauren shorts.
No Dodger caps here. And no Ralph Lauren. No posters in stores, no pictures in store windows, no banners.
Dodger Stadium is less than five miles away from the corner of Whittier and Boyle. Not far from I-5.
– – –
North through Los Angeles on I-5. Traffic is moving grudgingly, and it`s only 1:30 on a cloudless afternoon. It takes 12 minutes to go 1.7 miles, past an interesting exit ramp: Brooklyn Avenue.
The air is visible. Its color is brown, which is appropriate. The radio says the air is dangerous, which is no surprise.
It takes 26 minutes to go less than four miles to the Pasadena Freeway cutoff, 31.3 miles from the starting point at the junction of I-5 and I-10, and it will be almost an hour`s ride before the air turns clear beyond San Fernando.
Then suddenly, stunningly, the sky is not brown but vibrant blue. The surrounding hills, covered with short, golden grass, sparkle in the sun.
A few miles up I-5 is the town of Newhall.
There are several of these towns on this interstate. They are Interstate Towns. Their business district straddles the highway, where, before the interstate, there was no town at all.
Each will have at least four gas stations, most with mini-marts but no mechanics; two chain motels; at least two quick-burger restaurants; and at least two full-service, family-style chain restaurants.
At the Shell station, a youthful male attendant with longish blond, streaked hair, earphones covering his ears, a thick gold chain around his neck and 15 silver bracelets around each wrist dully says that, sure, he`s a Dodger fan.
”I live here,” he says. ”Might as well root for `em.
”Saw that killer play the other day. What was it, a grand slam?”
About 45 miles along, on the other side of the road, the world`s largest Georgia flag waves its stars and bars in the sunshine near what looks like a truck stop.
A huge Georgia flag in southern California?
The car chooses not to stop.
– – –
It`s 59.3 miles from the starting point, a few miles past Castaic Dam, which created Castaic Lake. I-5 has turned beautiful. Moving through Angeles National Forest, the countryside is bright golden hills with patches of bright green and designer brown. Far to the left, to the west, purple mountains rise majestically. The fruited plain comes later.
First comes Lebec, pop. 900. Little, plain houses and clusters of mobile homes tucked into the pretty hills. The jobs are in Bakersfield or Lancaster, not here. Downtown Lebec (accent on the ”bec”) is a post office, a food market, a video store. One building.
Mary Bollman used to be a Valley Girl. Now she works in the Lebec post office (ZIP 93243), rents her videos from Ace Nutting, shops in the market.
Got a favorite in the Series?
”I love the Dodgers,” Bollman said. ”Hershiser`s great. He broke that record. How can anyone break that record?”
Ace Nutting, the guy at the video store, has been taking heat. He may be the only serious Athletics backer in all of metropolitan Lebec.
”I`m just an Oakland fan,” said Nutting, with a hint of embarrassment. He is a rugged-looking man, longish black hair, tattoos on both arms, black cap turned around so the inscription-”I`d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6”-faces the wall behind him.
”I`ve been an Oakland fan for quite a little while,” he said. ”I was in the naval air station out in Oakland and I`ve got a lot of friends in Oakland, and now that the Dodgers are two up, I`m very nervous.
”But I don`t think we`re going to fall,” he said. ”I think Canseco will take it out for `em. He`ll hit another grand-slam home run and that`ll be it.”
– – –
The sign on I-5, 91.4 miles from the starting point, warns truckers to shift to a lower gear. The road winds down through the golden hills, takes a last turn and then the hills give way to an immense flatness. Even in late October, ripples of heat rise from the floor of the San Joaquin Valley.
Soon, even on a clear day, there are no mountains left, right or ahead. The only relief from the flatness are the overpasses spanning I-5.
Towns with names such as Pumpkin Center and Weed Patch beckon, but there are no pumpkins and there are no weeds. What there is now is cotton, miles and miles of cotton in all directions.
For some miles now, signs have been urging travelers to ”Pick Your Own” at the Al Bussell Ranch. At last, 132.3 miles from the starting point, the sign adds ”This Exit.”
The ranch is a couple of miles east of I-5 on Stockdale Road. A large, dirt parking area is virtually empty, but it`s a weekday, and it`s getting late. Two women and maybe six small children wander the ranch market, killing time by looking at baskets of apples and raisins and vegetables and jars of cider and a small hill of pumpkins.
”Who wants to go out and pick?”
The voice on the loudspeaker belongs to Jim Simpson. He is 72. A straw cowboy hat shades the sun from a deeply lined face. He wears overalls. He also wears an oversize, green-and-white polka-dot bowtie. He drives the Jeep that pulls the hay wagon that carries the women and children to the groves, where they can pick white sweet corn and squash and blackeyes and turnips (with greens, 29 cents a pound).
Dodger fan?
”You better believe it,” said Simpson. ”Hell, I live in California.”
Oakland`s in California.
”I don`t care. I lived in Los Angeles up until about `80, then I moved up here to work in the oilfields. We always was Dodger fans.”
They going to win it?
”Hell, yeah, because they`re good. I couldn`t get over what`s-his-name last night, pitched that game. No runs or nothing.”
Any Oakland fans at all around here?
”No. Not in this place, I`ll guarantee you.”
”You`re driving I-5?” asks Natalie Zachery, who works the register.
”God, that`s a boring drive. North or south?”
”North.”
”Oh, that`s worse. No sights. Don`t expect anything.”
– – –
Any town called Lost Hills is irresistible. It`s about two miles west of I-5, 156.4 miles from the starting point.
A high sign mounted on a post says, in small letters, ”Lost Hills Inn,” and below it in large letters, ”EAT.” There may have been something there before. Now there`s just a slab. On the slab is an old refrigerator.
The housing is predominantly mobile homes, predominantly old. The people who live in them work in the surrounding fields as drivers, mechanics or pickers. English is not a primary language.
Dona is a cook and waitress at the best-looking restaurant on Lost Hills Road, Los Compadres. It is a two-table restaurant.
How do you feel about the World Series?
Dona, a tiny Mexican woman with a single long black braid and a sweet smile exposing gold-inlaid teeth, shrugs politely, then asks about the notebook. Not everyone on I-5 is into this World Series.
– – –
Not even the road kill is interesting on I-5. No upside-down armadillos, no squished skunks, no scavenger birds picking at unidentifiable entrails. Just endless fields of cotton.
The sun is getting lower, and 190.3 miles from the starting point, it ducks behind a mountain and turns the horizon a faded yellow, which blends into a deepening blue. You have to wonder if it isn`t Dodger blue.
It is 233.7 miles from the starting point.
– – –
Santa Nella is an interstate town: gas stations, mini-marts, burger places and family restaurants, including a Denny`s.
Calif. Hwy. 152 carries produce between rich farm country north of Fresno and the rich farm country of the Salinas Valley to the west before hitting the coast at Monterey. It cuts across I-5 near Santa Nella.
There`s a truck stop there, one of those big ones. At the entrance is a marquee-like sign.
”Congratulations, Oakland A`s-L.A. Dodgers. North vs. South. It`s the I- 5 Series.”
After 307.1 miles from the starting point, it was the first sign-literally-that something special was happening here.
The truck-stop restaurant is called Mr. B`s. Among the day`s specials:
”Tom Lasorda`s favorite sandwich with cup of soup. $3.25.”
”It`s like a poor boy, on rye,” said Linda, a waitress, who didn`t care about any World Series, including the I-5 one.
The sign, night manager Jackie Day said, was the idea of Dave Buchanan, the owner. Mr. B himself. The sandwich was the idea of the restaurant manager, Erie Jackson.
”Mr. Jackson just came up with that this morning, Tommy Lasorda, because they were coming up this way, the Dodgers,” Day said.
But Jackson, like Day and just about everyone else around, according to Day, is an A`s fan.
”He`ll probably put something on there about the manager of the A`s tomorrow,” she said with a giggle. ”A sandwich or something.”
Truckers wear baseball-type caps. There were probably 40 baseball-capped truckers in Mr. B`s restaurant. The caps said ”Mack Trucks” and ”Coors Light” and ”Phoenix Cardinals” and ”Rough Country Racing Team.”
Not one said ”L.A.” or ”A`s.”
”I couldn`t care less,” said John, wearing Union 76 overalls and eating a taco salad. ”I pump diesel all day, and that`s all I do.
” `Sides, I`m a football fan. Dallas Cowboys. Only they ain`t doin` so good right now.”
– – –
It`s dark now on I-5, except for the moonlight and the headlights coming and the taillights going. There are no real towns, but shadows hint there are orchards.
I-5 doesn`t go to Oakland or San Francisco. Near Tracy, 346.9 miles from the starting point, I-5 heads for Sacramento, and I-580 heads west for Livermore and Castro Valley and Oakland.
The road, straight most of the way from Los Angeles, begins to wind, hinting that maybe this is a pretty stretch. But it`s dark, and the half-moon isn`t bright enough. At 371.6 miles, there`s a sign that says ”Altamont pass.”
At 371.6 miles, there are street lights. A town.
At 397.4 miles, there are serious buildings in the distance. A city.
At 408.2 miles, there comes into view a large office building whose windows are lit to create a word. The word is ”GO.”
I-580 bends, and the rest of the building tells the rest of the message.
”GO” say the top six floors.
”A`s” say the bottom 16.
