Marian, our first-born, having graduated from the University of California, decided she was going to take a year off and just work ”fun”
jobs. She found one at Lake Tahoe, a few hundred miles north of our home in Canoga Park.
One night several months into her Tahoe experience she called us. She sounded very serious and asked to talk to her mother.
”She won`t be back for a couple of hours,” I said. ”Anything I can do?”
”Pop,” she said, ”I`ve broken my foot.”
As a family we are not above phone jokes. ”Zat so?” I said, reciting the vaudeville classic: ”You know, I broke two fingers recently. Went out for a walk, was reaching for a cigar and a horse stepped on my hand.”
There was no laughter, only silence then a sniffle.
”This is not a phone joke? You really broke your foot?”
”I was horsing around in the parking lot,” she said. ”And I fell off a curb. I`ve been to the hospital and everything.”
A daughter`s tears
Then, control kind of slipped away. ”Pop, I can`t do anything,” she said through the tears. ”I can`t drive my car. I can`t go to work or anything. Could you come and get me?”
When either your wife or children announce an emergency and cry at you, there`s a tendency to change instantly to a knight, jump on your horse and ride off in all directions.
I all but told her to go to the door and wait. I wrote a note for my wife, threw a few things in a bag, raced to the airport and just made a 9 o`clock flight to Reno.
There were high winds and a driving rain but all they did was add to the excitement, minor obstacles to be overcome. The kid needed her dad, what was a little weather? I felt invincible. But as soon as the plane was airborne it occurred to me that maybe I was a little bit vincible; I`d forgotten to eat. I explained my situation to the flight attendants and asked what they had on board for snacks.
Considering the roughness of the flight, they were surprised I wanted anything. They explained that it was not a dinner flight, nor even a snack flight, but said they`d see what they could do.
While one of them hurried to the rear to aid a passenger who was sick, the other searched around in the cupboards and found a couple of cans of bloody mary mix and some peanuts.
As she poured the spiced tomato juice into a tumbler, I noticed that the cans had the word ”medium” printed on them in red.
A bartender told me once that bloody mary drinkers don`t consider the mix very good if it doesn`t burn more than the vodka. I could have used some vodka to cut this stuff.
”How is it, sir?” the cabin attendant asked.
Knights are macho. I nodded and told her it was fine. Then, I sat there, sipping bloody mary mix, throat on fire down to my belt, eyes and nose watering and trying to look like I was enjoying my ”dinner.”
She smiled at me.
”Hits the spot,” I said, smiling back. It felt like it was hitting it with a cattle-prod, but it`s the thought that counts, right? I only dabbed at my eyes when the tears were actually running down my cheeks, or I was sure the stewardess wasn`t looking.
As we got over the mountains, seeming to go a mile and a half up and down for every mile forward, the stewardess who had gone to the rear returned looking a little pale herself, found a seat and sat on the edge of it. The other offered me another glass of bloody mary mix. I declined.
I never really wanted to see any more of it, besides I was beginning to feel like I might be seeing the first drink again.
A ride to remember
We got to Reno at about 11. The shuttle to North Lake Tahoe was pretty fast, considering the road conditions and the fact that the driver seemed to be nodding off from time to time.
”Seventh round-trip today,” he said. ”Don`t worry, we`ll have you in Reno in no time.”
”Tahoe.”
”Right,” he said, ”Tahoe.”
I got to my daughter`s apartment at about 1:30 in the morning. She met me on crutches, with her foot in a cast up to her knee, and hugged me like she had when she was a little girl. The knighthood stuff has its good points.
”Did you have a good flight?”
”Not bad,” I said, but she didn`t believe me. She made me sit down, crutched her way into her kitchenette and made me a cup of instant coffee and a sandwich. It was a thoughtful thing to do.
But, when she put it all on a tray and tried to hop back into the living room with it, the whole gesture kind of went to pieces.
Marian, the coffee, the cup, the saucer and the sandwich all hopped up together but they all came down separately. I laughed and immediately felt guilty because she was dissolved in tears on the carpet next to the mess made by the coffee.
But, the tears were from laughter. She nodded toward the steaming wet spot on the carpet, ”You want cream and sugar on that?”
After about four hours` sleep we loaded up her `68 Volkswagen and headed south.
It may have been one of the best visits I`ve had or ever will have with her.
Driving back through the mountains, the trees laced with frost and the higher peaks blanketed with new snow put pictures in my mind I hope I`ll always have. The storm was over and except for occasional clouds snagged on the mountain tops around the basin, the sky was as blue as turquoise.
At the lower elevations all the things that had been brown were turning green again. The air was fresh and it kind of felt like it was going to be morning all day.
We took the inland route, U. S. Highway 395, the ”back way home” so I could show Marian some of my favorite miracles. Through Devil`s Gate, we took a side-trip through Tioga Pass, the gateway to Yosemite, where the wind whips against the granite faces of the canyon, carrying leaves and even small stones straight up.
Tioga feels like the entry to Shangri-la and when you go through it to Tuolumne Meadows, you`re sure it is Shangri-la. We stopped to view the scene and then to watch a busload of Japanese tourists doing the same.
Courtesy and reverence
They did it with a courtesy that was almost reverence, as if they knew they were standing in the presence of God.
Going back to 395, we saw Mono Lake, an area of such stark beauty it looks like a moonscape with water. We drove south, paralleling the John Muir Trail and the 13,000- to 14,000-foot mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
We cut through part of the Mojave desert at about sunset, then, through the San Gabriel Mountains and into Los Angeles. We talked about everything and then we just stared, not talking at all, or needing to.
When we pulled up in front of the house at 11:15, Marian turned to me, kissed me on the cheek and said, ”Thanks, Pop.”
”You`re welcome,” I said. ”Wouldn`t have missed it for the world.”
