The twelfth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. I’m southbound out of Pendleton, Oregon on Highway 395, a two lane sluice through broad fields of ranchland on either side of this solitary highway. Acres of yellow cheatgrass undulate in a light breeze and a bright morning sun just topping …
The eleventh in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. It’s seven in the morning and it’s toasty inside The Rainbow Cafe in Pendleton, Oregon. Outside it’s, as my daddy used to say, colder than a well digger’s ass. That is, the temp is somewhere south of 30 degrees. I’ve never …
Anyone born before 1996 most certainly knows where they were and what they were doing 22 years ago, this day. My wife and I were getting dressed for work. I was at the bathroom sink when my wife called me over to the television. On weekday mornings we kept the little TV in the bedroom …
Suburbia. But for a few short years of life in San Francisco, I’ve lived in its suburbs for most of my life. That’s where I still live and will probably remain until I’m planted. The city? People love it or hate it. The country? It’s either Shangri-la or backwards, antiquated, and too conservative. Suburbia? What …
The tenth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Antelope, Oregon marks the terminus of State Route 293 and the junction with State Route 218, which takes me back to U.S. 97 and the one time, “Wool Capital of the World.” Route 218 is just as isolated as 293 which …
I was staring down into the well of my martini, twirling the toothpick that speared the olive. I’d shut out the sounds around me; the ballgame on the TV, the usual bar chatter and the clatter of utensils on plates. Focused on the wakes in the crystal aromatic liquid, I asked myself the questions. “What …
Banner Photo: Dorris, California The eighth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Eugene Charles Valla spent four years of his young life hanging onto the edge of his boyhood dream. Valla was 21 years old in 1947, when he was signed to a minor league contract with the New …
Banner photo: Detail of a mural in Oakland, painted in the aftermath of the slaying of George Floyd Tim Scott said it. Nikki Haley said it. Both are running for president and both are out on the campaign trail road testing the lie that’s become a GOP shibboleth. That these two are people of color …
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s the most quoted sentence from the Declaration of Independence, the document that America celebrates every July fourth. When he …
The seventh in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. After our visit to Manzanar, Cora and I continued our trip south along Highway 395 to the last stop on our journey, Lone Pine, population 3700 and a visit to the Alabama Hills and the surrounding area. Festus Rogers squinted at …
“Renowned Bay Area wildlife photographer robbed of camera at gunpoint outside of Oakland park.” That was the headline of a story in the June 5th edition of The San Francisco Chronicle. I was initially made aware of this story while watching the local television news (link here). Stories of photographers getting relieved of their prized, …
Whenever my phone vibrates it can be anything, from a message from a Nigerian prince looking for someone to share his fortune with, to breaking news. I was reading on the couch in my office when I picked up the phone to learn that it was the latter and that, in a matter of moments, …
“We’re not gonna fix it.” ~ Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) That was the gist of Tim Burchett’s response to the killing of three, nine year old children and three members of the staff at The Covenant School, in Nashville, Tennessee. Given that there have been more mass shootings in America in the year 2023, than …
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game.” ~Jacques Barzun Major League Baseball’s spring training is open for business. With all due disrespect to Punxsutawney Phil, that know it all buck toothed rodent, the news that pitchers are lobbing baseballs to catchers …
The second in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. To explore Highway 395, you first have to get to 395. We’ll be picking up 395 at Sonora Junction, at the terminus of Highway 108, just east of a twisting descent from the Sonora Pass. We’re eastbound cutting across the width …
The first in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Highway 395. From the Canadian border to the Mojave Desert in California, it makes its way through thick green forests, flinty high desert country, and oceans of cheatgrass. It rolls past golden yellow wheat fields, blinding, bleached alkali lakes, the rugged, …
“Out with the old and in with the new,” goes the old New Year’s saying. The year 2022 decided that it would not go gracefully. I watched 2022’s final stormy afternoon from inside Peet’s Coffee at the local supermarket mall. The Bay Area was shooting the rapids, metaphorically speaking, of an atmospheric river. Atmospheric river. …
Cora posed the question sometime during Thanksgiving weekend. It was the never before posed query that put normalcy into doubt. “Are we getting a tree this year?” She might just as well have asked if we planned on breathing. I’d actually been asking myself the same question since the holiday season began, sometime back in …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. A continuation of the post, “The Road to Lansing and the Divine Revelation” “I just feel like the most important conversations I’ve had in my life have been at a diner counter.” ~ Ramy Youssef October 23rd, Lansing, …
Parke County, Indiana. Looking for the Mill Creek Covered Bridge, I turned left when I should’ve turned right. The road winds through some cornfields until the cornfields end and the road dips into a dark, woody hollow. It’s a foreboding place. A twinge of anxiety in my gut. Just about to the bottom of the …