Dreams ~

Frances on Emma

Young Paris, old Emma and a stranger.

Granddaughter Paris was about five feet tall and not yet a teenager, driving Emma, our big old live-in step van, on a dirt road near Mendocino, California. I was in the passenger seat, happy and confident that she could handle the job, although Frances had already gotten out and begged us to turn around when she first caught sight of the downward tilt of the bumpy rocky road, barely more than a 2-rutted path, dampened by rain the night before.

Paris had it in low gear, but at 10 miles an hour we were still going too fast. So she straightened out to her full length, hardly touching the seat, in order to push the brake pedal way down. A few yards farther on it became clear that this “road” was becoming a steep descent into a gravity well that Emma couldn’t get out of with only 2-wheel drive. So Paris set the hand brake and we got out to walk ahead and look. Our fears were well founded: it would be perhaps a 40% grade before it leveled off at the foot of the hill. We turned around and looked up in time to see Emma beginning to move forward! Paris screamed and we both ran uphill to prevent a disaster. Maybe the brake was relaxing slightly, or maybe the soggy ground beneath the rear tires was slipping.

Suddenly a raggedy man appeared, a common type in Mendocino County, and the three of us fell into a conversation of sorts, standing in front of Emma, who was apparently no longer in any danger of slipping, as the partly cloudy blue sky drifted above and the misty Pacific Ocean rolled its thunder half a mile to the west. The man said, “You don’t want to read the Chronicle.” I said, “I don’t read much printed news anymore, but when I did, I liked the Chronicle. And my wife found life-changing events in the pink pages, one of which led to our association with El Teatro Campesino.” He said, “You don’t want to read the Chronicle.” I said, “You don’t know what I want.”

Frances got out of bed and I woke up.

~ Tim, 2008-11-28, San Juan Bautista, CA.