I hadn’t thought about this in years. Then yesterday while sitting on an old-growth log at the end of a gravel road, I remembered it. Now it won’t leave me alone. That’s always a sign I’m supposed to write it down, whether I want to or not, so here goes.
—–
it was early summer, about a month after I graduated from high school. Well, I really didn’t graduate. I was off having my first acid trip while all the drones (as I saw them then) did the whole cap, gown, and boring speeches ritual. The school eventually mailed my diploma, even though I had refused to take the stupid “home economics” requirement and therefore didn’t qualify. I was pleased that they wanted to get rid of me.
But there I was a month later, nobody, nothing, and nowhere. I knew I never wanted to set foot in another school, not even if they called it college. But there was nothing else I wanted to do, either.
I was inert and empty. Spent most days in my bedroom reading, doing nothing. Nowadays they’d call it depression and give me pills. Back then, my father informed me I was lazy, useless, and good-for-nothing — and he had a point.
But for the life of me I could think of nothing I cared enough to do.
Then one summer day I decided to decide (without actually deciding) where my life would go.
I drove my parents’ old station wagon up through Los Gatos and Saratoga, twisting along Highway 9, through redwoods and into the coastal hills. Just before 9 intersects with Highway 35 (Skyline Boulevard), I parked and started walking. Up onto Skyline I went and turned north for San Francisco.
I told myself I’d either walk to San Francisco and disappear into the growing street scene, abandoning the car, family, and all normal life, or I’d turn around, walk back to the car, drive home, and get a job.
The walk would decide.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I knew San Francisco was 60 miles away. I had no backpack or tent. I probably had a canteen of water and maybe an apple and a packet of crackers in the embroidered burlap bag one of my friends had made me. I surely had no money. I can’t imagine what I thought I was up to.
All I knew was that I’d walk until I did know. Something would tell me which course I was supposed to take.
—–
Skyline Boulevard was (and to my surprise, still is) rural and forested even though it borders one of the country’s biggest metro areas. It follows the coastal mountain ridge from Santa Cruz to San Francisco. In some clearings, as you trek north, you can see the Pacific Ocean on one side and the smoggy sprawl of Silicon Valley on the other.
It was a peaceful refuge from the sterile suburbanization I’d grown up in.
It was also long, hot, and tiring.
After a few miles, it really began to dawn on me that 60 miles is a long, long way. After a few more, I felt hungry and dusty and footsore. After a few more … I did the inevitable and turned back. My aching feet sent me more of a message than any mystical “voice” ever did.
The very next day I found a job
—–
It was a horrible job. The kind everybody has to have once, if only as a reminder of what you don’t want to spend your whole life doing.
My boss at the Burr-gr-Freez, Leonard L. Dweeblputz (not his real name, or the real name of the drive-in, but close enough in spirit), was foul and repugnant. Three or four times an hour he’d reach down and ostentatiously adjust his privates in front of all us little girly employees. If we dropped a hamburger patty on the floor, he made us pick it up and put it back on the grill. And — trust me on this — if you’re ever tempted to order a chocolate-covered banana at a low-budget little dive … um, don’t. Just don’t.
I got fired after five weeks for calling in “sick” on a sunny Sunday (along with every other teenage layabout in Leonard’s employ, I gather) and was not sorry to lose that job. Not one bit.
One of my buddies quit a week later by making up an extra-extra big sof-serv cone and flinging it on Leonard’s shoes. Yeah, that was what that job inspired.
But during my brief and unlamented career as a counter girl, one of the other “here this week and gone the next” employees happened to mention this book called Atlas Shrugged. I’d seen it lying around on an end table of some family whose kids I used to babysit, but reading books that parents might read was not my style. I’d paid no attention to it.
I’d have continued to pay no attention to it except that this fellow Burr-gr-Freez counter girl described it as “a book about what happens when all the intellectuals and artists go on strike.”
Completely wrong and right up my alley. Read it. And life was never the same.
So my summer-day attempt to listen for the voice of God up there on Skyline Boulevard led me to a godawful job. Which led me to a novel written by a godless Russian philosopher. Which changed my life.
—–
One other little thing happened up there on Skyline Boulevard. It really was a little thing and I mention it only in passing.
There was some sort of private school up there. The buildings, as I recall, were geodesic domes that the students had helped build themselves. I knew domes were cool. But my only concept of school — and school students — was what I’d gotten from 12 years in government institutions. While some individual kids were nice or interesting, in mobs they were savage. And had often been savage toward me, the “different,” artsy, misfit type. (And that was something you could tell about me in those days, even at a quick glance.) I literally had no concept that all schools and all kids weren’t like the ones I’d endured. Even schools made of geodesic domes. I thought the buildings were different, but not the people.
While I was walking up there, the bus from the school came trundling toward me. Seeing me, kids started leaning out the windows. I was all too familiar with that routine. I put my head down and braced for the insults, catcalls, and maybe even thrown objects.
Instead, as the bus lumbered by, I was greeted with cheers and waves and an overwhelming outpouring of friendliness.
The bus had passed me before I was able to look up in wonder and realize what had happened.
I felt bad for not returning the cheer. But later I realized it was the first sign I ever got that the outside world — even the outside world of schoolkids — wasn’t as nasty as it had always seemed to me. The first sign that maybe there was hope for good things from people, after all.
Ah yes, high school. Girls took home-ec, and boys took shop. Well, not where I went to high school. Did have that routine in middle school though. IIRC, we did have a few girls in shop class.
Odd, isn’t it, how life works? You know how sometimes people will ponder, if they could go back and change something, what it would be? Well, I do that sometimes, but then I think, there’s no way to tell what course that would’ve put me on. Had I stayed in Oregon, would I have died in a boating accident? There’s one job that I sometimes kick myself for not taking. But would that have led, eventually, to a better or worse outcome? Well, I don’t know.
I don’t remember what induced me to read Rand. That was back when I had just moved to Colorado. I read both Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead — back to back I think. It was about the same time that I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A triple-whammy, as it were. Would I have eventually found those, in Portland?
For Portland, writings by Marx and Lenin would be the more likely finds. At least these days anyway.
I went to Beaverton high school. Class of ’60. Not a fun experience.
Random thoughts:
1) So at what point did you decide to write, Claire? More importantly ― Why?
2) “It was a horrible job. The kind everybody has to have once, if only as a reminder of what you don’t want to spend your whole life doing.”
Exactly. I had one of those once as a teenager. It was a mind-bender. It made me determine to… “never again”.
3) I’ve learned over the years that when “God” speaks, don’t listen. It’s usually something else (society? fear of the unknown? fear of being alone?) pulling your strings. It takes a lot of effort to find your own spirituality. Too much for most people to contemplate.
OTOH, I once read an interesting Prologue to a [mass market fiction] book, which stated:
“Time is a lot of the things people say that God is.
There’s the always preexisting, and having no end. There’s the notion of being all-powerful ― because nothing can stand against time, can it? Not mountains, not armies.
And time is, of course, all healing. Give anything _enough_ time, and everything is taken care of: all pain encompassed, all hardship erased, all love subsumed….
And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil.”
4) Rand was all things to all people. Just think how many self-styled “libertarians” have been influenced by her ― and how many interpretations of her works have been handed down. (BTW, does that make her a God? God has also been misinterpreted many times.)
5) I always thought “home economics” was a misnomer (also a waste of time). Girls and boys alike would have been better taught with more emphasis on the _economics_ part: how to budget and save, invest wisely, avoid the material aspects of buying for the quality of a product, and how to recognize a scam artist at work. More kids could appreciate math at work if they applied it to their own lives. After all, that’s what an education is for, isn’t it ― to teach us how to live in this world?
Never know what to say when these subjects come up. It still amazes me how close we can all end up being, we’re all headed in the some direction, only we start from different parts of the earth and crisscross paths over and over. Loved high school really, not the classes, but a lot of friends were there… but I particularly loved sports, and shop classes. I read The Fountain Head in the 10th grade and plowed through Atlas by my 11th, it was required reading in my household (although I recently found out that none of my brothers had to read it… just me.. and thank a deity for that, even if not for the same reasons as most. It was a revelation in the sense that it taught me how others thinks… which I used to my own advantage for many years. And this should amuse everyone… Being raised by Objectivists and Atheists was one of those experiences no one should miss. At some point I realized I loved my parents and knew they were just as full of shit as anyone elses parents, religious or not. When they divorced because of their less than honest ways with each other I credit Rand for teaching me acceptance, something I’m sure even Rand her own self would find shocking. I came to see Rand as all too human and traveling in my parents circles gave me a good insight into how inconsistent some could be; the Cult of Ayn was in full swing but kept my eyes open. Of course drugs, alcohol, friends, and road trips were the best. When I left high school shit got real. Played college football for a couple of years, was very good at it, but just lost the fire… and joined the army… and that’s where my real life started. Different starting points and destinations but we still cross paths on the same journey. Funny that as highly educated as I was early on the army was my real education and led me into the depths and heights.
And thanks for sharing that. I’ve always felt it’s good to revisit the past, but it seems as if I forget to do it.
Is it bad that I really can picture you as Proto-Emo Hippy Girl?
Thanks for sharing, Claire. We usually don’t know, at the time, which experiences will be important in shaping our lives, and the courage to go ahead and experience life when we don’t know where (or why) we are going is a unique part of being human.
Our self interest, needs and wants – even when unrecognized – are part of the survival mechanism hard wired into us, and denial of that self interest is probably one of the most destructive things we can do in the long run. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and wiser, if we allow ourselves to learn and grow from the experience.
Altruism, in the usual sense, seems to me to be the root of much that is evil. That was the major message I got from Rand nearly 50 years ago, and I remain convinced of it today.
Thank you for sharing this post This post brought back a lot of memories from a time long ago of living at home and going to high school, some good some not so much.
Like you Claire my high school days were not at all pleasant. If one was not a member of a gang then one was seen as prey… As Nietzsche said: “was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn stärker” (What does not kill him, makes him stronger). Maybe he was right, maybe not. With all the negitive that we are subjected to, that unending cascade of bad news from the media, it’s very hard not to let oneself be buried alive.
As for me, the books that got me through this time were written by Robert A Heinlein. From his works I learned TANSTAAFL and this has helped me a great deal over the years.
BTW like Joel I too can imagine you as a Proto-Emo Hippy Girl. :^)
I’ve never had a terrible job like the one you mentioned, Claire, but I have had jobs which taught me that there are things I didn’t want to spend a lifetime doing. (They tended to be physically taxing and low-paying, which I viewed as a bad combination.)
I distinctly remember my introduction to Ayn Rand, too (I wonder if that’s a common experience, like knowing where you were when Kennedy was assassinated or on 9/11?): Like you, I was directionless after high school and so had enlisted in the Army, and was in Bandsman School in Virginia (yes, I spent 3 years marching in parades and playing concerts, not a bad gig when you’re 20). One of the other guys in my unit turned me on to The Fountainhead, and that lead inexorably to Atlas Shrugged.
But I’ll join MJR in giving a shout-out to Heinlein. A kindly librarian pointed me toward his youth series of novels when I was in junior high, and I eventually found Stranger in a Strange Land. In a very real sense Heinlein prepared me for Rand.
I had a summer like that when I graduated high school. It ditdn’t help that the economy was in a shambles and there were basically no entry level jobs. I had no desire for college and many people considered me not smart enough to pass anyway. So, instead of reading Rand, I joined the military. Not the baby-killing branches, the USAF. Corporate military at its finest. It provided time and structure to finish growing up, gave me a good view of the world as it is, not how I wished it to be. Also exposed me to other cultures (american and foreign) and taught me that I was smart enough, I did have initiative and I could be succesful. MOst of all it gave me time and space to grow up with room, board and a steady pay check. It also provided some great mentors, a couple who are still my friends 30 years later.
For me, it was Heinlein and L. Neil Smith ( I re-read “The Probability Broach” and ” The Nagasaki Vector” every now and then), rather than Rand. I had two such crappy drop-mystery-meat-in-450-degree-grease while in high school, and briefly thereafter. One benefit of the two jobs was I didn’t go into a fast-food place for over 15 years-proabaly added a few years to my life. Nothing like working in a fast-food place to make you never want to go into one again.
I didn’t mind school too much-despite being Nerd Prime, I had very little trouble. I had friends, liked some of the classes (Physics and Shop). I made money in school by picking up deposit bottles. Laugh if you will, but I made more than I would have flipping burgers, in about the same amount of time-and no hot grease. Orange grove workers just tossed them into the ditch, making them easy to pick up, and there was a boatload of them in a short strip of road.
I sort of meandered through life for a decade or so at a variety of jobs-all told, things turned out well.
The Proto-Emo Hippy Girl? The mental image I have is sort of a multicolor Day-Glo version of Lydia from “Beetlejuice”…
Nice story, Claire. Really brings back the old days.
My last high school was in Tampa. I was a nerd and a loner but nobody picked on me. I had a gas station job which was a disaster (I was an idiot at it). Then I joined the Marine Corps for 4 years. I remember getting dropped off at the gate of Parris Island, an old school bus rolling up, and the Drill Instructors jumping out and screaming at us, “Last one of you *&^% pukes on this bus is gonna get the shit kicked out of him!” I distinctly remembered thinking to myself, “Hmmm, I may have made a mistake.” 🙂
It took me about 3 tries to get through Atlas Shrugged. I finally appreciated it after wading through all that turgid prose but still think of it as Gothic Romance for Capitalists.
Oh, I was also a huge Heinlein fan but also spent a lot of time in high school reading books like Gunter Grass’ “The Tin Drum” and Barth’s “Giles Goat Boy”.
“I joined the military. Not the baby-killing branches, the USAF.”
OH MY! The Air Farce is the Baby killing branch. Been doing it with reckless abandon since WW II and it continues to last week in Yemen where an Air Farce Drone strike ruined another family dinner, although we did get the number two head of Al Qae’da… again (I don’t know how many number two heads of AQ there are but the Air Farce has killed thousands of them). I’ll give you “corporate military” though.
Mama L, that’s very astute as usual.
The “not the baby killing branch,” was really meant as irony. Most efficient way is still carpet bombing or nukes.
Cool, Claire, just cool.
Funny you should mention Atlas Shrugged – I *just this morning* finished re-reading it, all except Galt’s speech, of course. Rand and Heinlein (my favorite next to you) and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance were all formative for me.
I must be the only one here who hasn’t read anything by Ayn Rand or L. Neil Smith.
I’ve been literary deprived.
Attempt to listen to the voice of God. Get sore feet, a godawful job, and a godless Russian philosopher. And along with it, get a radical change to your life. Typical response from the Almighty. 😉 But you left out the part where, by extension, it changed the lives of countless others.
It was only about three weeks ago (though it seems much longer) that my better half and I found ourselves driving through the Castro and Haight-Ashbury. She’d never been there before. I just chuckled the whole way, being somewhat more familiar (*ahem*) with said parts. Such a fascinating contrast from semi-rural NH (or the NorthWet, for that matter).
When I think of both possible outcomes of that walk, I am awfully grateful that God — or sore feet, depending on your worldview — saw fit to carry you down the road you actually traveled. Even if it meant some temporary unpleasantness at the hands of Leonard L. Dweeblputz. The story reminds me of this very short piece by Borges.
And when something won’t leave you alone? Good thing, that. And that experience when you have to, whether you want to or not, write or do something — that almost imperceptible sensation it might not be voluntary — it’s a very curious thing, isn’t it? Another good thing, that. Judging from the replies, I’d say this was a very popular blog post that resonated with a lot of people, so I’m very grateful you got a little nudge of sorts. Thanks again for heeding it, and writing what you did.
Oh, and I’ve pretty much concluded that being *assigned* to read Ayn Rand in High School — at the local government school no less — was not the norm.
Having spent a few years in Campbell, Santa Cruz and back and forth to San Fran I nearly choked on my pepsi when I saw where you were starting that walk. And not only long but hilly (and buggy) !!! too, LOL.
Back at the end of high school I sorta did the same thing, only with a car…got in one day and just kept driving….went from Chicago burbs all the way to Dallas before I figured I should turn back, but it was the beginning of a lifelong gypsy lifestyle….it still took another decade before I decided what to do next, but wouldn’t trade all those adventures during that time span for anything…Every time in my life I felt stuck or bored or whatever, I would go do something new or different from anything I’d done before. And every time it always led me to what was next to do with my life. Never did get the hang of planning very detailed futures, heh……Life always has a uncanny way of catching us once we start moving along, we just have to keep our eyes and minds open to what we bump in to…..
Great vignette, Claire! It’s neat to get insights into your early fruition. Your writing captures your moods & conundrums very nicely.
Dana, I like this Borges piece better: http://thefloatinglibrary.com/2008/07/28/ragnarok/
And while I admit that I pretty much invited the interpretation you put on my story, in fact I see nothing in the events that either requires or indicates personal micromanagement by the all-powerful creator of the universe.
Naturegirl — Oh yeah, Campbell, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose. Very familiar places in my childhood. Santa Cruz, Aptos, Portola, Big Basin park — weekend refuges. San Francisco — the magical, mystical, seldom-seen city on the hill. So your gypsy life has taken you to those places, too?
I love your impulsive Chicago-to-Dallas drive. And definitely can identify!
All — Thanks for the responses and for sharing memories. I always feel trepidation when I write personal things, but the comments always end up filled with richness.
And oh yeah, proto-emo hippie artsy girl. That was me. Funny how life changes us — while something inside remains timeless.
Hanza, you don’t need to leap unprepared into Ayn Rand. Take at shot a “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” first. Then you might try “Stranger in a Strange Land” (“required” counterculture reading in the 60’s; it’s a pity so few actually understood it).
Claire: It’s finally become obvious we share childhood geography. 😉
I’d never really looked at the blog in which both Borges pieces were posted before today. My link to the first piece was just the result of a simple search to find the text I was looking for, and I had gone no further when I posted it. But your link to the second piece led me to click further this morning. Funny how the blogger chose to post them back to back on the same day. Maybe the common thread is a lack of hope?
Perhaps a walk in the bright sunshine out to a treehouse is just the right antidote. 😉
Claire, Yep, yep, been to all of those 🙂 Started in Campbell for a few months then hopped over the hill and spent a year in Santa Cruz. While there I did the whole drive up and down the coasts thing, LOL. Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey (awesome aquarium there) all the way back as far north as Mendicino, Chico, Napa, Santa Rosa (had to see Snoopy, LOL). Love Half Moon Bay as long as it’s the right time of year and something is going on. From Santa Cruz, spent the next year in San Jose-Willow Glen area.
For a while I was back to Santa Cruz at least a few days every year (up until last year). Each time I was surprised at how many changes there were since the prior visit. From the midwest point of view, and decades ago, California always seemed to be partying. LOL. By the time I actually got there it seemed it was all about rules, restrictions and way to many people (traffic) everywhere.
Been to San Fran probably 5 or 7 times and I’m sure I’ve never seen all of it (fog!) Absolutely hate driving there, hehe. Not a big fan of the G G bridge sway, either. 🙂
My impulsive drives have always been the most fun!