ENTRY ONE (Louisiana to California)
On a late September afternoon in Harahan, Louisiana I step out of the brick house at 139 Elaine Avenue carrying my cat Orange. I place him in the front seat of my already loaded 1984 Peugeot then get on Interstate 10 in Metarie and head east towards Texas.
Soon Orange is frantically making his way around the car letting out horrible tortured yowling sounds. After thirty minutes of this he settles down to merely cruising around the car jumping from front to back and back to front. Sometimes he’s on the floor in front of me, sometimes between my foot and the brake pedal, sometimes under the front seats. After a good hour of unrest he finally settles down in the back window watching the sights go by.
By midnight I’ve made it a good way into Texas. Tired, I pull into a place with a sign that reads ‘American Motel’. I am greeted by a man with a heavy Indian accent.
“Will that just be you sir?”
“Yes, just me.”
“Okay sir sign here and that will be twenty nine dollars and thirty three cents.”
I hand him the money, he gives me a key then, “Sir we have the sex movie channel.” He mentions laughing a little as he finishes the sentence.
Back in the car I’m putting Orange into his cat box. I struggle with him a bit as he claws with a feverish look on his face as if fighting for his life. I shove him down inside pushing on the middle of his back. An orange paw comes up out of the box his front leg extending holding desperately onto the outer edge of the cat carrier. He twists his body under my hold and soon he’s freed himself from my grasp and retreats to a far corner of the Peugeot. I close the door to keep him from skittering off into the parking lot and begin the task of getting him into the box again.
After a prolonged struggle I prevail and step out of the car carrying the strange shaped blue box. I notice the manager of the hotel watching me from a small square office window that appears to have been placed there just for spying out folks who are trying to sneak an extra person in without paying. I hope he hasn’t seen what just went on with me and Orange because I haven’t even bothered to check on the motel’s animal policy.
I place the cat carrier just inside the room and head back to the car for a couple of trips. First, I get a small bag of mine and then from the backseat floor, Orange’s litter box, which has been left untouched for the length of the drive. When I’m settled in I let Orange out of the cat carrier. Once again he is restless, this time without the yowling. He begins exploring every inch of the motel room. I watch a bit of the pornography channel but am too tired to get into it so I go to bed. As I’m falling asleep I can hear Orange moving around the room under my bed then jumping up onto the desk.
Sometime in the night I am awakened by the sound of Orange. He is now on the bed, clawing at and jumping up the wall as he tries to climb it.
A couple of hours later I am awakened being bitten by some kind of bugs in my sleep. While I lay awake for a few moments I can still hear Orange making his way around the room.
The next day consists merely of driving and driving through miles and miles of Texas. Stop for gas then drive for two or more hours, stop at a rest area, use the toilet then on again till the gas gauge starts to point towards empty. Another stop then back on the freeway for a couple more hours, get hungry pull into a drive thru, eat quickly in the parking lot then back on the road, stop for coffee, back on the 10, stop to piss and still more and more Texas.
Driving through Texas can be disheartening with the miles and miles of bland landscape and sometimes I find myself on a long stretch of road with nothing but short brush trees and small plant life as far as the eye can see then freaking out thinking, “Fuck, this engine has been running for like ten hours straight! What if it just quits, can’t go on anymore? There is nothing around here for miles!” Then I get a hold of myself calming down as I remember how I had learned in a Michigan auto repair shop, that had belonged to my father, just how automobile engines work and if all of the essentials are taken care of they will run and run and run. Still, driving through Texas is a drag, endless, and after driving for a long, long way you come across a mileage sign that says something like, El Paso 1159 Mi.
Although Texas seems to be never ending, eventually I see that the border is coming up. After a good twelve hours of driving, I’m delighted when I reach the Texas-New Mexico border town El Paso in the evening. I pass into New Mexico and keep going west past Las Cruces, cross into Arizona and finally stop on the outskirts of Tucson and pull into a Motel Seven.
I check in, get Orange situated in the room with his litter box, bowl of food, and bowl of water. They’ve all been left untouched since leaving Harahan the day before. He immediately begins to inspect the place and I head over to a nearby fast food joint. I get a big double burger with everything and a large order of fries. I then walk across the parking lot to a liquor store where I buy a six-pack of beer and head back to the room.
I watch some cable television and drink the beers with my meal. Orange moves about the room. That night I sleep uninterrupted while subconsciously aware that Orange still hasn’t settled down and continues to sniff around the place.
The next morning we head out at seven a.m. I fill the Peugeot up with gas then I stop at a McDonald’s and order breakfast at the drive thru. Soon I steer back onto Interstate 10 eating and drinking coffee as we roll along.
It’s another uneventful day of driving, now through Arizona desert. It would probably be a cool place to check out if I was on a joyride traveling for pleasure, or at least not traveling with a cat.
I’m a little worried about Orange not using his litter box for going on two days now and decide to take him for a walk on one of my stops for gas. I take a leash and harness out of the trunk that I had bought just in case I needed it. I walk him, or more or less drag him along, away from the gas station, out towards the desert a bit.
Completely freaked out Orange claws and sniffs at the ground. A good thirty yards away from the gas station we come upon an old wire and wood post fence. I tie Orange’s leash to a post then step back four or five feet to give him some privacy. He immediately begins lunging with all of his force forward against the restraint of the harness and leash. I merely watch for a few moments thinking that he will soon settle down. He doesn’t settle down, and with each lunge he seems to gain strength taking up the slack in the leash and hitting the end of each jump with a little more force than the last. I watch leerily, as the large Ginger Tom summons all of his strength now in one huge effort to break free.
Orange makes one last super-strengthed lurch. The harness breaks away from the leash. I reach over grabbing my cat just in time to stop him from making a mad dash into the Arizona desert.
When we cross the California border I am delighted to be back in the state that I view as my adopted home. Originally from Michigan, I had disowned that place after traveling there on a road trip some years earlier. After the two years of backwardness in Louisiana I now see California as the Promised Land.
Instead of taking the 10 into L.A., I follow my brother in law’s advice and head towards San Diego on Interstate 8. The fact that I’ve already been driving for something like fourteen hours doesn’t bother me. I ignore the tiredness, set back and steer, focusing on finishing this drive tonight.
The car seems to be losing power in some mountains outside of San Diego. The engine sounds like its running fine but even when I am going downhill and not climbing the thing is gutless. This isn’t normal for the Peugeot, its power being one of the things I enjoy most about driving it. I stress out a bit at first, but the thing keeps rolling along and I end up ignoring the problem.
Heading into San Diego I am on flat ground again and everything is back to normal. When I enter Interstate 5 in San Diego it’s a bit of a shock. Six lanes of speeding cars whipping around curves this way and that. It’s like I’m in some kind of a race. The shock is made worse by the fact that I am experiencing more than just a mild case of ‘road fry’, the condition one experiences after hours and hours of driving non-stop on a cross-country trip. Also, it’s been a good couple of years since I have driven in this kind of traffic. On the freeway in New Orleans it’s not unusual to come up on someone creeping along at just five miles an hour.
An hour and a half later I pull up in front of my parents place in Huntington Beach. I plan to rest here for a couple of days before driving up to San Francisco. I’ve already lined up a job working at the San Francisco Art Institute, where I had been a student two years earlier.
Although Orange had grown up with my parents and all of the five cats that live with them, he doesn’t seem too happy about the situation and really doesn’t appear to remember. He is obviously a little pissed, but finally starts eating and drinking again and has dispensed with the constant sniffing and exploring that had gone on the previous two nights.
Photo by Hoffacurse