West With Giraffes(87)
And I thought my heart would bust.
15
Into California
We left by moonlight again, right before dawn.
By the time the sun was peeking out, we’d hit the mountains going through what they called Telegraph Pass. We did it so slow and smooth in first light that the giraffes, thank God, barely knew we’d done it.
Popping out the other side, we rolled right into Yuma. That was where the Old Man said we were going to cross into California on what was called the Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge over the Colorado River. When it was built, it was the only place for 1,200 miles that a vehicle could cross and go—like the name said—ocean to ocean.
From the looks of it, the river had recently done some flooding, debris littering the ground all around us, and the sight sent a small shiver down my spine. But there were more spine-shivering things to look at than that. This side of the bridge was another Hooverville of tents and tin lizzies and campfires and huddled people. I had to slow the rig to a crawl as a clump of grimy children began to run alongside us.
“Welcome to Okie Town,” muttered the Old Man as we joined the line to cross the bridge. He was staring ahead, toward the bridge’s middle, where several California state policemen were stopping traffic. A Model T pickup was being forced to turn around. The truck was piled high with stuff barely tied down, including a mattress with half a dozen kids riding on it. When it passed, I caught a glimpse inside of a stone-faced pa and a weeping ma.
“What just happened?” I said.
The Old Man didn’t answer, his eyes on the drama still ahead. Between us and the troopers were only two cars—the tin lizzie with the ride-along goat that passed us in New Mexico and the shiny baby-blue convertible carrying the ritzy couple from the Mohawk.
One of the troopers motioned up the family with the goat and started grilling them.
“Know what he’s asking?” the Old Man muttered. “‘You got money in your pocket? You got a job?’ If the answer’s no, they don’t let you cross. They’re calling it the Bum Blockade.”
I glanced back at the old Model T pickup as it rolled to a stop back on the Arizona side. “What if they got nowhere else to go?”
“They stay right here.” He nodded back at the shantytown. “This close to the Okie Promised Land and not an inch more.”
Eyeing the goat riding in the basket on the tin lizzie’s running board, the California trooper must have thought it looked like money, and he waved them by.
Then he waved the fancy convertible through without a glance.
We were next, and I thought we’d surely be stopping if for nothing else than the usual meet and greet with the giraffes. I even put on the brakes. But the trooper took one look at the giraffes and I guess saw money as well. Without cracking as much as a smile, he motioned us through, too.
As the giraffes rode high over the rest of the bridge, both the goat Okies and the Hollywood couple waved back at them, all of us entering the land of milk and honey together.
After that, things started coming at us fast.
We saw canals and green fields and orange groves and trucks hauling workers.
We saw more Hoovervilles set up helter-skelter.
We saw crowds of beat-down men with farmers’ faces.
We saw signs that said JOBLESS MEN KEEP GOING. WE CAN’T TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN right alongside other signs that said WORKERS UNITE!
We kept on moving.
We passed through a tiny town called El Centro, and then, like a bit of abracadabra, the people and the signs and the towns disappeared, and we were driving through dunes high enough to be the Sahara, the sand blowing and shifting like sugar across the road. As we wound through the dunes, the Old Man pointed at an abandoned “plank road” made of wood railroad ties, warped and rotting alongside the paved highway. “Be happy you’re not driving on that,” he said. “That was once the only way across these dunes.”
We kept on moving.
For a while, Mexico was within spitting distance on our left. Or so the Old Man said. But I didn’t notice one bit of difference between over there and over here except the highway itself—until the road curved north and headed again for some more blasted mountains. I jerked my head toward the Old Man, who hadn’t mentioned any such thing.
“No problem,” he promised. “It’s only a short pass with a couple of switchbacks and turnouts.”
A sign zipped by:
DANGER AHEAD: STEEP NARROW CLIMB
“If a little steep,” the Old Man added. “And narrow.”
As the road divided into one-way single lanes, he leaned back, cucumber cool. “You know how to do this and so do the darlings. On the other side is home, boy.”
So we went into the climb, the rig giving it all it had, the giraffes and me eyeing the “Engine Overheat” areas at every turn, moving up, up, up . . . then racing like a son of a gun down, down, down, with me standing on the brakes fighting to shift into a gear low enough to slow us back near legal limits. We barreled straight past the rest stop at the bottom as the split road joined again, my stomach sliding back down my throat and the giraffes’ snouts bending back with the wind.
That quick, we seemed to be in San Diego proper and you can bet we were met by a police escort. A dozen motorcycle cops and city patrol cars were scattered all along the city limits. When they spotted us, they circled the rig and turned on their rolling sirens, waving us to follow.