Sidetracked Charley

  Charley was John Steinbeck's Standard Poodle. I first met Charley, and John Steinbeck for that matter, in Union Station in Los Angeles. It was the culmination of an escape from my college dorm with five friends and a Buick Special which threw a connecting rod just outside of Kingman, Arizona in the middle of the General Motors strike in Detroit. Over the years I have written many short stories about that adventure, toyed with making it a coming of age novel except only men seem to write those, named every computer, and half my journals or blogs Charley. I have also read all the John Steinbeck novels since that day I used some of the last of my travel money and bought the just out in paperback Travels with Charley.  If I had gone ahead with getting my masters I might have made my thesis about John Steinbeck's works.  I abandoned the masters when living with someone who was doing his masters on Moby Dick. That may be a portion of my life I need to examine more fully. It i...

Once it has been opened, you know it will not keep . I think I heard that in a movie pertaining to wine or other alcoholic spirits. I have used it to refer to dark chocolate bars and from time to time ice cream. But lately it seems to mean memories. Open as the first rush of remembering, and keep as closing them back off again. And it is not just about Las Vegas, New Mexico, but also the Bruce years. He died in October 2015 which did not bring those memories rushing back. But a mutual good friend has been helping his daughter sort through stuff, boxes and boxes of stuff. Dianne recently brought me a couple boxes of things she thought I might want to see. Things Sue did not want. Memories she did not want to open. I am at this moment not that sure I wanted to either. I totally understand why Sue escaped back to the coast fast. Today is sometimes only safe because we have closed off yesterday. But the Bruce years were a significant part of my life. Bruce introduced me to John Ste...

Heading West There comes a point in every journey where the conscious person realizes it is not about the destination. As we left Las Vegas bound to drop Barb-from-Santa-Barbara off in Barstow I felt like Alice Through the Looking Glass. Penny had shotgun and I tried to sleep. I had not slept since before my last final, four hours before our departure. The trip could no longer be counted in hours but in images and flashing across my memory like slides shown in the backyard. Slides were after film and before digital. Dad was an avid recorder of our family adventures. He gave me a Kodak camera when I was eight and his Rolex when I went off to college. For some reason I left it back at the dorm as if this forbidden escape should not be recorded except in my mind. It it was. Each image recorded like a power point presentation with a caption. "Why Barstow?", I asked Barb as we got her bags out of the trunk at the railroad station there. "Because we moved here." ...

Welcome to Kingman Get Your Kicks on Route 66 Actually to be precise the Buick did not blow up in Kingman, Arizona but outside of Kingman. That particular day we saw Kingman three times. When we drove into the town on Route 66 just before dawn the car was knocking, and we again needed gas. Fortunately this time a station was open. There was no self serve in those days except for illegally siphoning it. You pulled in, waited for a gas jockey to make it out to your car, said fill it up with regular, and check the oil. Then we all made a dash for the bathrooms. They were always gross. But in the Route 66 days there were no rest stops with or without facilities. The attendant said the Buick was two quarts low. He added oil and some STP oil treatment stuff in case we had a crankshaft leak. The Buick was a year old and had just been serviced by the dealer in Albuquerque. We were all a bit road weary. Nobody questioned the information until the first long steep hill on the Califo...

Reflections on Life by J. Binford-Bell Last year was not an easy one. There were the usual struggles in life which lately seem to be economic and physical. Getting older on a fixed income isn't for sissies. But the big hurtle last year ways my age. A very small number of people in my family have made it past 67. Okay, I am just one day past that number but still it is past. Mother and Dad both died when they were 67 (three years apart) from health issues. Somehow you get to overlook tornadoes that took my paternal grandmother at an early age. I was somewhat gratified to find out I am not the only person to obsess over getting through the age in which a parent died. But I figured I had a double whammy since both parents died at my age. And there were times I really was not trying that hard to make it to 68. It was a tough year financially. Couldn't get or keep or get rid of tenants depending on where I was in that cycle of advertise, rent, evict and repair. My preoccupa...

Where from came Charley? From John Steinbeck and his non-fiction book Travels with Charley. Charley is the black standard poodle in the above illustration from the book jacket in one of its many publication runs. I chanced upon Charley and Steinbeck in the train station in Los Angeles on my first ill fated trip to the west coast. It was semester break of my sophomore year and five of us coeds had piled in Penny's Buick convertible and set off on the 17 hour drive to the coast. Well, it should be about 22 hours but this was before radar and at night. But the poor stressed Buick blew a con-rod and cracked the block in Kingman, Arizona. Heart of Goldwater country during the presidential campaign. We all accessed our available funds. We were college kids! And decided to hitch hike from there. It was the middle of a General Motors strike so months before the Buick, towed to the dealership there, would be fixed. And it is probably why, Charley, my particular Charley was out driving west ...