October 2022 – The Gunsmoke Diaries

L.A. Story

Note:
Downtown Los Angeles has been gentrified considerably over the last few years. What with the Staples Center, The Walt Disney Concert Hall, restaurants and many other family-friendly attractions, it’s a destination in itself. However, when I first visited in 1992, it was a very, very different story.

I’d visited Los Angeles once before, a couple of weeks earlier when I’d arrived fresh off the plane from Hong Kong. Well actually, nobody’s really all that fresh after they’ve been sat on a plane for eighteen hours, but the point is, while I was still comparatively new to the United States, I was already an old hand at negotiating my way around the City of Angels. OK, that’s not really true either – my experience so far was limited to the shuttle bus ride from the airport to the backpackers’ hostel, the area around Hollywood Boulevard and a day trip to Venice beach. There’s only so much you can do in L.A. in three days when you don’t have a car.

This visit was even shorter, arriving on the Greyhound bus in the early morning hours, leaving by the same method late that night. I would have been quite happy not to return at all except me dear ol’ Mum had sent a birthday present to the central post office there and as I’d been out of touch with my family for some weeks, I figured it was worth a side trip to pick it up.

When you tour the United States by Greyhound bus you get to see a side of America of most residents don’t. Most residents are probably unaware this side of America even exists and it’s worth noting that most residents are perfectly OK with that. Greyhound doesn’t run buses to Yosemite, the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone. They do; however, service the grottiest, seediest and most dangerous areas of the country’s major cities. Homeless people, alcoholics, the mentally deranged and other colourful characters tend to hang out in the waiting rooms and the sad thing is those are still much nicer than the neighbourhoods immediately outside.

I had three hours to kill before the post office opened and as I knew it wasn’t too far from the bus station, I partook of breakfast while perusing my guidebook.

“Upon leaving the station” it read, “be sure to turn left. Turning right will take you into deepest skid row.”

That sounded like good advice so turning smartly left, I strode out towards the post office. What the birthday present actually was, has I’m afraid been lost to the mists of time. However, I’m sure I appreciated it on the day. Thanks Mum. Either way, once it had been collected, I had some fourteen hours to kill before my bus out of town. There were two reasons for the late departure: both of them sound. For one, it would allow me to arrive at my next destination in daylight, when it’s far easier to search for accommodation. Secondly, even though I’ve never been great at sleeping while sitting up, it would save me the cost of a room for the night. I had however, decided that roaming the streets after dark wouldn’t be a good idea; even if I stayed to the left of East L.A. so decided to be sure I was back at the Greyhound Station well before sundown.

Downtown Los Angeles doesn’t see too many tourists itself these days and while I learned later that I wasn’t too far from the La Brea tar pits, I had never heard of them at the time and wouldn’t have noticed until I was up to my waist. I killed an hour on the free tour of the Los Angeles Times’ offices which was pretty interesting, and I scored a free notebook and pencil, but other than that, the day passed slowly. Even so, I dawdled somewhat, and it was with more than a little alarm I noticed the sun dropping swiftly towards where I assumed the Pacific Ocean must be. Time to head back.

I knew the street I needed and had scouted it out earlier in the day. According to my guidebook it was only a little over a mile, so I figured twenty minutes, thirty tops. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that the Greyhound Bus station had moved since my guidebook was written. It was still on the same street but a good two miles further along. Never mind “turning right will take you deepest skid row” the bus station was already up to its armpits in the ghetto. A fact that became painfully obvious the further I walked and the darker it got.

As evening stole across the streets the hustlers, pimps, dealers and low-lifes materialized around me, presumably from cracks in the walls, all pumped and ready to begin their day.

“Hey white boy! Gringo! Whatcha doin’ here?” came the catcalls from the doorways as I strode purposefully down the centre of the sidewalk, trying to make it look as if I wasn’t totally lost. Pulling out my guidebook didn’t seem like a good idea, nor was asking directions. My money belt dug uncomfortably into my stomach below my T-shirt, and I was only too aware just how vulnerable I would be if I didn’t find the bus station soon. Where the hell was it?

Fortunately, I came across a police cruiser. A muscular young guy was spread over the front, and I waited ‘till the cops had finished cuffing him before calling out.

“Is the Greyhound Station this way?”

“Yes,” they yelled back “About 1/2 a mile – but hurry!”

They didn’t have to tell me twice and I kicked it up a notch to cover the distance before the atmosphere got even worse.

Finally, up ahead, I saw the familiar electric sign of the skinny dog and stepped into the sanctuary. Except it wasn’t much better inside. People screaming, running, fighting and openly dealing drugs. It was like an 18th century insane asylum but without the charm. I sat on one of the hard plastic chairs and buried my head in my book, not making eye contact with anyone. Not even when a chair went sailing past my head. Not even when I had to step around the paramedics treating a stabbing victim on my way to the restroom.

At last, it was boarding time and I took my place on the bus out of that hell hole. A couple of nights later I sat with a bunch of other backpackers watching a movie on a tiny television. It was the usual cliché, about a small-town girl desperate to escape and “go to Hollywood”.

I couldn’t help thinking, “You know hon, with $60 and a packet of sandwiches, you could be there by tomorrow morning. Go ahead, do it – I dare ya!”

First Published: 20 September, 2005

Wheel of Fortune

I put the spare wheel from the pickup truck back in place last weekend. That was quite an accomplishment because it’s been sitting in the bed for almost two years now. There’s no way to secure it there, which meant any time we planned to park the truck in town, muggins here had to heave the thing into the cab. Then back again when we got home.

“Why didn’t you just put it away earlier?” I hear you ask. Well, mainly because it was such an ordeal getting the darn thing out in the first place and I had no enthusiasm for the process of trying to put it back. The good people at Ford who designed the spare wheel cradle for their truck line in the early 90’s obviously weren’t allowing for the fact that their customers might one day need to actually access it.

First you have to crawl way, way under the truck, so it’s best if you only get a flat on dry days when you’re wearing old clothes. Then you use an enormous spanner (not the one that came with the truck, but a different sized enormous spanner, which of course, you knew to carry with you) to unwind a long bolt which lowers a three-foot long metal bar on which the spare wheel sits.

If the aforementioned long bolt isn’t shiny and new, maybe if it’s been somewhere dirty and wet for perhaps ten or eleven years, like say, underneath a truck, it will be more or less impossible to undo. It might take you an hour or so of struggle before you come to this conclusion but come to it you will. This is why we have the American Automobile Association. However, lifesavers though they may be, they didn’t come back after the flat had been repaired to put the spare away for us.

I know it’s not a good idea to leave it there indefinitely and winter’s a-coming which would make crawling on the ground even less pleasant. So, last Saturday I spent a happy hour cursing and grunting as I tried to take the weight of a ¾ ton wheel with my left hand while screwing it into place with my right. Three days later, my back hardly hurt at all so as wheel changes go, this was far from being my worst.

One that comes to mind was the time when I decide to rotate the tires on Wilf, my first car, some (clears throat) years ago. As regular readers of The Gunsmoke Diaries will have gathered, I’m not exactly Mr. Fix-it and never have been, so why I chose to perform this task an hour before I was due to go out for the night is a mystery, even now. Citroen used an elaborate suspension system in those days, which they claimed would allow their cars to be driven on three wheels. I never put that to the test, but it did make jacking up the car something of a process because even when the chassis was a good three feet in the air, the wheel remained firmly on the ground.

However, the real fun started after I’d given up and jacked the thing back down again. The chassis remained where it was. I suspect this was less to do with Citroen’s elaborate suspension and everything to do with my car being a decrepit bucket of bolts but either way, Wilf remained listing stubbornly to starboard at an angle of some 45 degrees. My friends weren’t best pleased when I called them to say I couldn’t take my turn at driving that night, but the good news was; he gradually eased himself back into place over the next couple of days.

Even so, that still wasn’t the least pleasant wheel change I’ve ever performed. That singular event took place late one winter’s night, high on the moors of Yorkshire. It wasn’t even my car, but instead belonged to my girlfriend at the time. We’d had a pleasant enough evening in a snug and cosy country pub. Crackling log fire, lots of dark wood, just the thing for a cold December night. By the time we left, snow was beginning to fall in great swirling clouds, and I was hoping we’d be well on our way home before it really got started.

Naturally, that wasn’t to be. We were a good fifteen miles from anywhere when my beloved steered us over a large rock sitting in the roadway. It didn’t have an orange flashing light on it, but it would scarcely have been less obvious if it had. Still, over it we went and immediately I heard the dreaded thump, thump, thump that signals a flat. I prepared to do my knight-in-shining-armour bit.

“Where’s your jack?” I asked before receiving the answer that strikes fear into any boyfriend’s heart.

“What’s a jack?”

With a sigh, I pulled on my thin jacket and headed towards the boot. The jack was there, in a well under the spare wheel. Rotten with rust but semi-functional so I hauled it out of its nest and began the backbreaking task of jacking up the car. Mother Nature was obviously waiting for this moment to unleash her full force and the wind picked up to a terrific rate, sending flurries of snow down my neck and robbing me of the little body heat I had left. Visions of sugar plums danced in my head as I heaved and pulled while the car inched painfully higher.

Just when I figured a few more turns of the crank would do the trick, the car gave a sickening crunch as the jack punched its way through the rusted floor.

“Be careful!” yelled my darling from comfort of her down coat and woolly hat, which would have been comforting had she been concerned about me, rather than her car. Gritting my teeth ever tighter, I searched around the verge until I found a flattish piece of wood and using that as a brace; began the task once more.

Finally, the old wheel was off, and I heaved the spare out of the trunk. You won’t be at all surprised to learn that it was flat. And of course, there was nowhere to fill it. Not on the Yorkshire moors after midnight, there wasn’t.

It was about that time, I decided my sweetheart wasn’t all that good-looking, there were plenty more fish in the sea, and there was no particular advantage in continuing to be polite. We had a full and frank exchange of views and agreed to go our separate ways.

But you know what? I’m OK with that.

First published: 13 September, 2005

To Catch a Fish

The seaweed was biting that day, my friends.

Every few minutes the fishermen (and fisherwomen, and fisherkids) would haul in their lines to find yet another long string of glistening fauna. Come to think, it probably wasn’t even seaweed, seeing as how we were at a lake some 1,300 miles from the nearest ocean. But there was certainly lots of it and they excitedly compared hauls. “Maybe we should take it back to the campsite,” said Mary. “Make a seaweed salad?”

I’ve only been fishing a handful of times in my life. The very first time was off a pier in Tarbet, Scotland where the fish were so easy to catch the whole sport seemed rather pointless. Drop in the line, watch while the mackerel came up to check out the bait, jerk the pole (Note: This is called ‘striking’ – write that down kids!) then haul up the fish. Take out the hook; drop the fish back in the water, lather, rinse, repeat.

Any guilt I may have felt over the lack of sportsmanship on my first fishing trip was absolved on all my subsequent outings when I never came close to catching a single fish.

“I practice cruelty free fishing” I explain to anyone who will listen. “No fish were harmed in the making of this day out.”

Possibly for that reason, I never really got into fishing and if I did go, it was usually to tag along with others who knew more about the sport than I. Although curiously, they never seemed to catch anything either. Maybe I was a jinx who had used my lifetime’s supply of fisherman’s luck on that first day out.

But really, that was OK with me. I like fish well enough when they’re coated in batter and deep fried with chips but getting up close and personal with a wriggly one on a hook doesn’t particularly appeal. Also, I’ve never had a desire to be one of those hardy souls you’ll see up to their privates in icy cold water while they try to trick the fishes into their nets. No, when I go fishing, I want it to be a pleasant day out, preferably in beautiful scenery.

Which was the case today as I sat cross-legged on the shore of one of Colorado’s more picturesque lakes, with the sun on my face and the breeze gently ruffling my hair, simply watching as others went through the motions.

We were pretty sure there were fish in the lake. The campsite host was certainly charging enough for the privilege of attempting to catch them, although as I noted, this would be the scam to end all scams. Charge campers just to fish in a lake with no fish. How neat would that be? Sometimes I wonder why I’m not filthy rich.

Innyhoo, I questioned why Mary was using limburger cheese as bait.

“It may smell like old socks, but one of the old ladies I visit told me it’s the only thing to use. She hasn’t fished in years, but she perked right up when I told her I would be going this weekend and she swears by it.”

“Not doing much good so far, is it?” observed Ed, “Why don’t you try some salmon eggs?”

“I dunno, they don’t seem to be working too well for you so far, do they Hotshot” came the retort.

Ed looked sadly at his own pile of seaweed and had to conclude that she was right. So, he hauled in his line and cast once more out into the big blue yonder. Or at least, 30 feet or so out into it – he was only using a small fishing pole.

After a while, Sophie lost interest and wandered off to chat to the rest of the group who were busy catching seaweed further down the shore. Her fishing pole lay unused near my feet and after watching Ed and Mary for a few minutes longer, I decided I could catch seaweed just as skilfully as them.

I checked to make sure both hooks were properly baited. Sophie had been using a curiously unnatural looking attraction called ‘PowerBait’. These were pea-sized balls of putty like material in a shade of orange not found in nature. I would have thought this would scare the fish away, but what do I know. Everything appeared to be in order, so I laid the pole over my right shoulder and deftly cast out into the deep.

The hook barely reached the water.

It took another two equally abysmal efforts before I noticed that the reel had a wee lever on it, which I discovered, was the brake. Slide it the other way and the line has the opportunity to unwind as well as be reeled in. Probably fairly important, that. Flicking the lever to one side, I tried once more and this time, the line whizzed out across the water. That’s better.

After a few minutes of not very much happening, I decided I would give my new found casting skills another go and hauled in the line. I had to fight the urge to jump up and down when I felt an unmistakable tugging on the line. Could it be? Could I have caught a fish on my first cast while all these pros were hauling in nothing but seaweed? Could it be?

Well, no of course it couldn’t.

I had however, caught a twig. And quite an impressive one too; at least 6 inches long and quite formidable looking. I added it to the seaweed pile and tried once more. I didn’t catch a fish that time either. Or the next time, or the next. But you know what? I caught one on the next.

Oh, it wasn’t exactly a record breaker. At 5 inches or so, it was well under the limit which required me to throw it back, so no visit to the taxidermist for me. And it was an ugly little bugger too.

“A sucker fish” explained Ed. “A bottom feeder”.

OK, so not exactly the sort of thing you’d read about in Hemingway’s work. Melville probably wouldn’t have written a novel about it (although if he had, it couldn’t have been any worse than Moby Dick.) But it was the only fish anyone caught that day. Mr. Rugged-Outdoorsman, that’s me. When civilization crumbles around us, I’ll be able to provide for my family.

So, (lowering voice an octave and hitchin’ up pants) if you need any advice on fish catchin’, I’m your man.

Just don’t ask me what’s in PowerBait.