Highway Snobbery

I was driving to work and I saw a Ford Tarus, kind of shiny. Who buys a Taurus? Are they still making them? Would anyone own one besides my 83 year old mother in law? Maybe all Tauruses are owned by 83 year old mothers in law, and it's right there in the owners manual, "Dear 83 year old mother in law, Thank you for purchasing this nondescript mutt of a car. It is functional, but barely."

But why does that Taurus in the lane next to me look almost, kind of like, not bad and maybe even better than ok? I see the license plate frame, Cal Berkeley. How could someone get a premium college education and end up buying a Taurus? You're so judgmental Grace says and she's not even there, she's not even in Fresno, she's in Shafter visiting the baby our granddaughter who's a week old and I've only seen her for 4 hours. It's nobody's fault; Greg Bergen's dad and granddad put down roots there, then next thing you know, Greg climbs in the window at Fresno Pacific with the stars and bars and a quart of Valvoline, "Excellent vintage" he says and pantomimes quaffing a quart. Of course we became best friends, it was inevitable. Not even my severe LA snobbery could interfere. I didn't care what hayseed town he came from, the man crawled in the window with a confederate flag and a quart of motor oil and quipped before he even said hello.So we become friends and it makes sense that our girlfriends are mutually empathetic; each one knew what the other was putting up with, what with one guy the greatest deadpan oneline dropper ever and the other guy covering the dorm bathroom walls top to bottom and side to side with Dylan lyrics. And it is perfectly logical that our kids married each other. Who wouldn't marry a kid who stood on a folding chair and dove into a three foot deep wading pool? And it was a given that their baby would be the most remarkable, amazing, alert and beautiful baby is the universe and would look exactly like a Chavoor Chamichian Bergen Krueger. No doubt about it, indisputable, irrefutable, scientific fact. And well that's how Violet ended up born in Bakersfield, living in Shafter.

Maybe it was Greg who cured me of my snobberism. But how could I possibly have been snobbistic? I was from Burbank, which ain't now and never will be Los Feliz, it's not even Sherman Oaks. Still though, Fresno was, well, Fresno, until it became home to me. So 30 years later I'm fine with Fresno because after all what we do with most of our time is have friends over for dinner, go to friends' houses for dinner or go out to dinner or the movies or plant a garden or chemicalize the pool or otherwise go to sleep or go to work, all of which one can do pretty much anywhere and Fresno is as nice a place as any and better than many other places to do those things and we're only 3 hours to Dodger Stadium and a little more to Santa Monica, so I pretty much felt cured of any lingering traces of snobbyocity until I saw a Taurus this morning and thought who'd drive that and had Grace in my mind calling me out on my judgmental attitude which was not incorrect but at the same time of all the cars to drive, the guy had some money, the guy or someone he knew went to Berkeley. I came to a stop at Cedar and took a scoop of steel cut oatmeal and pondered what it was about being steel cut that made it taste better, nuttier, and even sweeter than plain old oatmeal.

Eating while driving the car isn't a good idea, it's not advisable, it annoys me when I see other people doing it but if you can't cut yourself some slack, will anyone? It was 7 o'clock and the faculty meeting was at 7:30 and I hadn't made breakfast and I didn't want to make breakfast because of the ants but I didn't want to not eat so I went to Jamba Juice and got the oatmeal with banana slices and no brown sugar. I didn't mind being late but I didn't want to be too late so I ate in the car.

I look to my right and the guys with the card tables and folding chairs are on the corner with their Bibles.I look over to my left at the guy in the Taurus and the schmoe behind the wheel is no schmoe at all, it's Ralph, one of the coolest guys ever which is to say an amiable, humor-loving, life-living, bright, contented, well-read ,can-I-get-you-a-beer kind of guy. If Santa Claus retired and shaved and moved to warmer climes and ate plate sized steaks and football sized potatoes obliterated in sour cream and chives and was a doctor, a heart doctor no less, and had a relative who could get a deep discount on Ford products, it would be Ralph. And it wasn't a Taurus by the way it was one of those reinvent yourself models, a 500, I'm pretty sure. Every Ford they've ever owned looked pretty sharp. I think Ralph, along with his wife and kids have single-handedly kept the Ford Motor Company afloat. It was a very cool looking car now that I think about it.Nice color and everything. I looked over at him; looked right at his ear. He didn't see me though but it was a long signal and I could have tooted the horn but I didn't. I mean I didn't want to disturb him in his early morning, driving to work thoughts.But in his eyes you didn't that feel-like-I'm-fixing-to-die going to work look. You saw Ralph, a guy who could get square with anything the world handed him. I know he would have smiled his tremendous everything's better than anyone imagined smile, followed by a slow-motion, out of sync half way wave of the hand which generally seems to suggest something like well ok, you know what a wave of the hand is, I'm not going through the whole thing.

I looked at him for a while and then looked away, changed songs on the iPod, going from "Tomorrow Never Knows," to "Patterns." I turned right on the red, finished the oatmeal, got to work late but not too late, and Ralph waited for the green and kept going west until he was downtown, most likely.