On the Road: Manteca, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on April 25, 2007

Unfolding the Map

Sal is working his way down California, which is a long way since it's a long state. You can work your way down California too by clicking on the map to see where we've come (and a little of where we are going)!

Book Quote

"The sun goes down long and red. All the magic names of the valley unrolled -- Manteca..."

On the Road, Chapter 12

Manteca, California

I remember, when I was growing up, that we only had two television stations for the first few years of my life, both out of Eureka, California. Just before I hit my teens, my parents splurged on cable, which gave us a total of about 12 stations, most of them on VHF but at least a couple in the UHF area. These stations opened a whole new world for me, because they were San Francisco stations with new and different programming. I actually saw new cartoons after school like Speed Racer and Kimba the White Lion. I also began to learn about place names around the Bay Area that I hadn't known before. These names were often exotic, like Sausalito, or simply descriptive, like Mill Valley or Stinson Beach. One TV station, advertising its reach with a catchy jingle, threw the name "Manteca" into the mix and that was probably the first time I ever heard of that particular place.

I write this because not just because I wanted to highlight my ignorance of Manteca, but also because the names evoke images that are hard to replace. When Jack Kerouac writes about "all the magic names..." I can identify with that because growing up in rural California in an isolated spot on the coast, these names created some imaginary scenes in my mind. I would have never pictured Manteca as being a simple and small San Joaquin Valley community surrounded by farms. Manteca to me sounded much more exotic and fantastical. The fact that the TV station celebrated its name in a jingle made it that much more likely that it was a special place. I don't mean to imply that it is not special in many ways, but you may see my point, that we often create images where the reality is probably less than the imagination.

Even when traveling as a teen with my family, on our occasional trips to the Bay Area (which were often fraught with tension because my parents weren't comfortable driving in urban areas) the simple act of passing a road sign pointing to some town off the freeway often made me wish that we could take a side trip. Now that I'm an adult, when I drive and notice a sign that seems interesting, I will go there. I remember one memorable trip I made when I was younger where I visited Salt Lick, Kentucky and Pee Pee, Ohio. Who can resist stopping in such places, if only to take a look around and say "Well, that was interesting/uninteresting?" Of course, any place that had some variant of my last name got a visit if I was passing by. It was magical, in a way, and only heightened at sunrise or sunset, when people were either getting up to start a day's work, or going in to have their suppers and settle in for the evening. At those times, passing through such sleepy places often seemed to me like catching them in a private moment and that I should be honored that they let me view them, illuminated almost mysteriously in the first or last rays of the day.

If you want to know more about Manteca

City of Manteca
Manteca Chamber of Commerce
Manteca Convention and Visitors Bureau
Wikipedia: Manteca

Next up: Madera, California

On the Road: Tracy, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on April 24, 2007

Unfolding the Map

Sal gets out into rural California. Hard to believe there is such a thing, right, when most of what is transmitted around the country about California involves glamorous LA city life, or crunchy granola San Francisco city life. Surprise! California is much more rural than urban, at least in land space, and if you throw a dart at a map of California you're probably more likely to stick in the general vicinity of a country-music listening redneck than you are a hip-hop loving, clubbing, partying blonde bombshell starlet of the week. So check the map.

Book Quote

"The first was the mad one, with a burly blond kid in a souped-up rod. 'See that toe?' he said as he gunned the heap to eighty and passed everybody on the road. 'Look at it.' It was swathed in bandages. 'I just had it amputated this morning. The bastards wanted me to stay in the hospital. I packed my bag and left. What's a toe?' Yes, indeed, I said to myself, look out now, and I hung on. You never saw a driving fool like that. He made Tracy in no time. Tracy is a railroad town; brakemen eat surly meals in diners by the tracks. Trains howl away across the valley."

On the Road, Chapter 12

Tracy, California

I didn't have an amputated toe, but I drove like that through California once. I was in maybe my second year of college. A friend of mine, John, and I drove down to Walnut Creek where I could visit my sister, who was in the hospital there. On the way back, being youthful, we decided to see how fast we could get back to our hometown. From Walnut Creek, the trip could take about four hours, the last 75 miles or so over winding roads through the coast range to Fort Bragg. We may have been spurred on by a supposed deadline -- John had to be home for dinner or I had to be home for something or other.

So, starting from Walnut Creek, we pushed 90 mph, me driving, while taking the long flat road around the top of the Bay area, then hitting the freeway at highway 101 and heading north. We slowed somewhat through Santa Rosa, but then pushed it again until we got to Cloverdale, where we turned west on CA-128 and drove over to the coast. This was the windy section, but I swear that John, who was driving this part, pushed 60 mph over most of it. We clocked in at 2½ hours, if I remember correctly. Only now when I look back on it am I amazed that we didn't get stopped by a cop, nor did we have a major wreck.

Years later, I learned what Sal is learning while careening with madmen over two-lane highways in rural California. On a month-long trip to Bangladesh, I was driven most everywhere. You can't imagine my thoughts the first time I sat in the back of the vehicle as the driver careened toward a huge truck bearing down on us in the opposite direction. Both blared their horns incessantly and I was certain there would be a head-on. At the last minute, both swerved, still blaring their horns, and passed each other with little room to spare. I was to experience many more moments like that, and learned how to simply go into a Zen-like calm. It is a good day to die, I would say, and simply let it be. Thankfully, I think some sorts of rules of the road that I was not aware of were at work, and I lived.

I don't know anything about Tracy, and I am not even sure if it is still a railroad town. Most likely it isn't, and is a stereotypical sleepy Central Valley farm community, but check out the links below to learn more.

If you want to know more about Tracy:

City of Tracy
Tracy Chamber of Commerce
Tracy Press
Wikipedia: Tracy

Next up: Manteca, California

On the Road: Oakland, California

Click on the Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on April 23, 2007

Unfolding the Map

Sal, tired of working, tired of the bickering between Remi and Lee Ann, hits the open road again, stealing out into the night and opening up a new set of experiences in California that we'll continue to explore through his first journey. So sit back, enjoy the ride, and click on the map if you want to see where we are right now.

Book Quote

"In the morning Remi and Lee Ann were asleep as I quietly packed and slipped out the window the same way I'd come in, and left Mill City with my canvas bag....In Oakland I had a beer among the bums of a saloon with a wagon wheel in front of it, and I was on the road again. I walked clear across Oakland to get on the Fresno road."

On the Road, Chapter 12

Oakland, California

Sal just stops in Oakland to have a beer. In a way that's fitting, because Oakland always has been a 1) working class city and 2) the practical sister of San Francisco. If San Francisco and Oakland were represented by two people in a bar, San Francisco would be the fun one, who would get drinks simply by being dazzling and spectacular. Oakland would be in the corner quietly drinking and going about its business. Sal is looking for the dazzle, whether its on the open road, in the city, or in romance, so it's no surprise that Oakland is only good for a quick beer for him - a short rest to collect his thoughts in the length of time left in a bottle.

I have a more complicated and nuanced relationship with Oakland, because it has waxed and waned in my life. I was born in Eureka, California where I was put up for adoption. I was given over into a foster home there, but when that didn't work out, I was taken to Oakland where the agency that took custody of me farmed me out to another foster home. I first met the people who were to become my parents in Oakland. Later, when my parents adopted another sibling, it was in Oakland that the adoption was handled.

Oakland was where I went to my first major league sporting event. My former foster parent Larry took me to see the Oakland A's play baseball when I was a teenager - I don't really remember who they played. I first rode a light rail train, BART, in Oakland. My first zoo experience was the Oakland Zoo.

In the early 80s, I drove through Oakland as a college student on my way to see my former foster parents. I drove right down the main street through Oakland. My former foster parents gave me hell. Oakland had a large black population, and they held the same opinions of blacks as other people of their generation did...blacks were okay when you dealt with them individually but when you got a bunch of them together they would start shooting white people. So they yelled at me for a little while. I eventually would go on to mystify them completely by choosing to live in an inner-city, mostly black neighborhood in Milwaukee.

Despite the influences that Oakland has on my life, I still know little about it. I know that it has a fantastic little museum where a former roommate of mine works. I know where the A's, Raiders and Warriors play. I know that BART runs through it. I know it is next door to Berkeley and the University of California. It is a port city. It has a small airport which is much easier to get in and out of than San Francisco International. Jerry Brown resurrected his political career by getting elected mayor there. I know it is still primarily working class. But I never really captured the soul of Oakland like I have other cities, and I don't quite understand it like I do other cities. And I find that a little sad.

Oh, by the way, Jack Kerouac lived near Oakland himself, at 1943 Berkeley Way in Berkeley, with his mother for a few months in the late 1950s before she got tired of it and they moved back east. His original cottage is not there anymore, just a few apartments.

If you want to know more about Oakland

City of Oakland
Literary Figures of Oakland
Oakland A's
Oakland Convention and Visitors Bureau
Oakland Museum
Oakland Tribune
Oakland Zoo
Wikipedia Oakland

Next up: Tracy, California

On the Road: Mill Valley, California

Click on the Thumbnail for Map

Note: First published on Blogger on April 16, 2007

Unfolding the Map

Sorry I haven't posted, but the dissertation took front and center for awhile. However, I will get in a post once in awhile...besides, a slow journey is often better than a fast one! Click the map to see where we are now! Sal makes it here, to "Mill City" where he meets up with Remi Boncoeur at Remi's cabin where Remi lives with his girlfriend. Chapter 11 continues with a description of his time here, which included working as a "special policeman" at barracks for construction workers heading overseas, probably like a security guard. He spent many of his duty hours getting drunk with the workers. Sal also makes numerous trips into San Francisco, and hangs out with Remi on an abandoned freighter in the Bay.

According to a history of the Homestead Valley in Marin County, Kerouac actually lived with Gary Snyder for some months in a cabin on the property at 370 Montford in Mill Valley, where this marker is situated.

Book Quote

"Mill City, where Remi lived, with a collection of shacks in a valley, housing-project shacks built for Navy Yard workers during the war; it was in a canyon, and a deep one, treed profusely on all slopes. There were special stores and barber shops and tailor shops for the people of the project. It was, so they say, the only community in America where whites and Negroes lived together voluntarily; and that was so, and so wild and joyous a place I've never seen since."

On the Road, Chapter 11

Mill Valley

Mill Valley is one of those little Marin communities that to me was only a sign on the road as we zipped by, multiple times, on the way to San Francisco. I never paid much attention to it. I remember that as you got around the area where the Mill Valley sign was, there was a large building that I always liked to look at. It was very large, space-agey in its design, and pink, with a blue roof I think.  I later learned that it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  I used to like to look at this building, partly because it meant that we were almost to the Golden Gate Bridge, and traveling over that was always a thrill for me.

We never really had any reason to stop anywhere in Marin County, unless we needed gasoline. We didn't know anybody there, and frankly, my parents were always uncomfortable stopping in places they didn't know very well. It was hilly, which meant that you couldn't always see the signs right away as you curved around the hills and went in and out of the depressions in the landscape.

My brother-in-law and his wife now life in San Anselmo, in Marin County, and now I have more familiarity with the place. Marin County is most likely not like how Kerouac and Sal experienced it in the late 40s. It tends to house a wealthier class of people, and a more environmentally conscious group of people. The people of Marin County that Sal describes -- rustic Italians and raucous construction workers, now most likely live in other, more blue-collar areas of the Bay Area. A recently proposed Habitat for Humanity project caused much consternation in Marin County, because even as the locals agree that housing should be available for low-income families, they worry about those low-income families depressing their own housing and property values.

Sal, however, given the household troubles between Remi and his girlfriend, as well as his job, finds Mill City a place from which he likes to escape. He spends a lot of time in San Francisco. Finally, Sal steals out in the middle of the night, leaving Remi and his girlfriend to their fate. "Remi and I were lost to each other...," he writes. He heads first for Oakland, and then south.

If you want to know more about Mill Valley

City of Mill Valley
Marin County Independent-Journal Mill Valley page
Mill Valley Film Festival
The Mill Valley Historical Society
Wikipedia: Mill Valley

Next Stop: Oakland

On the Road: Sausalito, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on October 15, 2006

Unfolding the Map

Sal has made it to San Francisco, and is now on his way to meet his friend Remi Boncoeur in Mill City. We will continue to follow him on his trip. Click on the image to follow along on the map, if you dare!

Book Quote

"I had just come through the little fishing village of Sausalito, and the first thing I said was, 'There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito.'"

On the Road, Chapter 11

The quote above is presented a little out of order from what happens in On the Road. In the book, Sal gets to Remi Boncoeur's cabin in Mill City, and then recounts going through Sausalito. But, in the interest of keeping the events right chronologically, I have presented his journey through Sausalito first, just as Sal and Jack experienced it.

Sausalito is known for the houseboats upon which rich Marin County dwellers live. These houseboats, however, are the legacy of something that I think Jack would have enjoyed and have been willing to take part in. In the 1950s, perhaps even before, people interested in living alternative lifestyles created these houseboat communities. They squatted on old boats tied together and created entire communities on the bay that existed on the fringes of society. These communities attracted bohemians and artists, and later hippies, as well as the requisite drugs, alcohol and free-wheeling lifestyles.

But in 1949, when Sal travels through, I think that Sausalito was probably just as he described it...a village full of Italian fishermen and their families. Though you have to wonder, for in the next sentence Remi Boncoeur laughs a knowing laugh...and you can almost hear him winking as he repeats Sal's line back to him, "There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito! Aaaaaaah!".

Of course, Sal would never recognize Sausalito now. The Italian fishing village is gone. Their successors, the bohemians and hippies who moved onto barely-floating junkers, are gone, replaced by dot.com millionaires who pay top dollar for these houseboats. The wild days of grass and booze and protest songs sung by circles of squatters are now replaced by the clinking of cocktail glasses and soft jazz. The sights and smells of an Italian fishing village are replaced by upscale shops that attract tourists with lots of money to burn.

Perhaps it is the circle of life. Everywhere you look, the fringe becomes hip. It doesn't matter what or where. Raw music of the sixties and seventies sells cars and computers today. Food and clothing styles, so common in one era, become the next generation's paragon of unhipness, only to be discovered anew two to three generations down the road and brought back into the limelight again.

Maybe once again, after a really bad economic downturn or social upheaval, the houseboats of Sausalito will once again be the haven of squatters and outcasts. Or maybe not. Perhaps Jack's comment about Sausalito revealed not only his surprise, but his ignorance of what was to come, and perhaps Remi's reply reveals more prescience than we expect.

If you want to know more about Sausalito

City of Sausalito
History of Sausalito
Houseboats of Sausalito
Wikipedia: Sausalito

Next stop: Mill City, California (Mill Valley?)