Auto-Biography 18: Vanishing Point

I followed the old maxim: “go west young man” to its ultimate conclusion: the California beach. I guess I missed an exit. I was looking for an opportunity to start a career. What I found instead was the clothing-optional Black’s Beach near San Diego. After spending two months watching pelicans skimming the waves and hang-gliders surfing the breeze off the cliff tops, I had a great tan. But I was broke. So for the last time in my life (fingers crossed), I defaulted to driving for a living.

The creaky 1970 Chevy taxi must have had at least a half-million miles on it. Thanks to time-warping fleet purchasing, it bristled with 1940’s technology: straight-six, two-speed Powerglide, manual steering and un-assisted drum brakes. The tired Turbo-Thrift six moaned and groaned like a mortally-wounded cowboy in a spaghetti western.

Time is money in the cab business. My driving style constantly tested the adage’s veracity. At 85mph, the yellow Biscayne shook and quivered like an overweight middle-aged belly dancer. The motions made it even harder to read the map that kept this newbie from getting lost in San Diego’s endless canyons.

It’s a good thing I never had to put the drum brakes to the test at speed, though. Stopping for a red light one morning, the right front wheel sheared off. Like a fallen horse with a broken leg, it was quickly dispatched.

The sudden unintended deceleration upgraded me to a fat-boy ‘71, with power brakes and steering. I preferred the old taxi; it was lighter, zippier and the rear-seat lower cushion was actually attached. In the “new” cab, my passengers slid forward on the loose seat whenever I braked. It was funny to watch their heads disappear in the rear-view mirror, but it did nothing to enhance my tip revenue.

Driving a cab is like being trapped in an endless Fellini movie. The ever-changing cast of eccentric characters occupying the back seat evoked pathos, fear, lust and loathing; sometimes all at once. No wonder I wanted to get lost in California’s deserts and mountain wilderness on weekends.

My ‘68 Dodge camper-van was my Dakar-Rally wanna-be truck. The slant six’s torque rivaled a Farmall tractor. The 90” wheelbase was shorter than a Wrangler, and it had a beam front axle. The only thing missing was four-wheel drive. But that didn’t stop me.

I had big traction tires on the back, and lowered the air pressure heading out across the desert. I carried a shovel and carpet strips to put under the spinning rear wheel if I got stuck in the sand.

Only once, on a breathtakingly clear and starry night in Death Valley, I couldn’t make it up a long, boulder-strewn steep trail. I had to back down a half mile, without any back-up lights. Fortunately, my night-time vision was better than my judgment.

Those nine months in San Diego were laid-back, but taxi driving didn’t offer much of a future. My older brother showed up one day, heading to Los Angeles to put a new TV station on the air. I tagged along.

The station was owned by the Transcendental Meditation (TM) organization, so things were… different. In lots of ways. Like hiring unskilled kids like me and paying us peanuts. Hardly anybody knew what the hell they were doing; it was a perpetual comedy of errors. Instead of broadcasting Maharishi’s endless lectures, we should have turned the cameras on ourselves and invented reality TV. The ratings would certainly have been higher.

I saw opportunity; next thing I knew, I was doing it all, thanks to no unions or job descriptions. My old Dodge got a new career (and paint job) as the station’s news van.

We all lived in a rented a house way up in the mountains by Lake Arrowhead, to get above the San Bernardino smog. It was so thick back then that we’d measure it by how many blocks we could see down the street.

Highway 18 to Lake Arrowhead is a beautifully-engineered road: long switchbacks connected by large-radius hair-pin curves. The now-tired Dodge was burning oil; it would foul its plugs during engine-braking. So I turned off the motor and coasted the entire way down the mountain. The grade was just right to keep the boxy van between 55 and 75 mph. It was a highly stimulating way to greet the day.

I wasn’t the only one coasting. Kids would hitchhike rides up the mountain with their custom-built low-slung bicycles. Then they’d fly down as fast, or faster, than the Dodge. Leave it to California kids to exploit every opportunity for wheeled thrills.

Seeing those fearless teens pass me, knowing I was coasting towards a real career, provided a moment of clarity– and it wasn’t pretty. For the first time in my life, I felt old.