Making Peace With The Pacific

The ocean can be sarcastic as hell. I mean, last month I moved to San Diego from California's version of Omaha with palm trees, Sacramento. When I arrived, Ocean talked to me in a bored snotty tone.

“Well, well, well,” Ocean sneered. “Look who's here. The ungrateful little wretch I carried all the way to Asia without drowning when he was a young ungrateful little wretch. I even threw in a pair of dolphins to show the way, otherwise that fat gray tub in which he was riding would have gotten as lost as Columbus did, the ninny.”

“Hello Ocean. Nice to see you too. Killed any Japanese lately?”

“Try, just this once, not to be a smartass,” Ocean said with an exasperated sigh. “They knew they were in tsunami country when they built their flimsy bamboo houses right smack on the beach. Too tempting a target. Same with that lunatic nuclear reactor that I swamped to show them the error of their ways. But never mind that. What brings you to my shore, you aged ex-sailor boy you? Got a death wish?”

“Not today, but thanks for offering. Besides, you'll recall that I'm descended from Norwegian sailors and the seagoing Native Americans of Southeastern Alaska. So my fatal attraction to you is genetic.”

“Oh yeah, the sardine eaters and foul tempered canoe jockeys with hyphenated names. So, you moved here because your wretched landlubber's heart is filled with love for little ol' me? I'm flattered right down to my tide pools, dearie me.”

“You do have your good moments. After all, Balboa named you Pacific, or peaceful..”

“Yeah, that was before I smacked him around some. Then Pizarro came along and accused him of some made up charges, and Balboa lost his head back in Spain. See? No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Oh?  Since when are you such a moralist?  And with a cliché at that. Tsk tsk.”

“Moi?  A moralist?  Perish the thought, laddie buck.  And keep your girlish tsks to yourself. If the headsman's ax or the lousy medieval mutton and pork diet hadn't nailed Balboa, I might've.   Moralist?  It is to laugh. Ha ha. After all, I got Magellan.”

“Beg to differ, Ocean. Filipino warriors killed Magellan. Maybe they thought he was an evil spirit, or maybe he groped someone's sister.”

“Yeah, well, let's get back on point here, kiddo. So what brings you to my fair shores?”

“Some friends who thought I'd be better off in closer proximity to you, for some reason, rather than slowly baking amid the pesticide ridden fields and the furnace heat of the Sacramento Valley in summer.

“Ha!” barked Ocean. “And will you stroll my shore with your 'trousers rolled,' like T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock?”

“Oh probably. I'll even dare to eat a peach, like Prufrock didn't.”

“Fine,” Ocean said. “Just don't spit peach pits in my waves. Don't pee in them when wading either, even with your trousers rolled."

“Don't tempt me."

"Don't provoke me."

"Deal," I said, and ate a peach.

-o-

Comments, critiques, corrections -- maybe cash -- are welcome:  tomatomike@aol.com

Very funny!  -- Shannon

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I hope you kept your pit and your, well, you know, in your pants. -- Beaty

You're no fun.  MB
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Question, why is FOX news so bad?  Is it because they lean toward the Republican side or am I wrong on that?  -- CM

Fox boss Roger Ailes was the head honcho on the Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes presidential campaigns.  He adopted the motto "fair and balanced," when making the Fox network a megaphone for conservative values, even though its broadcasts are neither fair nor balanced.  The slogan has succeeded in constipating liberals and making them grind their teeth in their sleep, as Mr. Ailes intended. MB

The Big Change

As I was saying, before being interrupted by the passage of months and some nice people who forcibly U-Hauled me and my Betta fish out of my Sacramento garret and into a San Diego condo, change is inevitable.

I hate change. I mean big change. Little changes, like underwear, are okay in moderation. But now and then a big change will tsunami its inexorable way into the most placid of lives, however hysterical the resistance of the placidee.

I mean, my new home is a beautiful place in a beautiful city, but a childhood of being frequently bunted between the far north and the deep south with a foray to the midwest by adventure stricken parents gave me a ironclad longing to stay-the-hell put and screw the adventure. I wanted permanence, goddamnit, and thought I had it in pleasantly dull Sacramento.

“Har de har har” the Fates laughed. The sonsabitches do that to the complacent and I found myself piloting an 18' truck in a two vehicle caravan down I-5, San Diego bound. Me, Mr. Don Simons and Mr. Rip (my tropical Betta fish) were in the truck. Mrs. Simons was driving my car, a 1986 Snitt.  That's what I call it.  

See, I always wanted to “leave in a snit,”  so I made up a fake automaker which I claimed made the car, adding that I  planned to eventually trade up to a Huff.  The car is actually a Honda Accord. I don't have right letters for Snit or Huff, but maybe I can fabricate a metal logo to read Doodah instead of Honda, but that's a project I'll procrastinate later. Anyway, because of the 55 mph speed limit imposed on trucks, and a big detour around L.A., we took two days to reach our destination.

I have a brief history in San Diego, a rite of passage due to failing high school grades and a runaway social maladjustment that landed me in the Navy right after my 17th birthday. Aside from a case of pneumonia in boot camp, which I aggravated by sneaking cigarettes in an isolation ward, I had good memories of San Diego, especially for its proximity to the fleshpots of Mexico where bartenders weren't fussy about IDs.

These days my only interest in Mexico does not extend beyond a beef burrito at a Taco Bell. Seems I've become more provincial and less worldly. What an old fuddy-duddy. But I draw the line at completing the Sudoko puzzle in the San Diego Union-Tribune, wearing my khaki pants halfway up my scrawny chest, or grumbling because the local PBS channel doesn't carry Lawrence Welk reruns. Even fuddy-duddies have their vanity and delusions of an embroidered youth.   I never liked Lawrence Welk's music anyway.  

San Diego has a lot more to offer than Sacramento for even the fuddiest of duddies.   An ocean, for starters. The Sacramento Valley is short on oceans, even though it was once the bottom of an inland sea. Some cynics who are less than enchanted with state government wish it was still submerged.   Not me.   Live and let live I say, but please, no more changes for awhile.   At least not in what passes for my back yard, a small balcony the owner optimistically festooned with live plants. I'm not a plant person.  In fact, I have a plant killing black thumb.  But maybe that will change too.   

Oh, and the above photo with an airplane?   That was taken during a visit to San Diego in April, before I was permanently moved as the only ex-pilot to be hijacked to Soutrhern California.

-o-

Comments?\


You needed a change.  I'm thrilled for you.  -- LadyWriter
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Wow..that's quite a change!! Hope you enjoy the weather, the water, the winter, the wonderfulness, and all the rest that SD has to offer. Email me if you get lonely in your new digs. I wish you the best -- Sac is poorer without your presence! (Getting hard to breathe up here with all the NorCal fires...cough, cough!)   -- Cyn

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The zoo, the zoo!  All I know about San Diego is that it has a great zoo. No one, in our age bracket should have to make a major move. It is very unsettling. Glad you made it though. Go to the ocean, it's worth a look-see!  - Beaty

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As a member of the Internet Fuddy Duddy gang, I couldn't sort out how to comment on this one. Anyway, it's wonderful writing, and LOL stuff. You should send it to the SD Union-Trib or Cal mag or re-jigger it a bit and send to NY Times.  -- Tim

California Magazine went belly up in '87 after publishing a some columns of mine.  But its demise wasn't all my fault.  Honest.  MB

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I love San Diego!   I lived there twice - once for five years across from the ocean in OB/Sunset Cliffs, and another time in Pt. Loma area.   -- Tab

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Maybe I've got one more move left in me.     Excuse me while I procrastinate another year.   -- Zoey

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The indignity of it all... to be hijacked in a road hugging four wheeler instead of a bi-wing open cockpit or P-41 Mustang! --  Kent