Memoir: California Dream

California Dream
by Jack Simons

A Honda showroom in Monterey, California – January 1966 – not a fancy place, just a concrete slab structure with large display windows set between Del Monte Avenue and the beach – a landscape of scraggly trees and sand-acclimated weeds. In a back room the owner showed us a prototype red sports car parked in a corner – “Honda’s going to make cars,” he said.

We laughed. It looked rudimentary, small, boxy – a non-starter.

We were three young Special Forces soldiers studying Spanish at the Defense Language Institute. But the intrigue of Coastal California enticed us, weighing heavily against our three-month Spanish course. Soon we would join the 8^th Special Forces Group in the Panama Canal Zone.  Panama would be a short stop on our way to Vietnam – adventure was calling.

We bought motorcycles. I gravitated to a black and silver 305 cc Superhawk. My friends, Spagnola and Branz, liked the plainer, tougher 305 Scrambler, a dirt bike. I thought I could out-run them on the street and keep up with them in the woods – and that conclusion turned out to be true – though my air filter didn’t handle the off-road dust as well, and my bike bottomed out on rocks near the top of long and winding pathways up California hills.

1967 Honda CB77 305 Super Hawk (photo: Steven Glover (cc))

I had previously owned a Honda 50 cc and knew how to ride. My friends had to learn, but since “hell for leather” always works best, they soon mastered their bikes.  We practiced in an off-road area of bush and stunted pine trees, playing tag to make the learning more interesting.  The game would often end with Spagnola and Branz chasing me up and down the paths and dirt tracks.

I could outrun a single Scrambler, but if the Scramblers together found my tail, I couldn’t shake them off.  Once in desperation, I turned into a solid wall of brush.  Without hesitation, they followed – amazing, but I guess not so amazing – Spagnola and Branz would do anything they saw me do – so I led them on a crashing rampage through dense underbrush, avoiding tree trunks and limbs pointed my direction.

We survived, but I never repeated the experiment.

We were young – untouched by suffering.  Because we saw ourselves as immortals, we went where we wanted and did what we could.

Highway 1 twisted past by our doorstep south along the coast from Monterey, following the edge of California with all its turns and rolls, the Pacific Ocean on one side and the rising palisades of rock and forest on the other.  Bright sunshine splashed off the sea and died in the darkened trees.  Sometimes, a fog dimmed the whole in shrouds of gray mist.

Each day, after six hours of non-stop Spanish recitation, we would change our fatigues for jeans and a nylon jacket – becoming civilians all the way down to our Army haircuts. These we hid under rudimentary motorcycle helmets required by the army long before California came around to passing a helmet law.

We endured heavy afternoon traffic jam leaving Monterey, but eventually found our way to the 1.  The looping road invited us to lean and accelerate through each sweeping curve.  I loved the turns, but discovered a psychological anomaly.  I could lean into the right turn so far it seemed I could touch my face to the pavement.

I could hardly lean at all doing a left-turning curve.  My mind blocked me.  No physical difference exists between a left-hand and a right-hand turn. But I knew my weakness, and approached left curves with great care.

How to explain California in 1966?  The sun, the damp fog, the coastal vegetation – lush green, sometimes shining with rain or dripping with fog – The Mamas and the Papas’ California Dreamin’ echoing down the hallway of our barracks every hour of the day.

I decided the state’s greatest asset was its most pleasant air – just walking around felt like I was swimming in an ocean of luxurious softness – free, at no charge – and the richest magnate could not buy a better piece of the air than we enjoyed as PFCs.

I had grown up in the hot, sharp-edged dust of the Southwest and the humid industry-laden air of Gary, Indiana.  I bathed in the gift of California’s air.  I devoured the ambiance the same way I ate abalone steak and drank Chablis every Friday night on Fisherman’s wharf.

And I rode my motorcycle.

Native Californians reminded me of exceptionally sleek and healthy seals basking in the sun, flapping their flippers in the surf, eating their food from the large open end of a cornucopia – the best of all possible lives.

And I despised them for their physically-fit softness, their mental laziness, their disconnection from history, their ability to float in the spiritual amniotic fluid that had produced Dreamin’.  Of course my human sample, taken from Monterey coffee houses, or seen at their ease on the beaches, didn’t meet any test of intellectual rigor – but all my comrades employed the then-current cliché, calling California “the land of the fruit and nuts.”

Perhaps we all had met the same people.  I fell into conversation one night with a soft young man – pot-bellied, wispy beard, fashionable long-dirty hair – passionately explaining to me that we don’t eat with forks, because you can taste the fork.  There it was – California Dreamin’.

But what if I had been raised on that coast, in that air, under that sun, before that sea, in the midst of that abundance?  Would I have been offended by the taste of a metal fork and insisted on chopsticks?

I was nearly converted on a ride under the Bixby Bridge one day. Riding south on the 1, I drove underneath it – an open-spandrel arch bridge of surpassing beauty that I had crossed many times.  I spied a trail circling the base of the hill that buttressed the bridge on the landward side. The hill had been sliced like a watermelon to make room for the highway, and I followed along the track at the base of the slice – until I found the path leading up the hill.  The summit above, the creek-gorge below, I rode the Superhawk to the top – dismounting and pushing when the rocks rose too high for a street bike.  I’ve never seen a picture of the Bixby Creek Bridge taken from that hill, and that’s a shame – it has the best view.  Before me the heaving sea broke against dark boulders, leaving behind scuds of white foam.  The mundane settings of the Midwest and the harsher offerings of the Southwest could not compare.  As I drank in that scene, the promised satisfaction offered by eating with wooden sticks didn’t seem so ridiculous.

Bixby Creek Bridge on Highway 1, near Monterey, CA (photo: Shayan USA (cc))

On another night, while returning late from a run down Highway 1, my friends and I discovered that a large crowd of Hell’s Angels bikers had gathered in Big Sur.  Hell’s Angels hated Japanese bikes.  It wouldn’t do to drive through their raucous party. So, we coasted around the town on side roads – seeing one large group of Harleys asleep in front of a darkened, noisy bar.

Even immortals must take care (just ask the elder Greek gods).

Since Hell’s Angels threatened police rule of the street, officers often vented a low-burning hostility toward motorcyclists in general. At that time, motorcycle cops had virtually disappeared from the roads. They didn’t identify with us and no motorcyclist, Hell’s Angels or otherwise, was going to take the streets from them.

One night, bombing north on Lighthouse Avenue – I had just passed through the tunnel – my eyes widened in shock.  A police car rode six inches off my rear bumper, bouncing on its brakes, siren wailing, lights flashing. I pulled over and dismounted.  The officer rushed toward me wanting to know why I was speeding.

I didn’t want to tell the cop that speeding is what one does on a motorcycle, or that I had thought I was alone in the tunnel, and that its nice drop and curve made speeding even more fun.

I told him I was sorry.

He began to furiously write me a ticket.  Another cop car had stopped Spagnola, and several other cop cars whizzed up and down the road.  We had sprung a speed trap specifically set to catch motorcyclists.  I guess that stretch of road was a particular problem because bikers loved making a dash through the tunnel.

The officer remained professional.  He didn’t berate or bully.  I heard him discuss with another officer that one biker had escaped and they were looking for him.

I had led through the tunnel – my street bike was fastest.  Spagnola followed – he was the most aggressive driver – and Branz came behind.  He saw the cop cars jump us and, in good military fashion, evaded and escaped.

The cops were thinking of scenes from The Wild One and imagining a confrontation with some hairy version of Marlon Brando riding an over-powered Triumph instead of young soldiers astride under-powered Hondas.  Then Branz drove up, wondering what was going on.

I heard one cop say to another: “I’ve never seen anything like that.”  They gave us all tickets that included a court date, and sent us on our way with a warning not to speed.

In the two weeks before our trial date we said little about our tickets and chastely drove about Monterey.

For our court date, we wore Class A uniforms which included jump boots, jump wings, and Special Forces berets that carried the 8^th Special Forces patch.

When we entered the courthouse for our trial, no one would look at us.  Police were the worst – their faces would stiffen into total neutrality, their eyes would remain fixed on some far away object.  We arrived in the courtroom and it congealed into silence.  With great respect the bailiff told us where to sit.

The cops had no way of knowing a thing about us when they made their arrest. We wore blue jeans and nylon jackets. Our short hair gave us away as soldiers, but Special Forces?  A cop would have had to hold Special Forces soldiers up there in the pantheon near angels or heroes of old. And let’s face it, we both saw ourselves as some super-hero version of the Boy Scouts – Aragon’s rangers protecting the shire from encroaching darkness.  If the story had any life among the Monterey police officers, the chief point would have had to be Branz turning himself in when he had escaped clean away – honor is a big thing with all the Boy Scouts.

Simons in warm weather uniform the night he shipped out to Vietnam. Gary, Indiana, 1966 (photo courtesy of the writer)

Standing before the judge, we heard our charges read, confessed our guilt, and received our fines – $30 for each of us.  We paid the clerk, and left – all the time surrounded by silence.

At another time, after hurrying away from class, I missed Spagnola and Branz at the barracks.  I knew they had headed south to Big Sur, so I followed – couldn’t find them in Big Sur – returned north, and after dark found myself in a ground-floor dormitory room. I wondered out loud about the pair, but then Branz appeared, banging on the window, his face gashed across the nose, which was smeared with clotted and dried blood.

“We had a wreck,” he said when we opened the window.  “Spagnola’s helmet cracked like an egg shell.”

They had crashed their bikes at Hurricane Point – a promontory extending like a finger toward the open sea. A long straightaway south of the point had tempted the pair to accelerate all along the way – where the curve at the point going north begins gently right, and then tightens to a sharp right.  They left the road, still heading toward the Pacific and were only stopped at the cliff-edge by a broken-down fence, on which Branz had planted his face while Spagnola smashed his helmet on a rock.  What a mess.

A Good Samaritan witnessed the wreck and brought them home.  Special Forces medics in our number took charge of the wounded – stitches for Branz, observation for Spagnola. (We actually failed Spagnola – a blow to the head like that. He didn’t respond right for the next several months – and often stared distantly into his own universe, responding only when spoken to for the second or third time.)

Classmates made bets among themselves that I wouldn’t be able to use Spanish to order a glass of water in Panama.  It was a close thing, but they lost that bet.  I scored high enough on the Spanish final to satisfy the army, but feel only shame when I remember my effort.

                  When we first bought our motorcycles, they excited us so much, we applied for permission to drive them to Panama.

Our applications started a run on the company clerk by other soldiers asking to “find their own way to Panama.”  We specifically said “drive our motorcycles;” everyone else was specifically vague.

Toward the end of our time at the DLI, a short, puffy lieutenant invited the travel applicants to a meeting room where he had us stand at attention in a quarter-moon group that somewhat scorned him because he was an officer. He was soft – not airborne – basically a clerk. He told us to stand at ease.

“My purpose,” he said, “is to tell you that the applicants who wish to “find their own way to Panama” have been approved, and the three who requested to travel by motorcycle, refused.”

We didn’t identify ourselves.  He seemed nonplussed as he surveyed each of us, before noticing Branz’s recent wounds.

“Soldier, what happened to your face?”

All my life I have had to wrestle with the inclination to blurt the truth when questioned – this was one of many such occasions – but Branz beat me by a full theatrical beat.

“Well you see Sir, I was crossing Pacific Street, and I tripped and hit my face on the curb.”

There was a long silence while the lieutenant stared at Branz in disbelief. He finally broke into a half-grin.

“Well, one thing I’ve got to say – you Special Forces guys are sure inventive.”

Afterward we had a laugh at Branz’s lie, and another laugh that the army had said yes to all who had no idea how they would get to Panama, but had turned down the three who named a specific mode of transportation.

Branz and his walking stick, Special Forces Graduation Exercise. Pisgah, North Carolina, 1965 (photo courtesy of the writer)

Of course the army was right. The notion that three rookie motorcyclists could ride unprepared bikes the length of Mexico and Central America was laughable – a person with less imagination than my mother could have foreseen at least a dozen gruesome outcomes from that adventure.

Those who took advantage of the army’s permission traveled by bus, without the handicap of machines to keep in repair and protect from thieves, and arrived both sick with tropical diseases and bruised from encounters with wayside toughs who wanted their wallets.

Stymied, Spagnola, Branz and I decided to ride across the U.S. instead.  I shared that idea with my mother, and learned that, though in the popular imagination I was a killer who dropped from the skies, I was still her boy, and I would not drive a 305 cc motorcycle from California to Indiana on my way to Panama.

So I settled on driving to Los Angeles.

We graduated at the end of March and left on Friday – April Fool’s day.

I had a problem tying a fully-packed duffle bag to the back of my under-sized motorcycle seat, but enough elastic tie-downs did the job.  We rode away after noon.

The rush of air and feeling – we played tag down the coast – Los Angeles by dark – but we were greener than the green.  Joyfully pumped with the juices of the young, we hadn’t considered the hard work Highway 1 required – a sharp curve to the left followed by a short straightaway, a sharp turn to the right, another short straightaway – sharp turn to the left  . . . It never ended.

We stopped for bodily relief once an hour, smoked, talked, then remounted and raced on our way. We must have wasted time on the breaks because we just crawled the length of the coast. My street bike led whenever I wished, which was most of the time. Branz and Spagnola stayed close, but I ran away from them on the straightaways, and they closed the gap on the curves.

Late in the afternoon, two-thirds of the way down the coastal section, I leaned and accelerated through a right-hand turn that pointed my front tire toward a rising horizon and the Pacific Ocean. With shock, I saw my mistake – the road at the near horizon disappeared in a left-hand turn. I simultaneously performed three actions: I gassed down; geared down as fast as I could; and tapped my brake like a nervous dancer.

The curve began gently – so far, so good – then tightened. I drifted toward the berm, correcting into the next straightaway just as my tires hit gravel and went out from under me.

People may think that members of the airborne are taught to jump from airplanes.  Not true.  We were taught how to fall on the ground.  Almost all bad things happen to the jumper upon landing, rarely on launching.  I had learned my lessons well.  I tucked and rolled across the highway just as Spagnola and Branz roared by.  I clipped Branz’s tail-pipe.

We reloaded, but the mood had changed.  A gloom consumed the sunlight; the day had darkened and grayed.  When to go our separate ways had not been discussed; where we would spend the night, not decided.  The wreck had rattled me, and I led the pack with a renewed fierceness.  I lost Spagnola and Branz, and then discovered I didn’t care if I found them.  I traveled on. By then, having given up on Los Angeles, I hoped for San Luis Obispo – the death of a dream: no Panama, no cross-country, no reason to stick together.

We used to say that you never had friends in the military, only temporary military acquaintances.  We did everything together – lived together, trained together – some died together.  But we didn’t stick together – civilian life scattered us like dust in a wind.

Together, Branz and I had spent weeks in the field learning to be Special Forces radio operators.  My last meaningful conversation with him was in the bathroom of a Monterey joint where he emphatically put the kibosh on my over-enthusiastic celebrating.  I repented, threw up in the toilet, and we returned to our graduation party.

I saw Spagnola for the last time in Vietnam; he had just come in from a patrol and plopped his ample body down on my bunk.

“Well,” he said, “killed two VC this morning.”

“What happened,” I said.

“Two men in a rice paddy.”

“Were they armed?”

“No.  They ran.”

“You shot two unarmed farmers?”

“They were VC.”

The conversation frustrated Spagnola. I had not been a friendly audience.

In the real world Spagnola was right, and I was wrong.  The two VC had cached their weapons nearby to assume the identity of farmers.  But conceived and raised in liberalism, I couldn’t get over the image of the two unarmed men working their rice paddy.

But in the days we rode our bikes in California, that all lay in the undiscovered future.

The gloom turned to night as Highway 1 left the coast. In the dark I found fatigue had destroyed my depth perception – all I saw in my moving

Simons at the beginning of Graduation Exercise. Pisgah, North Carolina, 1965 (photo courtesy of the writer)

world seemed equally close and equally distant. I slowed down to twenty miles-an-hour. Buildings appeared on the roadside.  An hour out of San Luis Obispo, I found a cottage-court hidden among some pine trees on the right. The owner charged me $15 for a cottage with a covered parking slab on the side. Judging by the decrepit appearance of the cottage and the aged furniture inside, the bungalow must have been standing when Clark Gable did his screen test for It Happened One Night.

The next morning I passed Hearst Castle high on its lofty hill on the left, and later in San Luis Obispo joined the 101 freeway.  The open road tempted me.  I opened my motorcycle up to its highest speed and discovered the valves floated at 85 miles-per-hour.  The speed thrilled me. I wore only blue jeans, a tee-shirt, a nylon jacket, and an inadequate helmet.  A crash at any speed would have left me a bleeding, shapeless corpse.  I didn’t care.

Riding through the surrounding lush hills, I felt like a traveler in the garden of the gods – a foreign gate crasher who could respond enough to the scenery around me to be overwhelmed, yet lacked the empathy to join the natives in their worship of the air, the mountains, and the abundance that was California.

My back tire squiggled, a sudden deviation to the right and the left.  I had no idea what was amiss – but that squiggle would occupy troubled dreams for the rest of my life.  I slowed down.

I stopped at the southbound rest stop at mile marker 131, and for some reason never forgot it – I notice it today when I drive by. I came to the coast above Santa Barbara and floated the valves again.  The rear tire squiggled, sending through me a thrill of real fear.  I was in a long sweeping right hand curve – the ocean on my right, the hills rising to mountains on my left.  That was enough for me.  I slowed down for good.

The traffic and structures beside the road increased until I was in a fully urban area that could easily be renamed ‘Extended Los Angeles.’

Coming into the Los Angeles proper, the air lost its clarity and turned to a sickly yellow smog.  The traffic came to a creeping halt. I developed the worst headache of my life – a smog headache, I decided.  Between the smog and the jammed freeway, California lost all its pleasures.

I found a Mayflower warehouse near the Santa Anita race track and stored my motorcycle for $14 a month.  I never saw it again.  While in Vietnam, I sold the bike to a soldier from San Diego named Petrocelli – his parents owned a furniture store.  He later wrote a letter telling me how much he enjoyed riding the bike around Southern California.

A cab took me to my uncle’s apartment in El Monte, and I flew home the next day.  By July in Panama I received orders for Vietnam and took a long leave.  In September I arrived in Saigon.

Three decades of mid-west living rolled by, and then, in 1999, I moved to Los Angeles. The smog was gone, but all the rest remained – air, sun, vistas, soft rain, the unparalleled experience. I bought a black Triumph Thunderbird – my third motorcycle.  I rode that bike until common sense and old age forced me to sell it.

Now, when I travel on Highway 1 it’s in a car.  I always make the trip when in Monterey and point out the hill above Bixby Creek Bridge, and then Hurricane Point.  I never go south of Big Sur.

Recently, on street-market day in Monterey, I stood at the corner of Calle Principal and West Franklin Street.  A small Honda motorcycle coming down Franklin from the direction of the Defense Language Institute raced through the intersection.

My heart leaped – the bike looked as beautiful and capable as my Superhawk. The young rider crossed the same intersection I had crossed scores of times a lifetime ago.

I glimpsed his stern face flashing by, and somehow the sight, the memories and the associations of all my experiences struck deep into my spirit – in that moment, I gave in. I joined up. I became in mind and spirit a Californian.

But I still eat my dinner with a fork.

The view north from Hurricane Point, near Big Sur, CA (photo: Gabriel Millos (cc))