Chapter 34

He woke up in all of his clothes, and took a look around. He was disoriented and not sure where he was, and surveyed the room to make sure he was alone. He looked up and saw a painting of a young Mexican woman on the wall, and it all started coming back to him. The Grateful Dead. The Mexacali Blues.

     He looked outside to make sure he wasn’t actually in Mexico, and was somewhat relived to see his car outside across the street from the dingy bar. Slowly his memory started to return to him. He had put a 20 dollar bill in the jukebox and played every Grateful Dead song from Casey Jones to Ripple, to Terrapin Station. Vaguely he remembered eating a pickled egg. It was an evening not unlike a number of others he had as a young man driving across the country in his old Volkswagen Bus, and he found himself chuckling at the odd journey back in time. Although he was in equal parts amused and disturbed by his behavior, he also knew he was a man in serious danger of redeveloping a drinking problem. He made a mental note to be more mindful of falling into familiar patterns.

     He quickly packed up his car and pointed it towards the ocean. He decided he would switch back to James Taylor this morning, as his old drinking music had not led to a desirable result. Monterey was one of the most beautiful places on earth, and he wanted to breathe some real ocean air.

     After two rotations of ‘Fire and Rain’ and three of ‘Sweet baby James’, he drove over the crest of a hill and saw nothing but clear skies and blue seas sprawled out in front of him. He pulled into an overlook and took it all in. He felt himself welling up with tears as he gazed at the splendor of what was in front of him. As a child his family didn’t have much money, but they had always managed to make it to the ocean on vacation, and it was something he had associated with freedom his entire life. The sea represented a break from stress and a break from worries, and the possibility that life could be different somehow. He still wanted to believe this.

     He decided he wanted to get settled before he ended up in another bar, and drove into downtown Monterey and booked a room. It was one of his favorite little towns in the world. And he made a point of picking up a copy of Cannery Row to read while he was here. 

     He walked down into the area of Steinbeck’s world, and marveled at how much things had changed since he had been here last. It was very touristy and polished, as opposed to the old rundown world the characters of Cannery Row inhabited so many decades ago. Maybe Joni Mitchell was right. In the end they pave paradise, and put up a parking lot.

     He wandered into an old bookstore and found a copy of the book, and decided he would spend the day sitting by the ocean, reading his book, and reliving some old memories. Among other things, the book was about a lonely doctor lamenting a lost love while learning to live as a fish out of water in a strange world.

It was a subject matter he was intimately acquainted with.