1934

“Santa Monica Pier or bust!” the bus driver called out as they passed Chicago’s Buckingham Fountain.

“Mom, what does ‘Or bust’ mean?” twelve-year-old Dad looked up from his cartoon perusing.

“It has to do with pioneer days when settlers went west hoping their wagons and oxen would survive the travels,”Gram stated after a thoughtful pause. Dad was flipping through New Yorker cartoons, reinterpreting the style in the cartoons in his notebook. He showed his mother one cartoon that had a jalopy with a family parked on the side of Route 66 with a handwritten sign, “California or bust.” The caption below read, “Go West Young Man?”

“Mom, what does this mean?” he asked.

“There is a migration to California of farmers who have lost their land during the Dust Bowl. We may see some broken-down cars along the way.” He started to doze off, leaning his head against the window, as Gramma and her sister Flo chatted about the Beverly Hills neighborhood Grandpa had chosen for them.

“How about that Cad’, Flo?” Then she'd see a '26 Buick, or a Ford Model A Victoria. The high and snotty Model T or a '25 Dodge occasionally passed. This long concrete path wound over red and grey gray soil from the Mississippi River to Oklahoma City. After Texas, they'd cross the Continental Divide and down into the New Mexico desert.  My dad was trying to draw the scene, but the bus was going too fast. The fence was two strands of barbed wire strung between crooked willow poles. Where there was a crotch at the right height, the wire hung there. When there was no crotch, rusted baling wire lashed it to the badly trimmed willow post. Behind the wire fencing, the dust-covered corn attempted to grow but was mostly beaten down by wind, heat and drought. He started again, this time sketching the whole scene, then filling in the details as he spotted them—much better. The drawing worked.

Gram learned the Buicks, Nashes, DeSotos. Plymouths, Chryslers, Rocknes and Stars came in a parade of rolling, rusting junk. “Flo, is that really an Apperson?” “Bess, those haven't been made for at least ten years.” Gram glanced again at Mac's drawing. The fence looked much better, and he was gesture sketching in dried corn stalks behind the wire fence. The sun had burned down on the green corn that for awhile had grown darker green to protect itself. The surface of the earth crusted over, becoming as pale as the cloudless and dusty sky. The leaves of the young corn lost their strength for want of water and tilted downward. Dad saw as he drew the bent stalk that it was bent over like the farmer he had watched walk into the cafe. He drew another stalk gestured to seem worn out like its caretaker, then another and another. The drawn field of corn became an army of bowed over, worn out, hungry farmers. Brown lines on the corn leaves widened and moved in to the central ribs. On occasion there appeared in the sky a high wispy cloud that gave no rain. Dry stream beds taunted the farmers with the memory of captured and flowing water. The sun pierced this world brutally. He was attempting to capture heat on paper with pencil. He wanted to show his father what they had seen when he got to California. The inventiveness in the drawing came from an inner, non-coercive order created by the trust between him and his mother. She allowed him the confidence to experiment by not interfering, while offering protection and continuity. 

Amongst the Oaks

“Dance me to the blue-eyed children who are asking to be born, dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn,” the music carried them on.  Love had never been so easy nor so close before. It was as though they had both reached the sheer precipice of childhood’s plateau at the same time. Hand in hand, they moved from dancing to light caresses and gentle kisses.

“Goodnight, Irene…goodnight, Irene,” the music signaled the end of the Sienna night, as the two walked arm in arm to the Washington Ave bus. “Goodnight, Irene, good night, Irene…I’ll see you in my dreams…” As the song faded into the distance, the lyrics amplified in their minds. Dad escorted Mom to Central Park Boulevard, careful to walk on the street side in case a car splashed water, his handkerchief in his pocket just in case.

This moment my parents fell in love came clear to me when I heard Madeleine Peyroux channel Billie Holiday in her recent rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love,” a song reflecting on WWII. “Dance to your beauty with a burning violin. Dance me through the panic, until I’m safely gathered in. Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove… show me slowly what I only know the limits of, dance me to the end of love."

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