Life, love, lust and lunacies from the Sage of Topanga

So I’m tooling up I-5 doing 70 in the slow lane from L.A. to my spiritual home, which is San Francisco, listening to Elton John doing B-B-B-Benny and the jets when I hear a horn beep-beeping in that very same rhythm.

I say to myself that it’s one of God’s coincidences, relying on my scant knowledge of God to accept whatever I don’t understand as one of his miracles. It is my Catholic upbringing. But then it happens again and by that time John has moved on to another tune and there’s no reason for the All Mighty to beep in rhythm that way.

I look around to see why someone would be honking at me when I notice that the guy in a car in front of me is giving me the finger for no apparent reason. There are a few out there within my sphere of influence who don’t like me, I’ll admit, but they do not usually throw me the bird on the freeway.

A car passes and the woman inside waves. In fact, the whole family waves, mom, pop, Uncle Leo and the twins. I smile and wave back. I don’t know who they are but they seem nice enough and think they know me.

I am confused why in relatively the same short expanse I am first given the finger and then honked and waved at when I hear beep, beep, beep, beep again, exactly four times. By now I have turned off the CD player and try to figure out who’s honking at me. And then I realize. It’s me.

I have no idea why I would be honking at me, but it is something over which I have no control. My car, a reliable 2008 Camry Hybrid, is doing the honking. Like Hal in the movie “2001” it has assumed a life of its own. I keep driving hoping it’s not a case of demonic possession. I have heard about such cases but they have mostly been in Fords and Chevys.

I don’t know what to do so I don’t do anything. Then I figure maybe the horn is stuck and needs to be rebooted as they say, so I push at it manually. It honks just fine but then an angry woman thinks I am honking at her and glares. She is driving a new, pineapple gold Mercedes and will not allow anything less than say a BMW to honk her way. I have offended her sense of placement and nod my head in apology. She shoots on by.

I have Blue Tooth technology, which is a strange name for a communications system, but crazy or not I use it to call my mechanic. He has taken care of my cars for 25 years but won’t touch anything that has to do with telemetry, he says, in a voice that clearly indicates I am annoying him. You need expensive, high tech equipment to fool with car computers and he doesn’t charge me enough to buy one.

OK, I say, I’m sorry to have bothered you. Next time I come in you can charge me extra.

The car continues to beep four times and I begin to realize that it does that every time I hit a bump; not just any bump but a certain kind of bump. Like a scientist studying the evolution of a worm, I prove my hypothesis by connecting the beep to the bump for the next 150 miles; bump/beep, bump/beep, as regular as a metronome.

No question that it’s a bump that does it, but I still don’t know what kind of bump. After another hundred miles of beeping I don’t care. I am embarrassed even more than I am when I have more than two martinis and trip over a table that knocks over a lamp and sends me sprawling over the hors d’oeuvres. It beeps when I stop for lunch and beeps as I pull into a service station for gasoline. I smile wanly and shrug. The looks that I receive range from fear to sympathy, with maybe a little homicidal rage thrown in.

I finally reach San Francisco, get to a mechanic by beeping into the Van Ness District and he says it’s not a Toyota part that has gone wrong, it’s a part from another company that has been installed. I have to call the manufacturer. He sees the crestfallen look on my face and says oh, hell, I’ll just turn it off, and he does. We kiss.

No, actually, we don’t kiss because I don’t do that with men, but I am grateful and touch his arm. That’s as far as I’ll go. He has in effect disarmed the security system that beeps and blares when someone I don’t know touches the car at night, which is OK with me. I know it is disabled because a red dashboard light that has been on suddenly ticks off, like the last blink of a dying man.

We have killed my security guard, but as George Bush might say it was necessary to maintain life in America as we know it. May it rest in peace, and in silence.

“like the last blink of a dying man”.
You still got it. Le bon mot, as the French would say…

Great, funny piece! I laughed out loud.

The same thing happened to my son’s Toyota van this week. Now he has no alarm system but at least the beeping has stopped.

Thanks for writing about every day life and making it interesting. I can’t quite picture you listening to Benny & the Jets!

Al,

Loved your blog. Also got your blind email today and while I won’t cancel my subscription to the L.A. Times just yet I have to vent and say

I ABSOLUTELY HATE THE COMBINATION OF THE CALIFORNIA SECTION WITHIN SECTION I

Nobody wears a coat and tie to go every (unemployed) day to sit in the Mirmar lobby and watch the other ‘retired’ folks drink coffee. I’m still trying to get a grip on losing my P/T job of 10 years… You see, I had this ‘New England – Puritan’ work ethic my mama instilled in me. I gave every employer everything I had while watching my Surfer Viking give his employers the least of his ability. Every time I surpassed him in salary (and my employer discovered that fact) I was either cut back or dismissed.

I can’t say I’ve ever been poor. My upbringing was lower to middle (when my mom worked). Married at the end of the 50s, I supported my love until he found a job…. His starting salary surpassed my two year employment by TWA. Between us be brought home about $5-700/month. We had fun, traveled around, ate well and… what, when, why, where, how did it change? We skated for the next 50 years, educating and empowering two daughters, and here we are broke.

I needed that last job! Surfer Viking had retired 15 years earlier (at the urging of his final employer). Nevertheless, before leaving Topanga we had about a million in property, securities and savings. You’d think we could survive retirement on that but, I have to admit, we forgot (always living for the moment) to be careful… Slowly, it eroded away due to various medical/dental/medication (to ward off the infirmities of old age) issues as well as American Dream maintenance problems. By the time the BIG, BIG (50%) loss came the end of last year we had accumulated a(hedged) $100K debt.

Now we are faced with FEARS that further politically liberal moves with take their toll on Social Security, Medicare, housing, pensions, banks and savings and our life, as we knew it, will end.

When I lost my $200 a week job two years ago, I got a feeling in the pit of my stomach that’s still growing. WE HAVE BECOME THE EXPENDABLES. I am an expendable in spite of giving everything I could give to employers, family, community and country. Our children (who haven’t had to cope with major health issues yet without health care) face similar 50% investment losses as well possibly job loss (GM). They have given us (and are going with us –yea!– on) a cruise partially in appreciation for hanging together for fifty years. Great Kids! We plan to handcuff ourselves together and jump (oh, probably not) so that what remains of our pitiful estate will become theirs… Well, possibly we can reduce our fun level one more notch and let the credit cards (crooks that they are) be damned.

So, you haven’t enjoyed the last month learning to be expendable? Relax. It will become better as time-goes-by… and you forget any ethics (and that feeling in the pit of your stomach) you ever thought you had. Who cares? Somebody will take care of us. We’re entitled!

P.S. I love Cindy’s Tiles… I can see she’s a REAL Topanga Girl… More prayers and good wishes. Still donating online daily!

Hi Al. I wanted to write and say I am so grateful that I found you again - I am, should say - was, a regular subscriber to the LA Times. Their decision to, once again, let you go, was the last straw. You were part of the heart and soul of that paper, but even with you I was growing disgruntled. The article ‘teasers’… a line of a story, then ‘Read this on LATimes.poop’. I like to buy and read the newspaper. I paid the money to read The LA Times - not have to get on the computer. I buy and read Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Mojo, The Boston Globe when I can get it [and yes, sorry, I purchase The Daily News, but they too have turned into a shell of what they once were - for me, frankly, a source of more San Fernando Valley news, than anything else. Though Dennis McCarthy is still a ‘fav’]. - You have been a joy to me and others and I will spread the word on your wonderful site. Thanks for staying in touch with all of us, Al!

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