the cows of paso robles

1991.  i've returned to california & my mother hands me the newspaper want-ads.  it is early spring & the fire season is just heating up & the state is hiring part-time firefighters.  i'm a wannabe poet.  i've read my gary snyder & know that he logged some serious time as a fire watcher.  i've returned to school.  i'm taking classes & talked my way into a graduate poetry creative writing class.  the poet, dennis schmitz, was a dear chap & what i think of as a kind of coup i find out later is not uncommon.  schmitz was a sweet man who allowed many who asked to take his class to take his class.

i'm at the age where i am always up for an adventure.  i don't have a vehicle.  i borrow my brother's ford fiesta.  yep, you got that right.  an early 1990s model ford fiesta.  a small square with four wheels, made of plastic & metal.  we had earlier driven, a couple of times, to los angeles in that same car so i think driving it to san luis obispo should be a walk in the park, right.

i take my only suit, the one that i bought for my brother's wedding.  little did i know that the human body can still grow in its early 20s.  i must've grown about a half inch in the few months since my brother's wedding & my borrowing his ford fiesta to drive to cal fire in san luis obispo to become a poet-firefighter.  

oh the odes i would've written.  the drive down south was uneventful.  at lunch time i stop at a taco bell.  me with a couple of bean burritos & my biograph of dylan thomas.  across from me an old couple, in their 70s?, i don't know, but they seem ancient to me.  i know this pair was long married because they sat across from each, & don't say nothing.  not one word to each other.  utterly silent.  without looking at each other too.  i find that a little creepy.  i know pop songs sing the praises of not needing words with our beloved.  i'm here to be a witness & say, you fucking do.  talk.  talk to each other.  speak to your loved ones.  use the words.  cuz words are, most times, all we have for each other.  

wouldn't you know it ford fiesta are shit cars.  i finish my bean burrito lunch from taco bell, leave the old couple to their silence, & drive down the freeway.  do i know where cal fire is?  i'm young, i'm dumb, i'll figure it out.  i did stop at a rest stop, went to the bathroom, found a stall & put on my suit.  that is how i found that i grew an inch.  i'm fucked.  how the hell will i sit for a job interview.  a firefighter interview if i don't wear a suit? 

at this stage i'm committed to going thru with it.  perhaps i can wear the jacket over my oxford shirt & jeans.  professionally casual.  besides, the job is working on the line of california wildfires.  i expect to work 40 hours straight in a cal fire uniform.

fuck!! when i get to the outskirts of paso robles, a town i don't know nothing about, the ford fiesta explodes.  BAM!  the car seizes.  utterly.  i pull over the side of the road.  steam, or smoke, billows from the closed hood.  i manage to get the car to stop on the freeway shoulder.  i don't know what the fuck just happened.  the fiesta is dead.  & is steaming or smoking. 

a few minutes of disbelief pass by.  i get out & start walking down the freeway.  my head is down.  i don't look up so i don't know if people are slowing down or even stopping to help me.  i do know that later when i needed to traverse that same stretch of freeway on foot to get the auto mechanic who did the miraculous repairs that a few cars did indeed slow & signaled to me if i required assistance.

i walk the off-ramp & toward a gas station, & a pay phone.  a field filled with cows are between me & the pay phone.  it is a quiet early spring day.  at the time paso robles, famous for its wineries, was a fairly sleepy town.  at least it was at the section i was in.  some houses.  a lot of farm land.  & cows.  these cows all lifted their heads as i walked to the gas station to watch where i was going.  & when i walked past them back to my injured vehicle these cows again lifted their heads in my direction as if they recognized an outlier.  another weirdo who got off the road.  

i was stuck in paso robles for a couple of days waiting for the repairs to the ford fiesta.  the car overheated but the gauge that measured the engine heat failed so i couldn't know that the car was about to explode from the heat.  i missed monday's poetry class.  i did hear nirvana's 'smells like teen spirti' for the first time as it was broadcast on MTV.  finally, i thougt, music television got punk rock right.  i was fortunate.  i had a motel room to rent.  i just got my grant to attend school approved so i had money to pay for the motel room, a bit of food, & the car repairs.  & i had an adventure that i never would've experienced.

but what about the cows.  they were all chill but curious about this person who might have come from a rocket ship as far as they were concerned.  i can't speak for them.  but i've learned never to take cow philosophy for granted.