Two Cities, One Me: Jessica Painter
If you felt like a road trip last Friday, you would have sat between Tim and I in a 3-seater blue Ford Ranger with no AC and loud tires for six hours. The first few hours wouldn’t be too bad, despite the extensive CD collection’s cases sitting on your lap and your knees bent up. We probably would have even let you pick the CDs at first. It would start getting warmer a few hours in. As we round the bends of 101-South, the glaring sun roasts upon our navy-blue truck. We create our own little oven, which we begin roasting in. The windows go down and the wind bellows, beginning to drown out your CD of choice – probably the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. You always did have eclectic taste.
We tumble out of the truck to stretch, fill up and scarf down unauthentic Mexican food a la the Chevron Aztec Grill in Willitts. We’re driving again, time for the DJ Shadow CD now. The samples and melodic beats compete for our attention with the still howling wind and the now stomach-turning-please-let-me-hold-onto-something curves.
I’ll brake suddenly as I grab my camera, pull over and run out. The old antique store sign with the letters you can arrange spell “ELO” - the greatest band on earth. I’ll make you take a picture of Tim and I standing underneath it. We get odd glances and almost-menacing stares from the locals. We run back across Highway 20 and peel-the-fuck-out of there. We leave the glancers and starers behind standing in front of their dilapidated convenience stores and porch of La Grande Casa de Cool Cove, California. With the lake of Lake County on our right, we’ll pass through Lucerne. It is the little Switzerland of California, complete with fading painted wood sign advertising and such. The lake will pass and we will eventually come to miles of dead grass and the occasional crops along I-5.
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