Of Mule And Man

DAY THIRTY-THREE

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

CITY OF ORIGIN: SAN FRANCISCO, CA	CITY OF DESTINATION: LOS ANGELES, CA
MILES TRAVELED: 382, VIA SALINAS	VENUE: JOHN STEINBECK MUSEUM (SALINAS, CA)

EVENT SPONSOR

John Steinbeck Rotary Club

The phone wakes me in the morning. It’s Nan Sincero from Centerforce, saying the Hobby Shop at San Quentin is open. There’s no telling when it might close, she says, but if I want to get in, now is the time.

Scheduled to speak in Salinas tonight, I throw everything together, check out of the hotel and head up across the Golden Gate Bridge hoping we’ll luck out this time.

Pulling up, I see a man standing in the doorway of the Hobby Shop, a good sign, so I quickly steer Mule down to the visitor parking area and am frustrated to find it full. Driving back up, I turn toward the gate, hoping to get a chance to ask the guard what to do. He’s on a walkie-talkie and has two people standing in front of him, so we stop in the road. He quickly yells, “Get out of the road, you’re blocking the gate!”

This is a very small space, so as I jockey Mule around I try to figure out what our options are. The road from the highway up here to the East Gate is less than a mile long, quite narrow and lined with old wooden houses—this comprising the small community of San Quentin. Most of it is restricted parking. I’d always assumed that the people living here work at or are somehow associated with the prison and therefore not sympathetic to us, but a few years ago a woman opened her door and offered tea and support on a bitter cold night when we were demonstrating against an execution. A nurse who lives in a small apartment behind a large house a ways down the street, she has extended the same warmth and hospitality to our group ever since—I have a picture of a couple of us huddled together with Joan Baez and Jesse Jackson in her small kitchen, probably on the horrible night they killed Stanley Tookie Williams.

But her place is halfway back to the highway, and even if she’s home it’s probably unlikely there’s enough room to park down there. And if I try, that’ll probably be when they decide to close the Hobby Shop. Here, though, the area is clearly marked in angry red stripes that indicate there’s no parking allowed except for a few spots, probably for employee cars, and they’re full.

“To hell with it,” I say to Mule, pulling him into the red No Parking space in front of the Hobby Shop, “the worst thing that can happen is he yells at me again.”

Now off the walkie-talkie, the guard is passing the two men through the gate as I approach. “Sorry about blocking the road,” I offer, “but the visitor parking area is full and I just wanted to see if there is anywhere else to park so I can get a couple of things at the Hobby Shop.”

He looks a bit longer, and I’m preparing to hear, Tough shit, when he says, “Tell you what. Pull it over there next to the Mustang. Not in the blue area, on the other side.”

Inside the small shop the walls are decorated with artwork, most of it pencil sketches, some quite good. Native Americans and black women predominate, though there are some very nicely detailed nature scenes. Old-fashioned display cases are filled with rings, earrings, bracelets and more artwork, a lot of it cartoon-style drawings. I can only find one box of the size I was given by Centerforce, and it’s decorated with a carved bird and flower that’s a bit too ornate for anyone I can think of. There are a number of smaller boxes, though, that display the same careful artistry and attention to detail as the one I was given. There are also a number of nicely made cable car replicas, some of them mounted, one or two set up as lamps, others as music boxes—and yes, they play “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

The young man in charge is a nice-looking African American in a loose-fitting red prison jumpsuit, the name O’Connor printed on the left side. He’s very friendly, has a nice smile and seems eager to help. It turns out he’s very excited because he’s being released on Saturday. He’s got a job waiting for him outside and he’s “going to stay straight.”

Mr. O’Connor is very meticulous about the paperwork as I buy a few things—if you’re about to rush out there, they take no credit cards or checks, only cash—and he explains that about ninety percent of the price paid goes to the artist (which is more than what I’d heard—I hope he has it right).

Wishing him the best, I walk out with my box of gifts and go over to thank the guard. He turns to me and says, “Sorry I yelled at you.”

As we make our way down that narrow street toward the Richmond Bridge and the road south to Salinas, I shake my head, saying, “Man, you just never know …”

Words have weight, so it’s worth being careful about their use. And, in thinking about the guard, one just never knows—about people, either.

Salinas is a couple of hours down Highway 101 and thus closer to home, which is good, but I’m a little unclear as to what’s expected of me when I get there. Mark Kimber, another friend from the Death Penalty Focus board, has been asking for months if I’d be willing to come speak to his Rotary Club, and this, since I’d be going right through there, seemed the logical time. (Who knew I’d be exhausted and brain-dead from this five-week, 8,000-plus mile marathon?)

Mark is a good guy (he bristles if I say sweet), a small-business owner in a heavily agriculture-dependent area and a Rotarian. He continues to insist he’s more conservative than most of us on the board, while being one of our most reliable and dependable volunteers at any and every event. Small speaking engagement, large fundraiser or in between, Mark and Phyllis, his terrific wife, are there taking tickets, passing out literature, pouring drinks, moving furniture, or whatever else is needed. And they’re always there for the clean-up detail. Generous to a fault and committed to eliminating state killing, he acts as the secretary at our board meetings and regularly spices things up with his wry and irreverent sense of humor. And, go figure, he’s a vegetarian and an expert skydiver.

Parking Mule, I walk into his travel agency and am quickly taken out to lunch at a local health food place he’s found. I again try to pin him down on what these folks expect to hear from me, and he remains vague, saying that since they haven’t arranged to have a supply of books to sell I can talk about anything I want. They are a pretty conservative bunch, he says, but they’ll be open to whatever I want to say. He has, he thinks, amply covered the subject of the death penalty with them through other guests he’s brought in, but it’s been awhile, so …

Mark has booked a hotel room for me, but when he says the meeting starts at 6 and will probably be over by 8:30, I ask him to cancel it so I can try driving home tonight. That worries him; it’s another 350 miles. But if I wear out, I assure him, I can get a room down the road somewhere. It just seems crazy to be this close to home and not get there.

He has business to take care of and we have a couple of hours before the meeting, so I walk up to the John Steinbeck Museum where the meeting will be held (the meeting is with the John Steinbeck Rotary Club) and nose around a bit, looking for ideas.

Back at the office, Mark leaves to go pick up a high school girl who needs a ride to the meeting (what did I tell you?) and we arrange to meet back at the museum at 6 p.m.

After a bit of socializing and some introductions, the meeting is called to order by the president of the club—Mark Kimber (something he neglected to mention). There is an invocation and everyone salutes the flag—as my own small protest I choose not to say “under God”—and the business part of the meeting goes forward. This includes formal introductions of visiting Rotarians and other guests, including two high school students. One, a girl from Norway, has been here in Salinas for a year, living with local families, and is about to go home. Another, the girl Mark had to go pick up, is a graduating senior who had been abroad during her junior year—in Norway, I think—and will graduate as the class salutatorian. Mark notes, after checking with the girl to be sure she won’t be embarrassed by having it mentioned, that she is the first in her family to graduate from high school. Now, he adds, she has been accepted, with full scholarship, to UC Berkeley. The girls’ presence, it’s clear, means their year-abroad trips were fully paid for by this club.

Other announcements are made, including one about the club’s purchase and distribution of a thousand dictionaries to local third-graders, a program begun after a study showed that introduction to a dictionary at a young age is one of the best ways to combat illiteracy.

Other announcements happen and some awards are presented, all of it salted with witty comments from President Mark, and the aura of goodwill and the genuine pleasure in good works that permeates the evening is very impressive.

I had decided to wait and learn what these folks are about and try to be appropriately responsive to what I see, so when Mark introduces me I get to thank them not only for their tradition of service, but for the generosity and thoughtfulness that have made it so meaningful—to these kids, for example—on a personal level.

Noting that the name John Steinbeck plays such an important part here, not only in the place they meet but in the name of their organization, I cite The Grapes of Wrath and Tom Joad’s discovery that maybe “a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one—the one big soul that belongs to ever’body …” and that what this meant to him was the determination to “be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad—an’ I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our people eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build, why, I’ll be there.”

Then I remind them that at a darker time, here in this very town that they love, Steinbeck’s books were burned. These great works of art, these celebrations of the human spirit, ignited so much revulsion in fearful people that they were destroyed. So it’s part of our job to see the bigger picture as well as the little one, to take pride in the fact that kids get dictionaries, but to remember the kids who don’t get them too, and the families whose kids still don’t graduate from school.

One of my favorite Steinbeck passages comes from his book Sweet Thursday, where he says the big question is, “What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me? … What have I contributed in the Great Ledger?”

Holding up a folder, I smile. “Mark said I could speak to anything I wanted this evening. I have here a twenty-six-page speech on human rights and a twenty-three page speech on the death penalty. But I think it’s more appropriate this evening to simply thank you for the service you’re doing, these things that are clearly a meaningful contribution to the Great Ledger, and just underscore Mr. Steinbeck’s observation about ‘the one big soul that belongs to everybody.’ With all the good we do, there remains more to be done. With all that’s been done for these, it’s important to remember the ones who are left behind and make sure they’re not forgotten.”

Mark was good to his word and the meeting ends at just about 8:30. After some pictures are taken and some parting words are exchanged, I fire up Mule and we head south. I call Shelley from the highway at around 9 and say I’m hoping to get home tonight, but it might be as late as 3 a.m., so not to be alarmed if I come crashing in at that hour.

She’s worried about my being too tired, so I assure her if I start to lose it I’ll pull into a motel and call her.

But Mule must have smelled the corral, because she takes off and flies low. We pull into the house at 1:30 in the morning and she isn’t even breathing hard.