| So that was the daytime part of the Saturday extravaganza. That evening would see yet another journey through the past/present/future. There was a basketball game at the college I graduated from that night, and they were playing the nationally ranked basketball team of the college my father, grandfather, mother, and various aunts and uncles and cousins attended. My great-uncle had been the coach of that team and had won the very first national collegiate championship. He eventually sold his house to my mother's family. Quite the family event as you can see, so my dad and I went to watch the game. I'd been wanting to go to a game for some years, but never got around to it. It would be a drive, usually at night, and I'm not in touch with anybody from those days anymore. The last game I saw was fifteen years ago during some alumni event, the last of those I've been to also. This one was just too good to pass up, however, so off we went under darkening grey skies, hoping the predicted rain would hold off until after midnight and we would make it home dry. Now, it involved driving down and up Pacific Coast Highway through the northern part of Malibu. This is a dark, lightly populated stretch of road, four good lanes now but still subject to frequent weather-induced closures. It isn't for the faint of heart in stormy weather. I had, fortunately, aquired much experience on this road in all kinds of horrid conditions - both weather and head related - and felt comfortable. The drive down was dark and uneventful except for the stretch past Leo Carrillo where a movie company as filming something. Nothing like topping a dark rise to find cop cars with flashing lights and about a hundred cars parked on either side of PCH. If you see guys with white shirts and dark ties it usually means valet parking for a party; if it's just cops on either end of the commotion it means filming. We got to the school, parked, and walked down the hill to the fieldhouse past a lot of television trucks and trailers. The place was mobbed with people, a far cry from my student days. There had been a lot of building on campus in the...in the 25 years to the day since I'd graduated. 25 years? Could it be? Yes, it certainly could. 25 years ago California was nearing the end of a 7 year drought which had brought all kinds of problems. It ended, in fact, on the day of graduation for the Fall term, and forced the ceremonies from the outdoor amphitheater with scenic backdrop into the cafeteria, which had memories of its own. Strangeness was in the air. If I had any doubts they were dispelled when we got to our seats and settled in. Looking down on the busy court, we could see the visiting team in warmups, or at least a bunch of kids in visiting team warmups. They looked like high school kids, and we were trying to figure the situation out when we finally recognized two of the boys as players who've been on television regularly. They looked huge on tv, but were pretty much the same size or smaller than the rest of their team. The team average height was so big, and the fact that, stars or not, they were barely out of high school, that it made it disorienting. Beyond that, it was school as usual. The three television crews there brought students to their feet whenever they had a chance to be on camera. There was their usual socializing going on, and a lot of local community types, and then the visiting fans and their local alumni. All in all, a festive occasion and a great break from the holiday pressures Game over, back to the car, and after a quick campus drive through memory lane for me we headed north to our last little bit of God's Country. Traffic was non-existant in this direction. By the time we reached Zuma the clouds were closing in and I had to hit the "intermittant" wiper setting. The movie crew had shut down and the flashing lights were gone. Droplets turned to mist which turned to a light rain, and this journey through the past/present/future was starting to feel more like one of those cold and wet banzai runs I used to make two and a half decades earlier. The time passes and the body changes but the brain is still hooked up and running at max rpms, absolutely ignoring or ignorant of the passing of time. There was a song of that long ago era which still has resonance, by Jackson Browne, called "Running On Empty", with that famous couplet "Running on empty, running blind" which was so emblematic of the 70's, and I swear as we threaded the curves nearing Mugu Rock I could almost hear it faintly in the wind, the beat tapped out in raindrops on the hood of the car. |
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