I have been keeping journals for over twenty years. It is humbling to read some of the old thoughts. They seem…well…wrong, stupid or worse!! But sometimes perhaps by pure chance you come upon a forgotten gem. This was the case. One day as is my custom I was riding bike along the San Tomas Creek bike path in Santa Clara and made my usual stop by Levi Stadium. The creek forms a pool and this is a serene spot to think, reflect and watch the waterfowl frolic in the waters. I usually write whatever comes to mind. It’s nothing earthshaking mind you but it becomes an eclectic sequence that describes one’s life. If not recorded, then like a puff of smoke it blends into the great beyond as though it never existed. Perhaps this is a primal instinct, a yearning for immortality. But…on this day I turned the page and there was a reminiscence of the picturesque and historical town of Truckee. It was a happy moment when one finds himself in contentment and in harmony with the world. Although written in June, 2012 I delighted in reading and reliving the experience.
June 1, 2012
The Truckee Hotel sports a fine second floor western style veranda overlooking Donner Pass Road, the town’s main street. It’s ‘Truckee Thursday’, the moniker given to their weekly summer fair. I sit in the sheltered corner lazily surveying the activity below. The proprietress slips a glass of cabernet on the table before me and says ‘enjoy’. She recognizes me from my many prior trips. So, the Thursday night market is in full swing bringing locals and tourists alike to this mountain retreat. Dining and drinking establishments are busy too. Folks with their dogs meander from one booth to another and greet friends along the way. I also see an awful lot of young girls with short, short, shorts. Not that I’m oogling over them, mind you! My oogling days are done, thank goodness!! But they still catch your eye, you see. Kind of like a Pavlovian reflex; remnants of the old days. But the shorts are very short and the legs are very long.
There is a duette below playing country rock. I’m no judge of music but they sound pretty good to me. One plays a huge base and its tunes reverberate through the timbers of the second-floor balcony where I sit. Yes! I have a grand view from my perch. Entertained from below and looking out at the activity of folks filtering though the booths of Truckee’s main street I sip the dark velvety liquid and lean back on the Adirondack entering that wonderful semiconscious state of repose. The sun is still warm but gusts of cool wind come to the rescue at the right moment.
A PLACE TO EAT
It seems that about every half hour a train comes through. There is a series of bellowing sounds so loud that they command your attention and for a moment you can’t hear and forget about the country rock duo below. Then there is a ding, ding, dinging tin sound above the subdued and gentle grind of the wheels. I counted the cars on one of the trains-seventy-six in all.
I turned to a guy who was watching with me and commented: “How can a couple of locomotives pull all those cars”. They were all flat
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cars with sea containers stacked two high. “They replace a lot of trucks”, he commented and walked into the upper lobby of the hotel. Then another train clanged by. This one must be one hundred plus! It had an engine in the middle and two more in the rear. All the engines are a smutty yellow-orange with flowing American flags emblazoned diagonally at the center. Its thunder diminished into the west and its void was replaced by my duo now in full swing. My Adirondack was once again resonating the notes-especially that big base.
I’m rather mesmerized by it all-the shrills here and there from young female voices, laughter of all types…throaty ones and cackles and loud words and an occasional oasis of silence preceding the next round of myrth. The sun is low and accents the tents with shadows to the east. Their peaks form two tidy straight lines on either side of the street.
There was a tall slender girl with a white and brown dress who was selling hula hoops. No one was interested! The hoops were various colors with swirling stripes all around. She started to work one but had no rhythm. Her attempts were labored and soon gave up and began to talk to one of the guys at the next booth.
Two police officers in green uniforms rode their mountain bikes slowly weaving through the crowd. They spoke to the hula hoop girl in passing.
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I finally found a place for that chocolate milk shake earlier that afternoon. It was an old fashioned ice cream shop midway on main street. I had that yen since King’s Beach some fifteen miles back on my bicycle ride. I searched King’s Beach and Brockway too but no shake was to be had. I wanted to drink it before the arduous climb over Brockway Summit. The ascent was only 800 feet from lake level but after the other fifty miles and Donner Summit earlier in the day my body was beginning to scram ‘fuel’! In those occasions the fuel of choice is always a frosty chocolate shake. So, I climbed Brockway Summit milk shake-less and I might add with some effort.
Now my duo is belting out Roger Miller’s “King of the Road”. “Trailers for sale or rent…… My body gently and unconsciously sways as I take another sip the wine.
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Oh! That lusty milk shake….I had sat on one of the planters at street level in front of the shop and sucked the thick cold elixir through the straw ever so slowly. It would have been better in Brockway, I thought, but it was plenty good here.
A group of little kids had hold of the lot of hula hoops. Some were rolling them while others were gyrating their hips effortlessly and magically the hoops defied gravity and clung to their tiny waists. The girl in the white and brown dress was paying them no attention. Just talking to the two guys.
Alas! My milk shake was gone. I felt like getting another but didn’t.