I drove over the Grapevine.

The Grapevine, in driving prowess is not such a big deal. In the mythology of my family it's like a super villain to be conquered. It's a steep grade superhighway climbing the Tejon pass from the San Joaquin Valley to the Los Angeles Basin. It used to be scary steep and winding, closed in the winter and treacherous even in summer when cars would overheat and families would camp out on the roadside waiting for things to cool down. Even now that it has been widened and straightened there are signs warning you to turn off the air conditioning so your fancy car doesn't overheat.

Back when I was a kid we drove the Grapevine nearly every weekend travelling from Long Beach or San Diego to my grandparents house in the Napa Valley. We didn't ever have a car with air conditioning and in the summer it was H.O.T. No DVD's, tape decks, CD's or other electronic gadgets. Just me, my Mom, my Dad our dog Skoshi and a very long hot drive in the dark. Friday evenings we would load up the car. Last in my was Dad's 22 gauge shotgun, which always rode on the back of the rear seat in the window. The only legal place to carry a gun, in plain sight. We would head out on the 5, north through Anahiem, LA, Santa Clarita...after we passed to big candy coloured sign for Magic Mountain( a six flags type park) we would head off into the dark. The lights went out pretty abruptly in those days. No developments on the canyons, no McMansions climbing the valley walls. Just dark. Up the Grapevine, listening to terrible AM radio. Too dark to read, to early to sleep. I would sort of space out and just roll with the car pitching and weaving up the steep highway. Sometimes things got exciting and we would see a big rig use the emergency run away lanes. The higher up we got the less light there was. Coming down the north side into the San Joaquin valley it was pitch black. The dog would be on my Mom's lap in the front and my Dad would be humming along to something by Conway Twitty or Merle Haggard. It might be the only time my Dad was really relaxed. Hurtling through the dark in a 1960 T-bird, or more often in his 1966 California GT Mustang. Either way it must have felt like a certain sort of freedom for him. An hour or so from the summit we could start to see the tiny lights of Buttonwillow in the distance. The first lights in a long time, at least to me it seemed like a long time and Buttonwillow seemed like a real oasis. We might stop at there for gas and a potty break. We might not. Most times we stopped long enough for the dog to go, but sometimes the car would need a full tank and the windows would need washing and I would take my two dollars into the truckstop and checkout the cheesy souvenirs ( Do truckers really buy crystal figurines?) the beef jerky and the candy.

Last week when we were driving to Disneyland we stopped in Buttonwillow. The truck stop is still there, the trucker showers and bathrooms are still in the door on the right, just before the all you can eat restaurant. The display of crystal figurines still hangs out in the rotating case, there is still a large supply of candy and beef jerky, trucker hats and t-shirts. Though now you can also rent wi-fi and movies. I could almost see my Dad standing by the T-bird in the fluorescent light, filling the tank and looking back into to darkness where the Grapevine was. We would be going back in the opposite direction in a couple of days. Sometimes he was worried about the radiator, sometimes it was snow, sometimes he was just worried about the road ahead.

I don't know why it was important for me to drive over that road. But it was and I did. Until last week it had been at least 30 years since I had ridden over that stretch or road with my Dad and I guess I wanted to show him I could do it too. I did just fine, though he would not have appreciated the music on this trip. In my family, the driver controls the radio.