Sometime in the late seventies, before the tilt up warehouses and subdivisions, my friend George and I, were sitting in my yard at sunset, marveling about how beautiful our neighborhood was and how lucky we were to have a view that extended as far as the Sierra Mountains, with hardly a scar of human occupation. We lamented that one-day, possibly in our lifetimes, life in the San Joaquin Valley would all be gone as we knew it. We got to wondering as we continued talking, just how far one could actually travel east on a horse without having to turn back. Freeways and irrigation canals were hindrances we thought, but no one mentioned private property. It was two beers too late for that logic.
We decided to spend the next day, a Sunday, riding into the eastern sunrise, to see just how far we could go before mankind intervened and turned us back. We agreed to leave at 5:30 AM and that meant no exceptions or excuses. The horses had to be ready and I would take the lunch and George would take the drinks. It was on! I made tuna sandwiches, packed them in bag with ice and soon to be crushed potato chips.
The alarm went off and I immediately regretted obliging myself to such a short night and early morning. I was just putting on my backpack when George arrived. Singing the theme from Bonanza, we left the Ponderosa, and headed out for adventures unknown. It was a race to beat the clock, and we both knew it. The landscape was changing and we wanted to remember how it “was” before the invasion of industry and man.
Cutting through a cornfield, George yelled over to me, “You know, speaking of progress, I got this f**king awesome mug at Goodwill two weeks ago, and the design is so modern, I can’t believe it isn’t on every store shelf in America. You can’t tip it over!.”
Just then we heard a gunshot and the horses both bolted forward. I was the first to realize that an angry farmer in a pickup truck was now chasing us with a rifle swinging out of the window. He was screaming and honking his horn at us to stop, but we followed the horse’s instincts and were glad to be on the run. “Cut here” I yelled to George and we ducked into a corn row with out missing a step in our galloping pace. We couldn’t see the farmer or the truck, but could clearly see the visible dust cloud closing in on us. “Did I mention,” George said, “That this mug I got even has a snap on cap so it can’t spill?” “Jesus,” I yelled back, “Will you shut up about the mug already?” We’re going to die here!”
Just then, we approached Little John Creek and swam the horses across. I knew then, we had out run the farmer. We were safe as long as we stayed behind the rows of sunflowers in the new field we ended up in, after the creek. “You know,” George said, “When you see my mug, you are going to cry because you’ll want one and can’t have it! I am telling you, it is revolutionary!” I had a more serious problem to deal with at the time. Somehow during the chase, I lost my cigarette pack out of my shirt pocket. Everyone who ever knew me had never seen me without a cigarette and I was the last person to ever want that vision. The whole run from humanity, found us changing our course toward a tavern with a cigarette machine on Mariposa road. There was poetry in hitching the horses up to a tree in the parking lot and having a beer and a smoke. There were now two horses, two pickup trucks and an old Camaro, with its every door and fender a different color. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but we already knew we were not destined to meet the Sierra Mountains that day.
We decided to head home on the safe side of Little John’s Creek to avoid the territorial farmer and call it a day, except for a picnic mid way. The trip home was uneventful except we had some good laughs along the way about the farmer, the tavern and what a bunch of wimps we turned out to be by giving up our quest east. We stopped for lunch in an oat field next to the sunflowers and the horses were in seventh heaven. I pulled out the sandwiches and George said “It’s iced tea time! Don’t cry too loud, because this mug is mine!” He pulled the mug from his back pack and exclaimed, “Here it is, unique, tip proof, shatter proof, spill proof, now proven to be bullet proof and in a hot turquoise color.” I was speechless, but it wasn’t because I was envious.
George popped the cap and took a long drawn out swig of tea. He truly did love that new mug of his and all I could do was gag and laugh at the same time. I took great pleasure in telling him that his dream mug, his find of a lifetime that should be on every shelf in America, was a male hospital urinal. I don’t know what flew farthest, the tea he spit out or the now airborne mug, somewhere over the sunflowers and heading South. I do know however, I laughed our entire return trip East.
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