TRAILS

MG and White Tiger guitarist after playing a party

My mom was sleeping it off -- coming down hard off some shit, but I had to get her signature on a note that I wrote about why I had been absent from my TRAILS class -- a class that taught responsibility, teamwork, and outback hiking skills, and culminated in a four day hike in Yosemite.

Strong students had been specially recruited for the TRAILS class. Being recruited for the class was not just based on grades or being a straight A student. TRAILS students were expected to demonstrate a particular kind of integrity, and I had been chosen along with: my best friend Amelie Sanchez, Matthew Johnson the straight A, former football player who was nice to everyone and who had spent sophomore year history class staring at me from across the room, athlete and best all around, Gail Morning, a Me-wuk friend and fellow Indian Club member from elementary school, and several others.

“Consider it an honor to be chosen for this class – an honor,”  Ms. Somerwell would repeat often throughout the year, at least once a class period when we first began.

“Mom,” I said quietly, hoping that it wouldn’t take much to wake her.

“Mom,” I said again, but she didn’t even stir.

I leaned in toward the mound of body under the covers and looked for the slightest movement: a muscle twitch, an inhalation, an exhalation. Had I seen something? I wasn’t sure. She was a sound sleeper everyone knew that.

“Mom,” I said, grabbing her where I thought a shoulder might be and giving her a good shake.  “Mom, wake up, I need you to sign this note.”

I had had bad cramps, too bad for school, so I wrote my own note, as I often had to do. I couldn’t bring this note in late either, for TRAILS students were not allowed any unexcused absences the entire semester, and we had all signed a contract in which we agreed to this important stipulation, among others. A late note would be met with suspicion, and any unexcused absences would result in not being permitted to go on the four day, three night hike after spending an entire year learning how to cook on single burner camp stoves, tie special knots, read topographic maps, use compasses, and how to clean bacteria from water using a portable hand pump. With a groan, mom rolled over -- "Mom, sign this note please," I pleaded, sliding a pen into her right hand. Finding the notepaper, she scribbled out ragged version of her signature, grunted, and rolled back to sleep.

Awake and lucid mom’s friends like her for being loud and fun. I didn’t see anything fun about sleeping for more than a day already. She was also known for saying every version of the word “fuck” possible. Fuck, fuck you, fucker, fucking, mother fucker, and when she smoked what she thought was some really good weed, or accidentally whacked her finger with the blunt end of the hatchet while chopping kindling, “Fucking-A!” To her delight, her friends called her “Wild Woman.”

While hanging around in town with friends, people would pass by me and say, “You’re Wild Woman’s daughter, aren’t you? How’s she doing?” or “Is she at the house right now?”  I answered the same each time. People thought I was stuck up.
“I don’t know.”

But I knew she was at the house. She was always home, at least physically.

Later, I’d get back to the house to find the same person who asked me questions in town sitting on the couch, my mom in her chair nearby, and a plume of smoke wafting around their heads. Sometimes they’d both be sniffing and wiping their noses, quiet for a moment while I’d pass by and go up the ladder to my room in the attic.

Sometimes, I’d put the needle on the The Clash’s London Calling album that was usually sitting on the turntable and turn up the volume so it shook the floorboards and ceiling over their heads. The distinctive guitar intro pounded its fist in the air.

         I didn’t so much as choose TRAILS as it  chose me. Even after a month or so in the class, I wasn’t sure if I should have taken it as one of my precious elective courses, but being specially invited to take the class gave me recognition for something other than my spiky hair, heavy eyeliner, or my mother’s habits. But I didn’t even like living in a small town in the mountains, and here I had elected to go hiking in Yosemite for three nights and four days with two high school teachers once the school year was over. While applying Deet to ward off mosquitoes and worrying about getting our food in a tall tree, so as not to attract black bears, all my friends would be on their third then fourth night of partying, drinking wine coolers and hanging around down in Crystal Falls or Jamestown. I didn’t know what I was going to miss out on, willing to miss out on, or what I had elected to be a part of.

I only knew that Ms. Somerwell and Mr. Nicholson were my two favorite teachers, who taught two subjects in which I excelled: English and History. Mr. Nicholson was my Honors English teacher. An avid runner and backpacker, Mr. Nicholson wore jeans and t-shirts in the classroom and had an easy way with students. Ms. Somerwell, also an avid backpacker, taught history and English. Even though both Ms. Somerwell and Mr. Nicholson were communist hippie types, she was more formal in her knee lengths skirts and blouses and a bit older. Ms. Somerwell was both brilliant and absent minded, and her teaching style more straightforward and serious than Mr. Nicholson’s, who was inclined to humor. Together, they were a great pair, and in his or her own way, each made sense of learning for their students.  Another class with my two favorite teachers together seemed like a great idea, but was I really interested in learning how to pack light, to tread lightly on the earth, by staying on the man made trails and packing out all my garbage, cook dehydrated lentil soup, or snack on gorp all day long? I actually did care about preserving the land, for I had been in Indian club, and had learned all about the power of mother earth from the tribal elders and from my own mother, but I was also sixteen. I cared more about hanging out with my friends, and boys, and going to punk shows at The Farm in San Francisco whenever I could, and playing music in my own band, Bitchfight. We played parties with a local heavy metal cover band that had a black lead singer but called themselves White Tiger. As perplexed as I was by their name, I forgot all about it whenever I saw their super talented and attractive guitar player, Timothy Hill. I wanted to care about the TRAILS class; I really did. But I was feeling pulled in so many different directions. All the different sides of me not always fitting neatly together leaving me feeling ragged and torn.

I stopped for a second at my mother’s door before stepping over the threshold, expecting her to stir or say goodbye. That didn’t usually happen, but I didn’t want to miss it. She wasn’t going to wake up again until we had been in school for two or three hours already. The house was quiet. I had helped my sister get ready for school and shooed her out the door about thirty minutes previous because she had to be to school before I did, and she had to walk, just like Amonie and I had done, unless it was raining, snowing, or below 50 degrees. On these cold days, mom would get out of bed and put on her bathrobe, pull on her men’s work boots, her mass of black curls flat on one side from the pillow and drive us to school. Once at the school, she never got out of the car, but she would wait in the car, waving until we got safely to the sidewalk.

Most Monday mornings, she’d have been asleep all of Sunday, after being awake since Thursday or so, sewing, listening to music, and sitting around the front room with various greasy-haired dudes, or her gravely-voiced female friends, and an occasional woman with a missing tooth who popped over to cop a little of what mom had around that week. Sometimes on Thursday nights late, I’d have to climb down the ladder from mine and my sister’s shared attic bedroom, and tell mom and her friends to turn down the music, usually Pink Floyd’s, The Wall, and to “shut the hell up” because my sister, brother, and I had to go to school the next day.

For some reason, I decided to wait until after class to give Ms. Somerwell my absence note. In class we had been talking about the importance of the buddy system, especially during the unguided, off trail, cross-country trek that we were required to do in pairs during the hike, the one that went off, in the end, without a hitch because it wasn’t all that long or all that hard after all. The plan was that Mr. Nicholson was to go ahead of the group and wait for the unguided, cross-country pairs to make their way to him, using a map and compass, while Ms. Somerwell waited behind, sending a new pair on their unguided trek every twenty minutes, or so, until we all met up with Mr. Nicholson, at which point Ms. Somerwell would make the trek herself to where we were all indeed waiting for her at the end. We had already learned how to use the snake-bite kit and other first aid techniques specially designed for hikers. And it was impressed upon us how important it was that each of us really learn and practice each technique, for our buddy’s life depended on it. I understood the buddy system.

After class, I waited for the other students to file out of the portable classroom, and handed Ms. Somerwell the note.
“Here’s my absence note,” I said, handing the note to Ms. Somerwell who was standing absent mindedly by her desk, looking as if she couldn’t remember what she was about to do, as she often did.
“Oh, yes, thanks, Michelle,” she said, opening the note and taking a look at
what it said.
I  studied her face, as I usually did when she wasn’t looking at me directly. She described herself as being from the East Coast, and she looked like a couple of my mom’s female friends from the East Coast: brunette, pointy nose, and pale, fragile looking skin around the eyes, sagging a bit around the mouth. She was a small-framed woman, a little plump, and cute with eyes that twinkled or flashed depending on her mood.
She furrowed her brow.

“I had bad cramps,” I said, “I’d much rather be at school.”
“This isn’t your mother’s signature,” she interrupted.
“Yes, umm, she did sign it, but she was like, um, asleep. I had to wake her.”
“This is not your mother’s signature,” she said again, still staring at the piece of lined paper in her hands.
“I wrote the note, and my mom signed it,” I said, trying to sound confident. I was glad that I had waited until after class to hand the note over at all.
“ I didn’t expect this from you, Michelle. Frankly, I’m shocked.”
My mind raced for a better explanation, and I wondered how the buddy system was going to work with an odd number of students on the hike.
“I’ll have to take his up with Mr. Nicholson.”
I wondered what it would be like doing the unguided trek alone.
“I am disappointed,” she said, looking me straight in the eye.
I didn’t say anything. I could feel the blood rushing to my face.
“Really disappointed.”
Suddenly, being able to do the hike felt really important; everything was on the line. I opened my mouth to speak. The bright hollow floors of the portable classroom stretched out in all directions around me.
I was holding my breath now, waiting for Ms. Somerwell to say something more, but she didn’t.  

Who Is The Fairest Of Them All?

No good pic for this story, but I do love this one with friends
who always made me feel good about myself.

I didn’t understand what a feat it was that Tom Sear started going together early freshman year until he broke up with me less than a month later. Tom, a JV football player, was considered rather attractive in his olive skin and sandy brown, feathered hair. Many of the freshman girls who hadn’t gone to elementary school with him, and who weren’t immune to his cool look of suede loafers and corduroys, spent a great deal of time talking about his perfect hair, pretty green eyes, and pouty lips. I wasn’t too aware that he was what most would consider “out of my league,” for the most popular and desired girls usually had big blond hair, light-colored eyes, and long white legs that looked good in cheer leading skirts or shorts. I knew not to mention that Tom had given me several sidelong looks around campus. I got the feeling that no one would believe me anyway.

        After hanging around after school during Tom’s football practice with my friend Brandy whose boyfriend was also on the team, and waiting to take the late bus home so we could all sit together, Tom and I began “going together.” We hung around one another shyly between classes, at first, but we’d soon be breaking the school’s PDA rules, kissing feverishly down on the wooded bridge which was surrounded by a grove of young, green trees in the middle of campus. Tom would grip his hands around my waist and hoist me onto the flat concrete railing and push himself between my legs, holding me tight around the back to keep me from falling. Our foreheads, noses, and lips, now almost level, met, and a charge of tongues conducted an electric volt, Tom’s grip tightening and loosing around my back as he leaned in and then pulled me tighter to him. My heart raced and my head felt light like the sound of the rustling leaves in the trees over my head.

         Then a couple of days before my fourteenth birthday, it was over. Tom broke up with me. 

         Just the day before, he had been standing between my legs, his arms around my waist, kissing me in his hot, sweet way, and the next he was telling me it was over, saying nothing about the dark-haired, but much lighter-skinned girl, named Marcie he was going around with just days later.

At first, I couldn’t figure it out. I went over the entire month long relationship in my head: we never had an argument; he never looked at another girl; all we ever did was kiss and say nice things quietly to one another. I spent the two days leading up to my fourteenth birthday crying and wondering what I had done wrong. After school one day as I was waiting again for the early bus, Brandy found me and told me that she had talked to Tom, “He said that he just doesn’t want to be around you anymore.” Whatever that meant.

For months and months, it seemed like it meant that no other boys felt like being around me either. I didn't dare look at the few Mexican boys who went to Summerville High because it was better to go around pretending that we didn't know we were Mexican ourselves let alone hooking up and drawing attention to ourselves. And I didn't dare thinking I had a chance with older boys. And since there wasn't anyone at the school who looked like Paul Simonon of The Clash, there wasn't anyone that I was really even attracted to, but I really wanted to be liked.

It took getting my hopes up about Matthew Johnson, who I didn’t find remotely attractive, to get a sense of what had happened with Tom and why I wasn't one of those girls who boys spent time thinking about. Matthew had stared at me in history class since nearly the beginning of the year. Our classroom, a portable, had the desks arranged in an L shape, the teacher’s desk and chalkboard were at the front of the class; rows of desks descended down the left and the back wall, making it possible to sneak looks, or in Matthew’s case, stare. When Matthew wasn’t staring at me, I snuck looks at him, his pink skin, nose that hooked unattractively upward, and awkward haircut that insisted on parting down the middle, in spite of being too short to do so. Even though he had blond hair and blue eyes, Matthew was not particularly attractive; he was popular and well liked by for being smart and nice to everyone. He also played on the football team, which didn’t really impress me all that much, but he didn’t strut around like some kind of Adonis. He got straight A’s and impressed people in class by his thoughtful insights. By many important standards, he was a dreamboat, and if he had asked me to a dance, I would have said, “yes,” even though I wasn't physically attracted to him at all. In fact, in some ways, I found him quite revolting.

         Thinking about Matthew one morning, while getting ready for school and taking special care to look my best, I saw my naked face, no mascara,  no  eye-shadow, or bright pink blush, when I realized something that had worried me about dating Tom from the beginning. I had black hair, dark skin and dark eyes, and no amount of blue eye shadow, mascara, or even perfectly feathered hair was going to help me blend in better or keep everyone from seeing who I really was – a shabby Mexican girl, trying to pass herself off as an all American girl worthy of a boyfriend.

       Then I had the urge to spit, to spit in my own face, to yank the mirror from the wall and smash it to bits and pieces. I saw the glass shattered at my feet. It was me. I was the problem. Matthew stared at me because he was intrigued and curious. He wasn’t going to redeem or validate or save me. He went out of his way to stare at me long enough to catch my eye before looking away, but he wasn't going to ask me out. I finally knew that.

Fashion Farce

MCG and family, Christmas 1984

It was hard work being an anti-establishment rebel, and all that rebelling against trendy clothes somehow made us the worst offenders when it came to adhering to a uniform. It took a lot of time and energy to find what we were looking for, for what was required, the right clothes and in the right size at thrift-stores, but being anti-establishment made shopping at thrift stores and army surplus stores cool and necessary which was convenient because money was always tight. Amelie, Sammie, and I actually got pretty creative with thrift-store apparel, but it took dedication and luck. They may have been affordable for those of us living under the poverty level, but thrift stores in the 1980's were over populated by puce colored polyester shift dresses and slacks, and skimpy on anything black, except slips, which were a find when they fit in the bust. Finding the right clothes to complete our look, especially in Tuolumne, was hard, but finding the right shoes was even harder.

Amelie, Sammie, and I wore high top Converse because that's what Clash loving, fist pumping, alienated, punk rock kids wore -- but I hated them. I had a couple of different pairs, but the most vivid pair was a light blue pair, not sky blue, and not navy blue which would have been a lot better. The light blue pair was on sale. I needed shoes; I could afford them, the last pair in my size. Size six shoes sold out quickly because stores don't stock as many as they do the sevens and eights. When I laced them and tied them tight, the light blue Converse pulled inward in a strange way, giving my foot a clownish look -- wide in the toe and narrow in the middle. They looked okay with baggy shorts but terrible with leggings, skirts, and dresses. I guess I thought they were supposed to look good with any outfit; they looked good on Amelie. She wore them with skirts over long johns and a different punk band t-shirt for nearly every day of the week: the Clash, Dead Kennedys, MDC, Minor Threat, Black Flag, Subhumans. She didn't have clown feet. She had the black converse -- the black ones were slimming apparently.
         Before Converse, and before discovering Doc Martins, I remember being pretty confused about shoes. Most girls my age wore Keds, or Reeboks, and the rich Twain Harte girls were Topsiders.  I wasn't going to wear any of those shoes. But what kind of shoes was I supposed to wear? It was hard to find shoes that worked with my army surplus/thrift-store look. Until about the ninth grade, whatever I wore on my feet had been chosen by my mother whose budget barely covered the shoe strings: sturdy winter boots, tennis shoes, saltwater sandals, and rubber flip flops that cut into the webbing between the big toe and the toe next to it. Before getting the light blue Converse, my mom took me shopping and I picked out a pair of imitation leather shoes in gray. They were loafers, or maybe they were moccasins, but with a couple of studs on top near the toes and silver buckle on the side. Tough looking loafers? Punk rock moccasins?

They seemed like a good idea in the store. I stared at them a long while in the mirror. I thought they looked cute with the skirt that I was wearing, a catholic-school-girl skirt in green plaid wool. I turned this way and that and lifted the toe of my right foot to get a better angle. I like the way the studs on the toe caught the light, and they were the only pair of shoes that I like even a little bit in the whole store. All the others my size looked either too cheap or too trendy, so I nodded to my mom that I’d take this pair. She said that she thought they were cute, a bad sign that I neglected to notice.

         When I got those shoes home and put them on and looked in my own mirror without my mom hovering around impatiently, and without the bright lights in the store, I realized that I couldn't wear them. They were ugly. A dead, ugly gray with a couple of tacky studs and a buckle to cheer them up. And not cool dead, ugly old-lady dead, and not with a cool Wicked Witch of West buckle but a useful buckle, one that actually tightened the shoe to the foot. I didn't want to wear them, but I knew that I was stuck with them, that my mom would flip if I told her that I didn't like them after all. And it was getting too cold for my worn out black, canvas, China doll, Mary Janes.  I'd have to either wear the ugly, dead, gray, old-lady studded moccasins and hope nobody noticed them, or I'd have to scuff them up a bit and try to pretend I thought they were cool.

         I didn’t understand why it was so hard to find shoes that I could afford, shoes that were cool, shoes that were feminine, but shoes that were tough too, and shoes that were as distinctive as my new look? I needed shoes that looked good with my frilly Mexican-looking skirts and my skater shorts. I had a white skirt with green and red rick-rack, Mexican flag colors, even though I didn't realize it at the time, or my favorite a black skirt with lace between each ruffled panel. I wore it with my favorite Clash t-shirt, and black, stiff-soled, thrift-store granny shoes. Those shoes were my favorite, and I wore them nearly everyday until they practically disintegrated on my foot after not being worn for the fifteen or twenty years they sat in someone's closet before winding up at the Red Church thrift-store. I also needed shoes that looked good with my paisley skater shorts or boys 501 jeans. I somehow thought that there was just one pair of magical, cool, feminine, tough-looking shoes that could do all that.

Punk Rock Mexicana

Proving there wasn't just one white way down the middle of the road.
Props to Nathan Stephens and Jason Meigs for knowing that so early on.

         My angst about how I looked and the world really became clear to me on Saturday, May 28th, 1984 – the day I saw The Clash at the US festival in San Bernadino, California.  Before that day, everyone in Tuolumne made it clear that I didn't look like everyone else, and after that day, I began working really hard not to. But only thirteen years old, and already a Clash fan, I naively showed up to the US festival, my hair still feathered, wearing red terry-cloth shorts, with a draw string bow that cinched up each side, and some strappy-leather hippy-looking flip flops that had belonged to my mom. They were the first shoes of my mom’s that I could fit into and wear. I didn’t even have a Clash shirt yet.

         It was Memorial Day weekend, and Amelie's mom, who also loved the Clash because they sang about Latin America, drove me and Amelie all the way from Tuolumne to the San Bernadino Valley in her white compact Fiat station wagon that would only start when parked on a hill. A seven hour drive took us about ten in the dry valley heat through Fresno, Visalia, Tulare, Delano and Porterville. The dry valley heat blasted into the open windows all the way there because there was no air-conditioning just a fan, the heat making us simultaneously drowsy and unable to sleep, and when we weren't able to find a hill to park the car on, Amelie and I would have to get out and push the car. Her mom would push the car with one hand on the driver side door and the other on the steering wheel, and Amelie and I would push from the back. Just when she thought we got the car going fast enough with the ignition on and the car in second gear, Amelie’s mom would jump in and pop the clutch. When we could get the car going fast enough, it would start with jerk and a sputter. It was a bit of a hassle, and at one point I worried that we might get stuck out there in the hot valley forever.

Or maybe it was that I knew somehow that going back would be different – that I’d be different. But we didn’t mind having to push the car; we were determined to get to San Bernadino before noon on Saturday. In fact we left Tuolumne after school on Friday, arriving somewhere outside of San Bernadino and Glen Helen Park at around one or two in the morning. Amelie's mom, barely able to hold her eyes open a second longer parked the car on a hill, told us to go back to sleep before letting her head drop back on the seat. And so we all slept until I woke at around seven the next morning with a full bladder to find that we were surrounded by empty rolling hills filled with dry grass and weeds – somewhere between nowhere and having our minds blown wide open by Joe Strummer and The Clash.

         While waiting in line for the turnstiles of Glen Helen Park, Amelie and I, her mom too, watched all the people around us, a lot of young people, skater types, guys with Mohawks and leather jackets, women with pink, or, blue, or green, or purple hair, some with all four colors all at once; they were older and tougher and cooler looking than we were though Amelie, who was always a bit ahead of her time, wore baggy shorts, her Combat Rock t-shirt, and Converse.  When we finally got to the front of the line, we were stopped by a young man in a vest and pimples who was charged with looking through our bags for contraband or recording equipment. Our tickets stated that cassette recorders were not permitted, but Amelie’s mom brought hers anyway, and hiding it carefully under a newspaper, a sweatshirt, and a bottle of Mylanta which she drank to calm her ulcer, she successfully smuggled it past the young man who only peeked inside her backpack without bothering to move anything around. After closing up our bags and still holding our breath, Amelie and I pushed our way through the metal turnstiles and walked straight into our adolescence.

         Before the first act, the Divynals, took the stage, Amelie’s mom made us find a designated spot near the front of the stage for us to meet since Amelie and I wanted to walk around. People were milling about finding a place to stand or sit on blankets. We saw a group of older teens sitting in a circle playing telephone, girls with big hair, thick eye-liner, and guys with different versions of the Flock of Seagulls hair. Amelie and I stood watching them while we waited our turn in line for the porta-potties. I didn’t think that real teenagers still played children’s games, and I wondered what kind of word or phrase they were passing around the circle. There were people rinsing off in the outdoor showers, women in stripped bikinis and topless men in shorts, and people in lines at booths buying cold beer, and cold water, and US festival t-shirts.  There were people smoking joints out in the open – something I had already seen a lot of, and there were people already drunk, stumbling around and lost. After our turn in the bathroom, Amelie and I went straight to the t-shirt booth to buy t-shirts, and I put mine on immediately, happy to put on something cool over the top I was wearing and my terry-cloth shorts –relieved to be wearing something that declared the new me to the world.

         Being both musicians and edgy music fans, Amelie and knew the words to most of the songs, or at least the popular ones by the bands that played that day. We sang and pogoed along to Oingo Boingo and The English Beat. We swooned when Michael Hutchins from Inxs took the stage, swinging his wild long hair over his shoulder, and Amelie swooned over Stan Ridgway from Wall of Voodoo – she always liked the weird looking guys. We studied Terri Bozio of Missing Persons, knowing that neither of us would ever show that much skin, wear plastic wrap, or have blond hair, and we sang along in earnest to just about every Flock of Seagulls and “Down Under,” and “It’s a Mistake,” by Men at Work song, but when The Clash, the band that we were really there to see, the only band that really mattered, finally, after a controversial delay, stormed the stage around midnight we were transformed.

“All right then, here we are in the capital of the decadent U S of A,” Joe Strummer growled into the microphone. And right away, after a day of bands and people watching, hair cut at weird angles, assorted scissored band t-shirts, and leather jackets in 110 degree heat, we knew we needed new clothes, attitudes, and new haircuts, fast. But there was more to it than clothes and hair; and we got that too. The Clash took the stage and called us decadent straight away then launched into London Calling, its opening guitar riff, slicing its way through the air. We knew that it was true – technology and music and twenty dollar tickets while others were starving or being disappeared in countries like Nicaragua and El Salvador by death squads, and we wanted to be punished by the barrage of loud guitars and Joe Strummer's growl then soothed by the sounds of Mick Jones’ high sweet falsetto, seduced by Paul Simonon's swagger.

The Clash’s anti-American decadence stance spoke directly to us, both Mexican, and weird, and poor, and disenfranchised. Joe Strummer even mentioned East LA – a part of LA where he had probably never been, but where I had been born. It’s like he knew Amelie and I were there and put us under his spell, two Mexican-American weirdos, waiting to receive their message, our marching orders, and so we marched, singing every word to every song, slamming our fists in the air, and tearing up when Mick Jones sang “Somebody Got Murdered” because somebody had to care.

          When the song ended, Joe Stummer railed, “You make, you buy, you die. That’s the motto of America.”

All of it got me thinking something I had not understood before – the thing that I would never say, wouldn’t be able to articulate, even then. Amelie and I were different; we stood out because our skin was brown, and we did not come from money. None of this was going to change, and people would judge us, or try to make us feel like less, ugly even, undesirable.

“You get born to buy, and I’ll tell you those people out in East LA they ain’t going to stay there forever.”

And we hadn’t. I hadn’t stayed in East LA.

“If there’s anything going to be in the future it’s going to be all parts of everything.”

But we were all over, in Tuolumne even, a fact of life in America that wasn’t going to change.

         “It’s not going to be just one white way down the middle of the road.”

         Not just one white way down the middle of the road – not just one way, not just the white way; he was right. Joe Strummer was right about that.