2 I spent the weekend with my Dad. I help him with his blood sugar and meds and all.
3 He lives in good ol' Millbrae, California.
4 Innocent enough.
5 Millbrae is one of those suburbs that sprouted everywhere after World War II.
6 It's famous for two things: One, it has a BART station, and two, it is practically the home of the San Francisco Airport. There are smaller things. Some people refer to the Walgreens store downtown as "Our Walgreens," for example.
7 A little known fact is about Millbrae is that my street was included in this old book called The Destruction of California by one Raymond F. Dasmann. I distinctly remember hauling around a dog-eared copy of that book because it had a picture of my neighborhood in the pictures' section.
8 I looked all over the internet last night for that pic to no avail.
9 So it goes, so it goes. Here is a picture of the book. I'm pretty sure it was used in college courses on our ecological destruction of the Earth.
10 The copy I had looked exactly like this. Inside was a picture of my neighborhood looking from a hill above to roughly the South City hillside and Candlestick Park.
11 I laughed because my neighborhood was used as a model of The Destruction of California. I always saw the town as my personal Penny Lane, complete with barbers shaving customers and people being wet beneath the blue suburban skies.
12 And the fireman rushing in from the pouring rain.
13 Very strange.
14 It wasn't famous for that. I kept Googling, trying to get that Dassman pic. It gave me these alternatives: Tasmania, Ram Dass, who made too much money, and some random Wikiquote by Nietzsche. Not the same.
15 This year I began to notice that little Millbrae had turned into one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
16 I goofed on that the last few times I drove up there.
17 First, there is the downtown. It is clearly too skinny to have cars on both sides of the street.
18 I never really realized it when I lived there, but cars are constantly coming within inches of each other while trying to squeeze in and out of the parking spots.
19 Millbrae, by the way, now sports one pho restaurant called Chicken Pho You. Cute. They try to get the white people to come in by calling it chicken soup.
20 At least they have pho.
21 I consider pho a form of what Poe called Nepenthe, only in soup form. Surcease of sorrow follows every bowl.
22 I'll get back to that in a special DN Pho issue I intend to create.
23 I have to continue with my bold statement about Millbrae being one of the most dangerous places on Earth. That's only if you leave out Pinole.
24 It has a Safeway parking lot which has become a neighborhood death trap. Cars come in fast and furious, as they do in many parking lots. I once caught a duck there when it was a dirt lot. True. A little perspective if you please.
25 It's just that if you have a handful of groceries and two 12-packs of soda in your shopping cart, you will find that the carts won't let you take them into the parking lot.
26 This becomes an instant video game if you park away from mainstream cars, as I do.
27 The cart I had would not go past the front of the store, rendering the entire idea of a shopping cart useless.
28 So I had to hold a bulky bag and two awkward 12-packs and try getting them about thirty yards through a maniacal parking lot.
29 I almost got clipped at least three times, finally making it halfway to my car, where I came upon some new carts.
30
31 My natural instinct had me throwing the groceries into the cart before my arm cracked and fell to the pavement.
32 I then got behind the new cart, and IT refused to move.
33 <Twilight Zone music up>
34 I again gathered all the stuff and made a run for my car, which was now around twenty feet away. Two more cars almost got me, but I was able to escape.
35 I decided to go to the barber shop. It wasn't the Penny Lane one to which I have referred in the past, but a brand new Great Clips place.
36 I like those because they make me feel that I am somehow getting groomed.
37 I went inside and they rocked. They had me in the computer and knew exactly what I needed to look purty.
38 A new head and body.
39 JUST kidding.
40 I relaxed. The gal doing my hair chatted and was really nice.
41 When I was done, I paid and left.
42 I got two steps out the door when my legs flew out from under me. I crashed to the Earth.
43 As it was fairly early in the morning, someone had mopped the outside of all the stores, making it virtually impossible for a guy in Ram Dass sandals to make it safely two feet.
44 People tried to help, but all I wanted to do at that point was to leave Millbrae.
45 Who knew?
46 And even yesterday I was washing down the side of Dad's house, and again slipped, this time much less violently.
47 Adventures in Millbrae, and the Destruction of California.
48 Ah, I'm just jivin'.
49 It was just a goofy weekend. I've lost most of my memory anyway.
50 I just goofed on how unsafe everything is, not just there, but everywhere.
51 I eventually made is safely home, and am moving swiftly into a state of blissful oblivion.
52 Have a GREAT Monday.
53 See you again.
54 I think.
55 Gottago.
56 Peace.
~H~
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