dilemma3

Marilyn and Pal Mark Go West!
(continued)

DAY 3 continued...

    The statement didn't register with me since he didn't say it while flinging his arm over his eyes, arching his back toward the heavens and wailing the statement and plus I was in complete denial. Finally I backed off the interstate back into the Welcome Center (at 5 PM), called AAA, and waited for the tow truck.
    Eventually a Navajo Indian wrecker service guy showed up, towed my car to his garage on Route 66 (which was sort of a junkyard garage and house with a couple of huge dogs and men out in the middle of basic nowhere and I had to fight to keep "Duelling Banjos" out of my head). He was very nice and sold me a used tire to replace it, and Mark drove us to a Burger King because between the blinking Check Engine light and the flat tire in one day, I was pretty beat.
    I called the folks back home at the pay phone outside Burger King, still rubbing my nose from my latest breakdown, and looked up, marvelling at the rainbow over the desert in front of me and the stunning sunset over the desert behind me. All things considered, it was beautiful.
    Mark suggested we push onto Flagstaff, getting there around 10, sleeping, getting up early for my eagerly requested trek to the Grand Canyon, and onto L.A. We drove across the desert in the dark, missing out on the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest, but getting to see all the stars in the huge desert sky.

DAY 4: THE WEST
    The next morning we got up and drove straight for the Grand Canyon, scheduling breakfast for later. We drove through some cool forest on the way, and Indian road workers stopped us for a temporary construction delay.
    "You're going to the canyon?" one asked.
    "Yeah. How is it?" Mark asked.
    "It's a big hole in the ground," he offered.
    We finally got there and -- Wow, they said it was big, but I didn't know it would be BIG! Mark said it would take forever to fill it with garbage. A few snaps for the folks back home, Mark instructed me to climb down some rocks on the ledge for a really good picture. I insisted he take one right where I was standing. He said climb down those rocks. I said take this one anyway, there's enough film. He took the shot and said, okay, that's done, now for the real picture. As I was climbing down, a disease-ridden squirrel with determined eyes approached me. Aigh! I said, get away from me squirrel! (The paperwork presented to us at the gate said don't pet the squirrels because they'll bite. Then it went on the describe the diseases you could get from a squirrel bite, as if a wild rodent breaking your skin with its teeth wasn't deterrent enough, which for me it was). It kept coming at me and Mark kept lining up the shot. Got it. Then after shooing the squirrel away, I turned to climb up the rocks and ANOTHER squirrel was coming at me. We hit the gift shop, a marvelous assortment of Hopi, Navajo, Zuni jewlery, blankets, kuchini dolls and sand painting. I picked out the PERFECT Navajo sand painting of the Creation story, Mark bought a petroglyph refrigerator magnet, and off we went.
    Mark figured the time from Williams AZ to L.A. -- "About two hours to the California border...we'll go back another time zone, putting us across the Mojave Desert around, oh, noon..."
    So we drove and drove, remembering the cool breezes wrapping around us at the Grand Canyon, and upon arriving at the Chevron station opened the car door to WHOOM! Hot dry oven air that sucked into the car.
    Inside the station, the cashier's radio announced the temperature of 109 degrees.
    "What did he say?" I asked.
    "109," she said. "It's great, isn't it? Last week it was 116 -- it rained this weekend."
    Into the Mojave Desert, Mark is ready to get to L.A. so he's flooring my poor little Honda up an incline and assuring me everything's fine. The little "Check Engine" light came on and stayed on for the next 100 miles, which, coincidentally, was about the same length of time Mark and I didn't speak to each other.
    We pulled into L.A. around rush hour and I got a good look at the filthy city I was moving into. Mark probably felt my emotions regarding my new home since I kept muttering "I hate this place I hate this place I hate this place..." We found Ed's digs and Mark disembarked (after requesting privately that I drive him to the airport Sunday morning, since he wasn't sure he trusted Ed to get him there on time). I took off for brother Larry's for one night before checking into my new digs.

MARK, MARILYN & ED IN HOLLYWOODLAND
    Saturday morning I cruised by the Hollywood Bowl and arrived at Ed's, where I initiated talk of the plan to get Mark to the airport by 6 the next morning, since I didn't think I could do it. Mark and Ed said they had worked that out and Ed was taking them, and Ed sarcastically assured me I could trust him. I looked at Mark like Hey--I wasn't the one who-- but Mark cut off my look with a laughing "Bad, BAD Marilyn!"
    We hopped into Ed's jeep to embark on our day of fun.
    Our first stop: the La Brea Tar Pits. A musician on the sidewalk was finishing his number, maybe one person walking by applauds, and Mark cries, "La Brea Tar Pit audiences are the greatest audiences in the world!"
    Ed dipped a small stick into a tar puddle next to the sidewalk and spent the next ten minutes watching it react with various things he touched it against, commenting on just how cool it is ("Look -- you can do this and you can do this..."). Mark asked him enticingly what it tasted like. Ed said he wouldn't go that far but now that Mark planted the idea in his head thanks a lot.
    We lunched at Spielberg's restaurant L.A. Dive, where Ed ate his entire pizza and the other half of my huge cheese steak sandwich (the waiter said it's the sandwich Spielberg orders when he's in the restaurant), and then we spent the rest of the afternoon at Santa Monica Beach so Mark could swim in the Pacific Ocean, which sounds like a good idea until your toe actually touches the water, freezes and falls off your foot as a podiacal ice cube.
    We told Ed about the Rodgers and Hammerstein imagery in Oklahoma, and Ed told us about his actor friends who were married on the stage set of Oklahoma!, which had some sentimental value for these particular actors. I asked him if their actor friends put them on top of a haystack and set it on fire as well. He said No. Mark asked if during the vows, she said "I'm just a girl who cain't say no." Ed said No.

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