After much consideration, W.S. decided to accept a civilian job working for the Navy. I didn’t care where we moved, as long as being downsized didn’t involve a firing squad. The job was located at the Naval Base in San Diego, California, one of the most beautiful cities in the United States. They were paying our moving expenses, so we purchased new furniture to go along with our new life, and recycled our college furniture back to the Salvation Army.
All of our friends were packing and looking forward to actual lives in the real world. Professor Seltzer donated his entire library to the university. He had read those books, and was on his way to Florida, where he planned to spend the rest of his days fishing off a boat named, “The Criterion.”
We hired the, “Get You There In One Piece Moving Company,” and the salesman assured us that their movers would treat our worldly belongings as lovingly as if they were moving their very own families. A week later, as soon as the truck was loaded, we began the 5-day drive across the U.S. in our
12-year-old Volkswagen Beetle.
W.S. assured me that the apartment he found for us was nicer than anything we had ever lived in before. “It’s airy and bright. The rooms are large, and it’s close to my office.” What he failed to tell me was that after looking at several apartments around town, the brakes on his rental car had failed. He would have gone over a cliff, but instead he had hit a dumpster at this particular apartment complex. It was then that he decided that, since he couldn’t go any further, this was the place we were going to call home.
After the first day of driving, eating catch-as-catch-can food, and experiencing gas station washrooms, I started whining, “Are we there yet?” W.S. told me that if I didn’t stop complaining, he’d turn around, go back to the university and enroll in law school. I stopped!
We made pretty good time in our little Volkswagen, until we got to Texas. As soon as we crossed the border, we got stuck behind a rickety truck on a no-passing-zone stretch of highway. The driver was obviously in no hurry, because you can’t hit a fence post with a beer bottle while driving fast.
His cheering section, six, inbred, toothless progeny of first cousins, were sitting in the open bed of the truck, and they were facing us. For miles and miles, they stared at us, with the same familial expressionless expression. Unless W.S. wanted an encounter with the Texas Highway Patrol, he couldn’t pass that truck.
Fortunately, I could look at the sky, but he had to keep his eyes on the winding road and stay alert for beer-toss slow downs.
The driver finally drove off the highway onto a dirt road. The fellows in the back of the truck belched their “goodbyes,” and two days later we arrived in San Diego.
I was very happy that the brakes on W.S.’s rental car had failed at this particular apartment complex, because the grounds were beautiful and our apartment was bright and breezy. Since W.S. was now a Ph.D., I proudly taped, “Dr. W.S.” on our mailbox. Life was going to be conventional. W.S. had a nine-to-five job, which paid enough so I could finally concentrate on my writing. Now, all we had to do was to wait for the arrival of our furniture. Life was changing. “Normalcy” was the operative word.
There was a knock at the door. I opened it, and a young man said, “Is the doctor in? I have boils!”
Esther Blumenfeld, CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld, c. 2006
EPILOGUE: I was happy to share some stories with you from my unpublished book, CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld, c.2006. It has not been published but now partially read. If I learned anything from writing this book, it is a certainty that people who value their lives no longer ask me to bake a pie for the potluck. Now they realize that my expertise is limited to mixed nuts. Esther