THE AUTOMOBILE IGNITION KEY

The Automobile ignition key, long a staple of purses, front pockets and key hooks in so many households, has been replaced by the ‘remote,’ a techno-gem that allows one to start the car while still toweling off from the shower, unlock the vehicle with the mere touch of a button and open the hatch by waving one’s foot under the rear bumper. Quoting a wide-eyed Gomer Pyle: “Shazam!”

         The downside to such magic is a) the cost of replacement – they’re, like, 400 bucks – and b) how easy they are to lose. These devises, generally about twice the size of a wad of bubblegum found under a third grade student’s desk, are, in general, always encased in black, molded plastic. Not sure why. In one’s pocket or in one’s purse, nobody’s ever going to see the thing so what difference does the color make? It’s not like a chartreuse remote will clash with the lady’s pink chiffon gown or the gent’s tan, suede Hush Puppies.

         So why not make remotes some garish color like school bus yellow or pomegranate red or fly-eye green? The argument for is compelling: The damn thing might be easier to see. 

 

Today, as our long-time friends rushed to depart – given the eight hour drive in front of them – one spouse queried of the other, “Do you have your remote?” 

         Response: “No, you have it.” 

         “No, I have mine.” 

         “Well, I don’t have mine.”

         “Did you check your computer case?”

         “That’s where I always put it, but it isn’t there.”

         “How ‘bout your jacket? The black one from last night?”

         The jacket in question was retrieved from the behind the front seat, unfolded and squeezed. No remote was found.

         “Did you check your pockets? The ones in the pants you wore to dinner?”

         “They’re buried in my suitcase.”

         The ensuing five or six minutes was consumed with unpacking onto the driveway, groping in dark reaches of the grip, throwing things all a-heap back into the bag and grousing, while spouse rechecked the guest room looking atop dresser and side table, under the bed, as casting redoubtable stink eye toward the host’s adorable little mixed-breed mutt who might reasonably be accused of eating anything found on the floor that was about the size of a large wad of bubblegum.

         “No luck.”

         “No luck.”

 

A feature of the vehicle to which the remote belonged is that the car cannot be locked if a key is inside. Quite the innovation! The scientist in me, observing the proceedings, suggested an experiment. “Close everything up and, with the one you’ve got, try to lock the car. If it doesn’t lock, then you’ll know it’s with you somewhere in the car – not actually lost, just not actually found.”

         Our anxious friends looked at each other and chorused: “Brilliant!”

         In the dim morning light, remaining remote in hand, as my pal’s wife was about to push the driver’s door closed, she spotted a molded black object – about the size of a wad of gum – sitting on the black leatherette console between the seats. Perfectly still. Perfectly camouflaged. Perfectly invisible. 

 

How much more efficient might their departure have been if said remote was the color of any of about 56 of the crayons found in a 64-count box of Crayolas^®?

         Just a thought, GM. Ford. Subaru. Mazda. VW group. Mecedes AG, Toyota, folks who make the Space Shuttle…

         You’re welcome.

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

Café Music

Shaking off a dripping, deep autumn fog,

     I enter.

 

The dining room is nearly silent:

     No talk-television

     No talk-jocks

     No Muzak.

Just soft, sweet percolation

     And, perhaps, the whisking of huevos.

The waitress calls me ‘sweetie.’

     I call for ‘the usual.’

Giggles

     – this being my first visit – 

     and banter.

 

The kitchen:

     Clean, orderly.

Giant man with a subtle smile:

     "¿Qué está tomando?"

     head tilting forward. 

“Esto es habitual.”     

     Lilting, hints of an aria. 

“  —¡Pero si nunca lo habíamos visto! ¡Es nuevo!”    

     Basso profundo.  

 

Melodious, harmonious, enchanting laughter 

– a Julio Iglesias-Maria Callas duet sans Julio and Maria – 

begetting thoughts of daisy fields in spring, 

     and fair weather clouds,

     and meadowlark lyric.

     And warmth.

Dispatch from a world 

     – or at least a season – 

     dreams away.

(My copy of The Times has slipped to the floor.)

 

Breakfast arrives: 

     “Here ya go, sweetie.”

     Latina eyes glow.

‘The usual:’

     Omelet, hashbrowns, rye toast.

     Perfect this bone-chilled Saturday.

Command of two languages?

     More perfect, any day.

 

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

Chance Meeting with Arnold

 …people you wished you’d met on the road...

 

Lost to the dustbin of my memory is exactly why or when, other than Arnold Schwartzenegger was governor. Serving as the curriculum leader in a Sacramento area school district, and as an obligatory member of the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), I found myself enrolled in a conference of educators focused on something-er-other and arranged for the ballroom of a hotel across from the state capitol. During a much needed afternoon break where perhaps 500 of us were milling about clutching store-bought cookies and sipping Coca Colas, the lights in the hall flashed on and off, on and off. The group quieted, someone took the mic and said, “Supes and Assistants, the governor wants a photo op with about eight of you.” 

         

I shrunk to the back of the venue, but my name tag label “Assistant Superintendent Curriculum and Instruction” betrayed me. Tapped on the shoulder, someone herded me and seven others into an adjacent room where we were instructed to line up. “The Governor wants to see you.”

         

A near-silent buzz coursed through the assembly of colleagues that I’d never met. Seventh in the line of eight, I straightened the tie I was wearing, a black something decorated with images of Crayola crayons. Very elementary school.

         

Mr. Schwartzenegger – a bit shorter than I’d imaged – entered with an aide, a broad smile and an outstretched hand. This should only take a few minutes, I thought. But it didn’t. To the superintendents this would be their less-than-fifteen minutes of fame. Each one grasped the governor’s hand and would not let go until they’d offered more-than-two-cents-worth on some issue or topic I was sure the governor either didn’t particularly care about or about which he’d already made up his mind. As he inched closer, I realized his smile was pasted on, the handshakes perfunctory and that this was simply one of the duties an elected person had to perform if they wanted to stay an elected person. It seemed artificial, fake. I decided not to play the lobbying game.

 

Months, maybe a year, prior, the governor had been riding his glitzy ‘Wide Glide’ motorcycle along the Pacific Coast Highway though Pacific Palisades sans the required helmet. 

The city cop pulled him over and issued the required citation. Rumor has it that Arnie thanked the officer for his service.

 

My turn came up and as Arnold Schwartzenegger grasped my hand, I looked him in the eye and quietly – so as not to embarrass him – said, “Jeez, governor. A Harley?”

         

His hand immediately pulled away and I felt a firm Austrian index finger pointedly poking my chest four or five times. “I bet you drives zee Bee Em Dawbue!” he said with a grin. An honest grin. 

 

I nodded as he clapped my shoulder. Making a different kind of eye contact, together we laughed and he said, “You be safe, now.”

 

With a wink he was gone to whomever was next and I was left with the impression that, in that moment, Arnold Schwartzenneger was anything but fake. 

I’ve always wished we could have done the Pacific Coast Highway together.

 

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

SOME BOOK MAGIC

 In praise of a good reference book…

…and a little kismet

 

For reasons I cannot recall, about a half century ago, I picked up a copy of Erwin Gudde’s California Place Names, the hardbound edition, at the used bookstore on Broadway in Chico…  

…Maybe because new it was listed at $15.95 but this one was marked down to $13.50… 

I’d probably picked it off the shelf and looked up Chico [page 62]… 

…then Paradise [page 238], then Butte Creek [page 44] and learning useful trivia about the origins of the names of the places near which I’d grown up.

 

The wisdom of that purchase was confirmed a few years later when I served as a Fourth Grade teacher in Durham [page 96]…

…and kept it on hand in the back of my classroom. At the conclusion of my reading Scott O’Dell’s classic Island of the Blue Dolphins to the class, one of my students asked if the island was real and what was it really called. Pulling Place Names from the back counter, the kids learned about San Nicolas Island… 

 

…and the Santa Barbara islands and a bunch of other one-thing-led-to-another- type stuff found in such a volume. After lunch recess, we always engaged in ten-minutes of silent reading. A little boy pulled the reference book from the back counter. He wanted to find out about the town where his grandparents lived. The next day another one picked it up.

 

Two or three years into my tenure as a fourth grade teacher, someone donated an aquarium to the class. (There’s a lesson here.) I gladly accepted it, and one Friday afternoon, set it up and filled it with water thinking that over the weekend the water would warm enough to be suitable for a goldfish or a guppy. Monday, I discovered not an aquarium filled with warm water, but a countertop backed with water-logged books. Including Place Names… 

…Tossing out some, having to pay for others, I kept Gudde’s volume knowing it was still serviceable once all the pages dried out. Yet, over the intervening fifty years, I’ve felt a pang of disappointment every time I leave through its crackly pages. So much so that I was always on the lookout for a replacement. I even purchased the 40^th Anniversary edition (2004) in paper, but that fell short of relieving my angst.

 

During those Durham days, I was a regular attendee of the Bidwell [John Bidwell, page 28 (entry) and 376 (glossary)] Presbyterian Church in Chico. I even served on their Session ~ the elective body that oversees policy for the congregation. The session was comprised of long-time members, many upstanding members of the Chico community: doctors, lawyers, university types, educators. Not sure how I qualified.

 

John Nopel, decades my senior, was one of ‘em. He and his wife always sat a few pews in front of me and the family I’d married into during my first attempt at matrimony. In reviewing his lovingly prepared obituary, it became clear that Mr. Nopel garnered many claims to fame beyond being an elder in the Presbyterian Church. A life-long member of Scouting, in 1934, he worked on the construction crew building Camp Lassen, the Boy Scout Camp where 54 years later, I wed [See Eden Indeed: Tales, Truths and Fabrications of a Small Town Boy pages 210-15]. As a school principal, Mr. Nopel opened Chico’s Hooker Oak School in 1948 and later served as an associate superintendent for the school district before moving to the county office. Career coincidence found me a member of Chico’s Phi Delta Kappa educational fraternity with him, later employed opening two new schools (elsewhere) myself. But, perhaps, most significant, he was the heartbeat of the Butte County Historical Society maintaining files and photos of the earliest years of my old stompin’ grounds. His library of historic texts and references must have been exhaustive.

 

 

Why might I think this? A couple of weeks back, I engaged in another of those searches for a copy of my long-damaged book. To my surprise, AbeBooks so called ‘sellers of books, fine art and collectables’ had one listed. In excellent condition. Priced at  thirty-five bucks! (AbeBooks, it turns out, serves as a means for individuals to market their wares to an online audience. Note: I normally avoid shopping for books online.) Confirmation of my purchase came with a bit of information about the seller. Enough to tell me to whom this copy might have once belonged. The Chico address rang a bell.

 

The book arrived. The cover, sheathed in plastic perfect. The pages pristine. Side-by-side, it was an exact match for my waterlogged copy. I can’t say my throat didn’t constrict a bit.

 

That evening, I settled into a favorite chair with a thimbleful of favored scotch and began to thumb through. All the listings I’d referenced before were there as, of course, were entries about the new places I’ve explored…

 

…and before I knew it, an hour-and-a-half and fifty years magically dissolved.

 

Mr. John Nopel (1914 – 2006): Perhaps your greatest calling was that of teacher. Know that even now in 2025, you’re still in the business.

 

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

FIELD NOTES FROM FIVE DAYS ON THE MOTO GUZZI

 …back in the saddle again… 

It was the multi-day motorcycle tour I absolutely needed to have.  A trip to my favored old stompin’ grounds up north would rekindle my distance riding spirit but highballing on the I-5 freeway is not the best use of an Italian masterpiece such as the Guzzi.  Still, when one crests that hill on the four-lane some thirty-plus miles north of Redding and sees the welcoming arms of Mount Shasta – the Queen of the Southern Cascades – the breakneck pace of the interstate seems worth it.  A few moments off the bike to take in the view is in order.  

Shasta would be riding on my shoulder for much of the week’s adventure.  (Four days later, I would be gazing at her when my cell phone pinged to alert me about a highly anticipated jury verdict.  I’ll always know the answer to the question “Where were you when you heard about…” It’ll be Mount Shasta.)

 

 

Whenever possible, I overnight in McCloud at the historic McCloud Hotel.  Brother Randy from the Pacific Northwest and I meet up there for a stroll around the business district and the company town housing. 

Always a delight to see what some folks have done to dress up some of the vintage company town homes of eighty to hundred years back.  Dinner is usually at the Sage Restaurant at the hotel and sleep is comfortable, relaxing as the old place fills dreams with the sounds of the creaking floor joists and the musty aroma of history.

 Sadly, the Sage Restaurant was unable to open for dinner dining this year for lack of staffing.  We were looking forward to a nice bottle of wine and a perfectly cooked filet.  Breakfast, however, was nicely turned out, setting up a pleasant second day on the road.

 

The Volcanic Legacy highway crosses Lake Britton near the train trestle from that frightening scene in the movie “Stand by Me” and leads us to Burney Falls State Park. 

The entrance station ranger offered to let me in for free if I’d allow him to take a spin on the Guzzi. He’d recently given up riding his Gold Wing.  I handed him my key but, ultimately, he shrugged and soon I was out nine bucks.  I couldn’t help but admire his giddy appreciation for the Guzzi.

 

 There’s a glorious rest stop / scenic overlook just off State Route 44 east of Old Station.  Situated halfway between Shasta and Lassen, it is always a go to.  Both summits seem close almost enough to touch.

This day, two sojourners from Austria were making their way from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. Brother Randy engaged with them as they shared details of their thus-far adventure.  

My pal talked about his daughter’s semester in Austria and asked the kids to please feel free to call when they made Snoqualmie or Stevens Pass in Washington – still months away for them – tempting the hikers with hot showers, comfortable accommodations, and good food and wine.  I’ve bedded down many a night at Randy’s hostelry when riding up that way and can attest to the quality of the goods and services there offered.  Ahhh… The people you meet on the road.  Hopefully the couple will take advantage.

 

 Our route to Quincy took us along the east shore of Lake Almanor, where I lived for a couple of years when serving at the principal of the local elementary school.  Here, a favorite turnout with a view of Lassen in the distance…

An hour further south we took a side trip to visit the old Paxton Hotel.  That waystop is recounted in a previous post.  https://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2024/06/old-haunt.html

 

 The cozy and rustic VRBO cabin selected outside of Quincy would serve as a good layover spot.  A robust creek serenaded all day and all night.

 

The layover day allowed a trip to Bucks Lake passing the cabin (well, grand chalet) of a childhood chum.  The place looks just as I remember from back in the early 60s.  Well preserved.  Nice work!  Down the road a piece is the dam ~ a spot worthy of a portrait of the bike ~ but what caught my eye was the proliferation of Dogwood blossoms.   

Harbingers of lovely mountain summers and always among my favorites!

 

Afternoon would find me riding solo up the Quincy/LaPorte Highway into snow country with the road only plowed the day before.

Geographers tell us that there is a distinct difference in the geomorphology of Sierra Nevada and the Cascades. That granitic uplift to basaltic outflow shift is somewhere in the Feather River watershed.   

Sucker for a picture of an old steel bridge that I am, this one span crosses the Middle Fork of the Feather.  This might be that place.  If not, there's a nice swimming hole below.

 

Heading north the following day, we pass through the historic northern mine town of Greenville, devastated by the horrendous Dixie Fire of 2021.   

That visit is also shared in a previous post. 

  https://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2024/06/lessons-from-fire-footprint.html

 

 Retracing our steps back to McCloud and beyond, we are reminded that any road taken in the other direction is, essentially, a different ride.  The mountains, the meadows, the forests – all stunning and fresh, leading us to our final night in Dunsmuir.  The little berg nestled along the upper reaches of the Sacramento River is an historic whistle stop on the old California Northern (later Southern Pacific; currently Union Pacific) route. 

Café Maddalena is a favored restaurant there.  I stumbled in several years back to sit at the only seat available and enjoy perhaps the best meal on the road I’d ever had.  The café has become a must-stop treat anytime I’m in that neck of the woods.  

Unfortunately, the economics in this itty-bitty mountain town could not support the business.  Apparently, we were only a week or so late as its doors had closed permanently though the website was still up.  Such a disappointment.  Hopefully Café Maddalena will rise again.  We’ll keep checking back.

 

 Three or four years ago, I thought I’d tired of multi-day tours on the motorcycle.  I gave up a substantial model to downsize, but the urge never fully went away.  Does it ever?  A year ago, I upgraded to this 850cc Moto Guzzi V85tt touring model.  Distinctive and good looking.  Powerful enough.  Light.  And it eats both sweeping curves and twisting ones.  This past week’s ride makes me happy I’ve gotten back in the saddle.

See you on the road. 

 

Footnote

 

Around lunch time on the first day, I rolled into Willows.  In a bit of a rush, I fell back on a habit I’d developed long ago when my between-teaching summers were spent delivering local freight. In fact, that first summer, I earned nearly as much driving truck as I did as a teacher for the year.  Almost made me turn my back on a career in education.  Then one of the old-timers (52 years old) didn’t make it to the dock on Monday.  Died the Saturday before on the sixth green.  Heart failure.

     I was reminded of this as I parked the Moto Guzzi next to a bobtail like the one I’d driven.  Upon receiving my order (two Burrito Supremes and a small soft drink, speaking of asking for heart failure), I spied the driver: a lanky young red headed man with a full beard.  Probably weighed in at about 135 pounds.  As he stuffed his face, I thought, My God!  That was me fifty years ago!

     I ate my lunch and didn’t talk to the kid but about five miles up the freeway it occurred to me that I might have suggested: “The money is good right now, but the lifespan is short. Go for big dreams.”  But I didn’t.  

     The least I could have done was offer to pay for his taco.

 

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

OLD HAUNT

 …first in a series of stories from a recent road trip

My pal and I powered up the roughly paved road to the Paxton Hotel about mid-afternoon.  It would be my first real visit in about 65 years.  Or would it be a visit at all?

         As we set our Moto Guzzis on their side stands, a furious looking someone steamed in our direction from a nearby cabin.  

         “Just the man I was lookin’ for,” I said before he could utter a word.

         “Huh?”

         “Yeah.  You run this place?” I asked.

         “Security and stuff,” he said.  “Who wants to know?”

         I’d unzipped my bike’s tail pack and slipped out a copy Eden, Indeed: Tales, Truths and Fabrications of a Small Town Boy.  [Available by special order through your neighborhood independent bookseller – or through that online company that starts with an A.]  “Here,” I said.

         Whatever steam he had boiled up began to dissipate.  “What’s this?

         “A book I wrote about growing up in Chico. There’s a story in there [starting on page 48] about the time Dad stopped in here for a beer ‘cause he was tired of hearin’ me and my brother squabble in the back seat of the car.”  

         Security and Stuff crimped an eye and began thumbing through pages.

         “The barkeep served up Dad’s beer and then scared the crap out of me with a story about a ghost woman who sat in a rocking chair all night.”

         The man grinned.  “That rocker’s right there on the porch.” He pointed.  “Go take a look.”  

         I climbed up the stairs and snapped a picture or two.  Frankly, the chair didn’t look exactly like or old enough to be the one in question, but I’d been seven at the time of my other visit and memories can be fuzzy.  

         “Would you like to see what they’ve done to the place?”  I wondered who ‘they’ was and how many ‘theys’ there’d been in the past six decades.

         The entrance was not as I remembered.  No shaft of light illuminated a tired wooden floor or tattered rug when he opened the door.  I didn’t see the upright piano or the moth-eaten American flag.  The filmy curtains were gone and the windows seemed to close, which they didn’t do before.  It seems a lot of work had been done and redone to freshen things up.  The bar was polished and clean – no cigarette butts filled ashtrays – and the kitchen looked commercial and modern.  

         “If you’ve got a minute, I’ll show you the widow’s watch.  You wanna see it?”

         “Sure!”  

         I was expecting to head upstairs, but instead squeezed through a narrow portal and clumped down a darkened set of stairs.  The walls had no interior plaster or sheathing, just rough two-by-fours with light slipping through cracks in the exterior planking.  The air smelled of dust and mildew aged a century or more.  

         As we clambered down, he explained: “Sorry to be so gruff up there.  This is private property and I just ran off five guys and a gal who seemed pretty high on something.  Didn’t understand the term private.  Got into quite an argument.  Made me kinda edgy.  Sheriff can’t respond too quickly in this neck of the canyon.  Distance and all.”

         We pushed through a narrow passage with a grubby, littered floor with poor footing.  Opening a door that he must have located by feel alone he said, “Here’s where they found that rocking chair.”  Then he pointed at a pair of windows that didn’t quite close.  “That’s where she was lookin’ out.”

         I stepped around a weary settee that might have survived a trip around the horn and peered through the dusty, wrinkled glass.  “You can’t see the tracks from here.  Aren’t they up the hill?”

         “Yeah. It doesn’t make sense, does it?  But this is where they say they found what they think was the old gal’s chair.”  I again wondered about ‘they.’  

         He opened a door and now sunlight flooded in.  We stepped outside finding ourselves at the basement of the grand old building.  The Feather River rushed by in the ravine a hundred or so feet below us, its current offering an age-old whisper.  Although we could see Highway 70, the old Western Pacific Line was nowhere in sight.

         He thumbed through the book.  “So you grew up in Chico?”

         “Yep.”

         “So did I.  Chico High.  Class of ’79.”  He offered a bit more bio.  Father was a lawyer.  He, himself, flew fixed wing transport until he retired a few years back and moved home.  Came to do this for lack of anything better.  Enjoyed the place and the job; not so much having to run folks off.

 

The Paxton Hotel is now used for special occasions like weddings and such.  Rooms aren’t available to passers-through, but we were told we could stop by any time.

         As my pal and I puttered down the road back to the highway, I wasn’t sure I’d seen the actual chair – at least it wasn’t the one I remembered – or visited the actual window where the ghost lady would rock at midnight “Waitin’, just waitin’ for her true love to return.”  

         But I was sure I’d visited an old haunt.

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press