New York to California: An I Ching Travel Adventure

by Darlene Frank

Those numb toes inside my boots were feeling annoyed and ready to give a solid kick to the fender of Becky’s blue Datsun wagon. The car was ruining our trip, and since Becky owned the car, I blamed her for every problem we’d faced since we left the slushy streets of New York City.

We were on the road to California in the middle of a bleak, wintry February, certain that within days we would meet the coast, settle into new jobs, and find adventure. College was behind us at last. Becky was from California, as were many of my college friends. They spoke of their home state in near-hallowed terms and could not wait to return. I was eager to experience the mystique of the place, and Becky had offered a ride.

Becky had consulted the I Ching before we left and it warned repeatedly to cancel the trip. She didn’t tell me that until we were heavy into trouble, but I doubt I’d have taken her seriously anyway. Oracles were a foreign concept to me and she kept the book wrapped in a white silk scarf in a special spot on her bookshelf. I revered books, though I didn’t wrap or ritualize any of them.

We’d left New York on Saturday morning. Now here we were, Wednesday evening, still in Pennsylvania. Standing in a grimy service station in Greensburg, in the western part of the state, stomping our feet on the concrete, trying to stay warm. Pacing, with Becky’s two dogs yapping in the car—neurotic, trembling little creatures who were always underfoot. The beer, courtesy of the attendants, offered little comfort.

I was sure I would have to help pay for this repair too, and this was the big one. The very first service station, less than twenty miles outside of New York City, had charged us the price of a tow. I offered to split the cost with Becky, setting a precedent I would regret. Rotten luck to start off with car problems, I thought, but it could happen to any vehicle—two wires disconnect and it stalls. Besides, this wasn’t Becky’s first cross-country trip. I trusted her.

Five miles and two gas stations later, we split the bill again for the same problem.

Three days later, in Chambersburg, a buff young mechanic had done a major job on the oil pan gasket. He took cash and Becky’s tape recorder in payment, even let us stay overnight in his living room to save us the cost of a motel. Crème de menthe nightcap included. But his work failed and ninety miles later all the oil had drained out of the car. A tow took us to Greensburg.

•

Our very first day on the road had landed us at my parents’ house, barely two hours south of New York City. It was a weekend-long detour we neither anticipated nor wanted. Granted, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was prettier than the subways, but Becky hadn’t planned on storing her dogs in my mother’s “shed” with the washing machine and garbage can. Those dogs were lap animals who ate fresh liver and gizzard she prepared nightly for their health. And my family’s religious customs didn’t permit swearing, so we had little outlet for our frustration. We spent as much of the weekend as possible walking the dogs just to get out of the house. Fortunately the presence of Becky and her two house pets distracted my parents from the fact that I was moving three thousand miles away. I’d announced the move in a letter but had no plans to say goodbye in person. The I Ching, it seemed, had other ideas.

My dad knew a guy named Jack—a loud fellow I disliked on sight—who worked on Datsuns. Jack found a crack in the gas-filter holder, replaced it, and Monday morning we were on our way again with money to spare.

When the red oil light flashed on in the Blue Mountain Tunnel, not far from crème-de-menthe Chambersburg, I sensed serious trouble. Becky’s I Ching might have a knowing mind after all. Against my will, I was becoming a believer.

•

It took us three days to get out of Greensburg. Hang around service stations long enough, and you meet other folks in similar situations. Where would we have slept the first night, without Joe? A fellow traveler on his way to Baltimore when his Datsun truck broke down, Joe offered to pay for a motel if we slept on the floor and he took the bed. With our money dangerously slipping away, we agreed. We locked the dogs in the bathroom, and I hung the No Pets sign on the inside doorknob where they could see it.

Joe, Becky, and I laughed for hours about our shared plight, until somewhere in the midst of our hysterics I felt sobering fear at being stuck in unknown territory with no knowledge of what was inside a car to make it run. What if we couldn’t continue? Would I consider returning to Buffalo and my post-college waitressing job? Things were only worse because everywhere we went my feet were freezing.

By morning, the I Ching gave us a dead battery. We bought a new one, not because we didn’t know we could charge a dead battery, but because Joe and Rock, a local helping hand, cracked a terminal inspecting it. Dear Rock. That kind man taxied us around in his old Plymouth (one flat tire included) and gave us a place to sleep that night—a tiny room in his mobile home, just big enough for our mattress and the cat’s litter box. We shared a joint with Rock and his girlfriend and laughed and talked until we were exhausted. The dogs squeezed onto the mattress with Becky and me, taking up precious space my feet could have used.

The Greensburg mechanics who repaired our oil pan gasket wanted cash—no tape recorders, no suitcases, not even the dogs. We paid them all but the last of our dollars. I began to feel I owned half the car, and realized that when Becky had asked me to share the trip, she meant sharing everything.

A week had passed since we left the Big Apple. A weekend with a friend in Pittsburgh did little to lift my spirits. I sat in a stupor, feeding myself as though I were a baby, staring into nowhere, numbed less by the cold than the fact that my money was gone. I think I let the dogs sit in my lap.

Becky had a sister in St. Louis who promised bed and board while we worked at temp jobs to earn more money. Proceed cautiously to St. Louis, but no farther, the I Ching advised.

Monday morning we headed out. Two hundred miles later the red oil light flashed on. Things were improving. No repair yet had taken us quite so far.

“You need a new oil pan gasket,” the mechanic pronounced. Words flew like daggers from our mouths, and he bent under the hood again. Becky snatched a quart of oil off the shelf and into her purse. And then the I Ching must have turned in our favor, because he found the true problem: my dad’s friend in Bucks County had replaced the fuel pump incorrectly, causing the oil to leak from the car. Nothing had ever been wrong with the oil pan gasket. Which confirmed my feelings about that guy Jack and raised my hopes that our gas station layovers had come to an end.

I don’t know what we paid this latest mechanic with for fixing our fuel pump—dog food or apple pie from Pittsburgh or actual cash. But Becky didn’t return the quart of oil. We thought we might need that.

Three stalls, a look at the alternator, and a free battery charge took us to St. Louis, where we parked the car. I kept my worry and resentments quiet, and I’m sure Becky acted extra cheerful to cover her guilt that I had run out of money due to her car problems. Becky always found a way to laugh about things. It made her easy to be with. But I wasn’t laughing about the long stopover in St. Louis.

For two weeks we worked to replenish our funds by typing lists of numbers for the Hickey Mitchell Casualty Company and Zinsco Electrical Products. Abysmal jobs in offices that felt like factories, where a mass of clerical workers, all women, sat at rows of desks in a huge room. Warmer and cleaner than a gas station, but not half as entertaining. Four kids, three dogs, and a TV with no off button greeted us each day after the office. We slept on a lumpy sofa bed with two small dogs at the foot and children jumping us at 6 a.m.

It was probably a good thing that Becky and I didn’t see each other for eight hours a day.

One night Becky’s sister’s husband tried to kiss me over the barbecue, and I told Becky that if we didn’t get out of there right away, I was taking a bus back to Buffalo. In reality, the thought of going back felt like defeat. And Becky still held out a tantalizing vision of our California future: she knew where we could apply for jobs and what to say on the applications. Getting hired would be easy. She declared this with such certainty you’d think the words had been printed on a page in her silk-wrapped oracle.

Becky was as eager as I to get out of St. Louis, with its bland, brick-house streets and gray snow on the sidewalks. The car was already repaired. We left.

The I Ching was packed and, as far as I knew, Becky had not looked at it. We were so joyous at leaving, we drove down Route 44 out of St. Louis and imagined we saw the rolling surf of California right there on the horizon. It was the most refreshing sight since New York.

In just a few days we crossed the California border. The dogs slept on the suitcases in the back, I gazed in wonder at the floating palm trees, and Becky hummed little tunes. The minor carburetor adjustment in Tulsa had already slipped from our minds and we sailed toward Los Angeles. Never had I seen such stupendous beauty as the mountains and the flowers and the shiny polished automobiles. The sun glinted everywhere.

California was Becky’s home; she knew the state and its state of mind. Now I would know it too. I had crossed more than a geographical border; I had crossed into a new life. California would shape me in ways I could not imagine or would even have wanted to know had the I Ching laid out a preview. I didn’t care about the car anymore. I had pioneered my way west, and California promised the next great adventure.

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© 2013 Darlene Frank. All rights reserved. This story first appeared in Fault Zone: Shift, published in 2014 by Sand Hill Review Press. Please ask permission of the author if you would like to reproduce or use this work in any form.