GRAND CANYON: MOTOWN

To the rest of the world Motown refers to the Motor City, home of the American automobile, conjuring images of the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Shondells, Aretha Franklin and Cadillac Records but to those who hail from the central valley of California Motown is Modesto, home of Gallo Wine and American Graffiti.

Modesto is at the dead center of the richest agricultural land the world has ever known outside the Nile. Modesto is from the Spanish for modest and it is appropriately named. I wonder how it looks through Wiz’s eyes with its flatland profile, its Quik Stops and 7-11’s, its Burger Kings and lighted ballparks, its almond orchards and shopping malls, its construction projects and commercialism, its main drag and downtown improvement, its tree lined streets and industrial parks.

In parts of the Midwest I’m told Modesto is known as Sin City. It is a crossroad in the drug trade. In my own travels I have rarely encountered anyone who has even heard of the town except those who have been here. For years there was a controversy played out in the editorial page of the local paper regarding the absence of freeway signs referring to Modesto. We call it a town but the population is over 200,000. To me it is a lot like every town.

Over the years Modesto has undergone massive growth and development yet somehow it remains essentially the same. The children here still have a hard time finding anything to do outside of sports. The adults never tire of complaining about the rebelliousness of youth only now it relates to gangs. Modesto’s prime agricultural land is shrinking. Crime and unemployment are high. Local politicians have given lip service to limited growth policy but the developers march on without restraint.

It is a town of strange bedfellows and curious contradictions. The city council has outlawed the tradition of the cruise made famous by Modesto raised filmmaker George Lucas but they reserve one night a year each summer for reenactment.

There is a new and positive development: the downtown Café. Young people gather with books and notepads, listening to music and talking about art. They look at their elders as we looked at ours with trepidation and mistrust. In my eyes they appear to be taking notes for a cultural revolution. I like the look of them and wish them success whatever the consequences.

A good friend of mine has contributed to the trend by opening a bistro called Deva after his oldest daughter. It is first on my list of places to go. Charlie is one of the nicest guys in America. In more than ten years the harshest criticism I’ve ever heard him utter is: You must be high! I met Charlie at the crossroad of women and sports. I was then a college student involved with an interesting woman from my old neighborhood. Her sister was married to one of the few remaining longhairs from the late sixties. Ron is also one of the nicest guys in America. He was destined to lose his then wife for lack of ambition. My own relationship would stumble to a close after little more than a year. I was never quite certain why it ended but I suspect my interest in sports, my philosophic opposition to marriage and my distrust of counseling contributed to the fading of our relationship. I had begun to look in other directions and so had she.

Before our relationships ended, Ron invited me to try out for a city league softball team. I did and played for the Westside Hammers for the next few seasons. Charlie played third base and Ron was the centerfielder. Before long we were gathering at Charlie’s place on Paradise Road, talking baseball, passing the pipe and listening to rock and roll. Neil Young was Charlie’s hero. My oldest brother John offered me a place in a fantasy baseball team. I recruited Ron and Charlie as my partners and took him up. That was the beginning of a long commitment. My participation in softball would end when I took a part in a summer Shakespeare production but the fantasy baseball team would endure.

Looking back I am amazed at how a chain of seemingly random events so profoundly shape our lives. Our ends never know our means. On the perpetually winding road of life there is so much to be grateful for and so little to regret. I love this life. I love living it. I love bending with the wind in search of my own destiny. Above all I love the people who have become a part of my life.

Charlie’s wife Cathy is a gifted teacher who as chance would have it worked with my mother as instructional aide. She has a strong spiritual side. She believes she has encountered extraterrestrial life on earth and greets that knowledge with both wonder and apprehension. Ron’s second wife Deborah is a nurse and a wise soul from the flower child tradition. She compliments and accepts Ron as himself. She has no need to inspire him with greater ambition. Their children are as gifted and talented as their parents are, free spirits who find their own paths to make a mark in this ever-changing world.

As the Wiz and I make our way to Charlie’s café, the one word that describes both him and the circle of friends surrounding him occurs to me: Acceptance. There is a simple creed governing the conduct of this sacred circle that strangely seems to require a great deal of intellect to comprehend. There is no wrong where there is no harm. At Charlie’s place you are not judged for your opinions, tastes, manner of speech or choice of appearance. Each individual is valued for his contribution to the harmony of the whole. Like Wiz it is a quality that calls on Charlie to give much of his time and energy. It is not his habit to cut a conversation short or turn down a friend in need. As a consequence he will often let his phone ring for hours without answering it. Even nice guys need their own time.

I don’t have an address for the café. I only know it is somewhere on Jay Street, a road that runs from the west side to the center of town and feeds eventually to the new main drag at five corners. We begin on the west side and work our way eastward. I have pictured an informal atmosphere, low keyed and low overhead, like a converted storefront with wooden spools for tables and director chairs dispersed without any discernable pattern. I picture a bar rather than a service counter, a sound system next to the cash register with a rich collection of tapes and disks. On the walls I see avant-garde artwork, photographs and rock posters in style of the psychedelic sixties. Neil Young’s Ragged Glory is playing through quadraphonic speakers. Wednesday night poetry, Thursday jazz and Friday rock is on the program. Books of interest adorn shelves in one corner of the room where a water pipe hides behind a potted plant.

In the back of my mind I hear Charlie saying: You must be high!

We finally locate Deva in the center of town, only a handful of blocks from the main drag. Times have changed. I realize that my vision was drawn from my own ambitions in another time and place. Charlie is no sentimental fool, at least not where business is concerned. Deva is not highbrow but it is impressively upscale by local standards. On the walls are large prints by Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin and others against a tasteful wallpapered background. Classical music floats softly through the air. A single Neil Young ballad is the only concession to the owner’s personal taste. The décor compliments a menu with items like Pesto a la Panache.

Times have changed. It is I suspect the finest café-bistro in old Motown with a clientele of downtown lawyers, judges and business people.

A beautiful and talented actress, a young woman who was the source of many wet dreams in my former days, greets us at a table by the windows. She is our waitress. I offer an opinion that she has the best boss in town. She agrees with a hint of doubt: You mean Charlie? She has more than one boss. I later learn that Charlie and Cathy have hired a friend from Seattle as a consultant.

Deva is the only establishment in northern California with Guinness stout on tap. Served as intended at room temperature, I am certain that is Charlie’s touch. I suspect the place will take on more of his imprint as time goes by.

Charlie makes a late entrance and his eyes light up. Introductions around. The Wiz is welcomed into the circle. Cathy joins us with a warm embrace. She tells us about a friend who recently died in a car wreck while traveling at an estimated 120 miles per hour. By divine coincidence, at the approximate time of his death I happened to send an email entitled: Is anybody out there? It reads in part:

He was a man who befriended many, who left his mark on trees and park benches…and in the hearts of those he loved. He wandered long and far from home. He returned to find no one who remembered his name. His mark erased, painted over by graffiti artists… Is anybody out there? Does anybody know my name?

The words were not intended in effigy or as an epitaph. They were elicited by the journey before me, not the journey behind. Yet how strangely poignant they are in the death of a friend. Death too is a journey. It is a journey that escapes none of us. As Charlie says: No one gets out alive. He is not in mourning. He says his friend went the way he would like to go, in a blaze of glory, fast, reckless and wild like James Dean. I knew him only as a friend of Charlie’s, a man with a quick smile and encouraging words.

Ron soon joins us with his youngest child Manon, after the film Manon of the Spring. She is a beautiful child, full of life and laughter. We all sit for a few on the house. The more things change the more they stay the same: Baseball, David Lynch, Neil Young and the passage of time. We are invited to dinner and a gathering of minds. We accept and make our way to the Mustang where Manon coaxes the Wiz into a little music on the streets of Motown. The journey brings out the child in us all.

The gods of golf are calling once again.