Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
he trekked through all manner of weather, around very many obstacles, to find his way to Grandma's House, probably the most magical place on Earth. As a drunken crow flies, the walk was not all that very long, perhaps just over a mile, a little more if you stuck to the streets, but a boy's imagination could travel leagues and leagues and leagues during that walk, ranging from the outside of outer space to the deeper and darker parts of the ocean, facing and eluding all manner of danger (both real and imagined). In the summer he often walked the walk barefoot, pretending to be an Indian (and the bottoms of his feet developed hard soles, complete with tire treads, although never as thick or crusty as what Mama had on the bottoms of her feet), even though the desert temperatures often exceeded 100 degrees (crossing black-top streets was especially painful, shrieking ouch and ooh and oh all the way across). Or sometimes he wore flip-flops, other times actual Indian moccasins, for years it was cowboy boots. And in the winter he trudged in snowboots or cowboy boots and more than a few times in sloshy, squeaky, freezing-to-death tennis shoe sneakers.
Often he rode his bicycle, one of several, sometimes the winding back route to Grandma's House, other times he pushed forward on his skateboard, or on his pony Squirt, and a few times on his little Honda 50 motorcycle, which was against the law (always sticking to the dirt roads, or at least to the side of the paved streets, and in Quartz Hill in those days there were plenty of open fields).A few times he was threatened by bullies (never run from a bully, Dada had told him, but walk away, never run). A couple of times a slow cruising car would pull alongside and some hot, sweaty man would grin and offer a ride, and never get in a car with a stranger would ring like a bell from one ear to the other, and he never did get in one of those cars, and so is here to this day to remember what it was like to a be a boy walking to his beloved grandma's house, all those years ago.He often walked with his friends to Grandma's House, and all his friends smiled when they saw her and called her Gramma! And when he was older he actually took a few dates there to visit Grandma, a few of which Grandpa took him aside and warned him about (but Dougie rarely listened, and he would have had a much more trouble-free life if he had listened to Grandpa).There was an age-old Oldsmobile, cracked and dry, sitting there like a quiet hulk, at Grandma's House, and on Dougie's 17th birthday Grandpa gave him the car so that he could drive to Newbury Park to go away to boarding high school, and Doug promptly named the hulk the puzzling name "Galadriel," which many will recognize today, but in 1979 hardly anyone had ever heard the name Galadriel before. And for several years whenever Doug visited Grandma's House it was via Galadriel, and not walking, but probably more than three times poor Galadriel ran out of gas (despite the fact that gas usually cost less than $0.75 a gallon, at least that's what he remembered paying for gas when filling Galadriel to the brim), and so Doug ended up maintaining the old, old habit of walking up the hills to Grandma's House.From Grades 1 through 4 Dougie usually walked from Quartz Hill Elementary School to Grandma's House, cutting through fields and climbing a few fences he was not supposed to climb over, and when he was older and came home from classes at Antelope Valley College he often went to Grandma's House, and drank a can of A&W Root Beer, or Catcus Cooler.But whatever the age or weather or time of day, always there was one magical thing, Grandma opening the door, always looking puzzled, until she saw Dougie, and then she smiled hugely and half-shouted in her quavering voice: "Dougie! It's Dougie! I thought it might be you!" And as always, there would be Grandpa, out in the back yard, watering ice plants or organizing junk, or he'd be at the table studying his Bible.If there was a walk he could make today, it would be up that long driveway, to 4747 W. Avenue M, if only it would be Grandma that opened the door. He could almost believe he could hear her voice:"Dougie! It's Dougie! I thought it might be you!"All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
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