P.N.ZOYTLOW

(Here is the last Field Report of the Big Road Trip of 2005 which covered some 11,000 miles between 12/15/04 and 5/2/05)

The car wash may be the best example of the American Culture. It is rich in symbols because you submit to having your vehicle sent into the tunnel of foaming water mixed with special chemicals. Think about the times you sat there slowly moving through the blinking lights and coarse sprays like a penitent being wiped clean of accumulated stain. You might even be offered a scent, for a price, at the end of the line which would mask any of the ordure that still hung about you and your machine. Not to forget the powerful jets that loudly dry while we imagine undertones of approving Puritan voices admitting us again, out of the dankness, to the light of day….but this is a solitary, even a lonely moment and Americans are gregarious, a Happy Folk who would rather sit at a baseball game and feel their cores resonate with their compatriots.  Or rather experience an elusive communalism that may or may not be available at The Motel.

Because of recent experience with dozens of these phenomena, it seemed a Field Report was in order. But how to do it for, as students of these Reports know, these efforts must be grounded in a mere 75 minutes of careful observation. How to do that with the Motel, a thing  where one might spend anywhere from 12 hours to one week experiencing the layers of “stuff” which are there?    As to the Method: (1). Let us assume that all Motels are the same; this allows us to ignore the need for all that picky comparative analysis. Or just think of a Motel somewhere in Kentucky or Kansas which will serve as an archetype for all the rest. (2). Let us meet any objections to #1 by further stating that all Motels are like quasi-communities, ephemeral little Villages whose raw ingredients are,uh… (3). Let us agree that Method is unimportant.

Each day, towards evening, most thriving Motels experience a swelling of new Villagers, inhabitants who may stay from a mere twelve hours to several days. Common to all is to approach The Desk, a counter behind which Authority will scrutinize our various affiliations: from whence do we come, what manner of machine transports us, and do we have an acceptable fiscal blessing? It seems wise to also offer these worthies the information that we have earlier argued our case with an even more obscure Authority: reservations via telephone or Internet.

If all has gone well, we are given a key, shrouded in electronic secrecy, and so become Villagers.  Our humble belongings may now be taken to our Very Own Room in which we may either smoke tobacco or abstain from that practice according to our established traditions.

We go to Motels so that we may avoid the night dangers of the world and to sleep. So, as new Villagers, we now contemplate the Bed. Motels have generally firm beds. Soft beds invite backaches and, worse, remind us emphatically that we are sharing this bed with many hundreds of Others of our species whom we do not want to think about. Also to be avoided are recollections of news stories in which DNA samples figure, or on rare occasions, the corpses of murdered prostitutes entombed in the wooden substructure of the bed itself. Better to glance at the ceiling and tap a wall to tell whether is room will be a quiet (concrete) or not (plaster board).  And yes, the smoke detector, it’s there and it winks with its red indicator. On the nightstand, a very cheap radio/alarm, which must be inspected because it may be set it for an odd hour, say 3:27 AM, a possibility which once again raises questions about those Phantom Villagers of the past with whom we are now sharing this bunk.

On to the bathroom. Here are the most revealing surfaces of the 150 or so square feet one has rented and usually they will reassure you. They are clean and the soap and shampoo are new and sealed. But always mind the toilet: how does it flush and does it have any idiosyncrasies? Some are very loud, almost aggressive in their zeal to please. Others raise doubts, some will not soon cease their song. Never take a Motel toilet for granted; observe it carefully and get acquainted early before the maintenance person leaves the premises for the night.

A recent Motel oddity is the shower curtain and this is most unexpected and interesting. It cries out for more research: shower curtains are being retrofitted all across America in response to the burgeoning obesity of a prosperous people. It is no longer possible to expect that only a small minority will be able to shower and not have the curtain cling disgustingly to their Wet Flesh. Solution: install a curtain rod that bows outward in the middle so that this Wet Flesh, this lathered and proud Wet Flesh may be spared contact with a curtain that multitudes of Others, those Phantom Villagers, have used before.  For those who wish precision here, the deviation from the formerly straight rod to its more accommodating bulge is 6.5 inches, translated into pounds of Wet Flesh….? Quantity unknown but significant.

If you go beyond the confines of your Very Own Room, do not expect to see many Villagers.  The place may be fully booked but you will see few of the Other.  This is at once reassuring and disturbing, a matter of some subtlety. First, no one want to stay in a Motel alone. It recalls Hitchcock too easily as well as a few other films or news reports in which an otherwise “normal” Motel had attracted Evil.  But, if fellow inn-mates there must be, who can one tolerate? We all want quiet, of course, so inevitably those you do encounter will engage in careful mutual scrutiny, assessing whether you or they may be a Bad Villager. Some danger signs: carrying a twelve-pack of beer, noisy children, loud voices, college age four-to-a-room, missing teeth.  These are truly The Other; let us not have them settle too near Our Very Own Room. Smokers and Non-Smokers, groups which share a mutual suspicion, are carefully segregated. Perhaps you will wander to the pool or spa, where whole families sometimes dunk themselves and acquire a strong odor of disinfectant chlorine, one of the ways the Motel Authority seeks to protect one Villager from the other, past, present, and future. But mostly they do what we all do, stay in that room and try to forget that there are strange people all around.  Use the locks on the door, use the peep-hole, and review safety procedures found in the room.  Although it may not always seem that way, there is an excellent chance that most Villagers will sleep through the night and awaken too.

By morning, the night having gone well with no violence in the next room, no stray bullets and whatever else you could fantasize, you are ready, finally, to meet Other Villagers in the Breakfast Room.  Nearly all Motels now feature a breakfast usually labeled “Continental” a hopeful term which has no precise meaning.  You may occasionally see a claim for an “expanded continental breakfast” which may mean one of those waffle irons, or more interestingly, regional favorites such as boiled eggs, biscuits and gravy, sausage, and grits. It is astonishing that some moderately populated Motel can go through, per breakfast period, several gallons of pinkish gray gravy slopped over thick biscuits.  This may correlate to the shower rod retrofitting mentioned earlier.  In most Villages the coffee lacks muscle and all cups, dishes, and utensils are disposable. If you get there too late all you will see is the Breakfast Lady tying up sacks of plastic waste on its way to the landfill.

Regardless of the satisfaction which may come from breaking our nocturnal fast with the victuals offered by Village Authority, the Breakfast Room is where we meet many of our new and fleeting neighbors. To deaden the palpable awkwardness of being suddenly thrust into such a community, the TV is on and whether we like it or not, we all must now see and hear that morning program from New York where everyone is so determinedly cheerful. Being here in the Breakfast Room helps to lessen ruminations over what kind of people stay here and, importantly, what kind must have inhabited the rooms over the years. Although most Villagers are of a modest good cheer and a few will acknowledge us with nods or small tight smiles, typically we all want little to do with the Others; hence the TV set and only low, sporadic conversation in the room. There are small and infrequent violations of personal space as Villagers attempt to fill cereal bowls or attend to the toaster without getting close to Others. Brush the arm of that woman whose hair is in curlers, still wet from her shower, or that man smelling strongly of chlorine from the pool or hot tub and he or she is sure to flinch and there will be murmured apologies for this breach of Breakfast Room protocol. No one wants to be the sole inhabitant of the Motel, but all would like to be left the hell alone while struggling with the cereal dispenser or picking through the donuts.

When breakfast is over guests disappear down the long corridors or into the elevator to return to their rooms. Now is the time when some may encounter the Housekeeping staff and its carts loaded with the stuff that will purge our Very Own Room. The perspective of these “maids” (such a quaint term) on Village Life would be revealing if we could only get them to talk, but they have taken vows of silence enhanced by their inability to speak Village English except for words like “housekeeping” or “towel” which they render in the accents of Haiti, Mexico, or Southeast Asia. But they are of good cheer. Others, not of recent immigrant stock, down on their luck and less well educated, do speak English but are more circumspect regarding guests. Unlike us, mere temporary room inhabitants, they know the Village well and know the nature of the thousands of Phantom Villagers who have come and gone before us.  What is it they know that we do not know and perhaps should never know?

Or would their own Field Reports be much like this one? Allowing for a few outrageous episodes of Village High Comedy or Despairing Tragedy known only to these Housekeepers, most would perhaps agree that the Motel is a premier example of American Culture, a elusive sort of communalism touching more lives than, say, a baseball game or a car wash.

Zoytlow, in an observational aspect,  was driving East across the deserts of southern Arizona and New Mexico on Interstate 10 when a fabulous opportunity presented itself. The road had been labeled the Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway. He had occasionally noted the number of memorials established in communities concerning the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Everywhere Zoytlow had encountered those magnetized ribbons attached to the rear end of cars which variously asked that the troops be supported, that America be blessed, or that all must heed that  “these colors do not run.”  These were motorists pledged never to forget 9/11.  And there were the personalized veteran’s plates that provided information about  the owner of the vehicle:  Purple Heart, Gulf War Veteran, POW-Vietnam, or simply World War II Vet.  The open road was also the way of patriotism.

Columbus, New Mexico is a very small town thirty miles south of the big Interstate  and just above the border with Mexico. Here, on March 16, 1916, Francisco “Pancho” Villa chose to attack the United States of America for reasons related more to Mexican internal politics than the need to vent a spleen or two to the North.  He hoped to embarrass his political enemies by causing the U.S. to retaliate. It worked, sort of. U.S. troops crossed into Mexico and even used airplanes to try and find him, but they failed.  Villa’s raid became one of only handful of actual violations of Fortress America by combatant “outsiders.” This puts him in the same company as the British who burned the White House in 1812, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the “day of infamy” in 1941 and, of course, Osama Bin-Ladin’s horrific masterwork in 2001. Imagine, a little town in New Mexico having a place on the charm bracelet of national trauma?  How had they dealt with it and had they exploited it?  What sights, sounds, and souvenirs awaited the tourist who took that half hour south to reach the scene of this earlier outrage?  It’s said that during the raid one of Villa’s men had shot at the town clock and it had stopped at 4:10 AM.  Was the clock still there and could you buy a t-shirt with the clock on it? How about an ashtray with Villa’s raffish face?  Maybe CDs with songs of the Mexican Revolution and U.S. Army songs of the era? Would there be Pancho-burritos or burgers in honor of General Pershing? Surely little Columbus must be milking the event in a big way. Would Zoytlow’s strictly enforced time limit of 75 minutes for this research be enough to take it all in?

New Mexico State Highway 11, straight and flat for all of the thirty miles to Columbus, failed to have even one sign advertising what must be the town’s singular attraction: its glorious victimhood. Instead Zoytlow was given to ponder one of those Adopt-a-Highway signs which announced that the next mile or so would be cleansed by “ Elizabethans, Arabians, and Belgians.”  Whatever that really meant, the literal possibilities were thickly entertaining just thinking about how those diverse groups (horse people?) would agree to groom the same stretch of highway.  Then came Son-Shine Baptist Church at the crossroads communtiy named Sunshine.  Interesting, but not too interesting.  Finally, a sign that announced that Pancho Villa State Park was so many miles ahead.

Columbus has about 1700 inhabitants, most of them poor and of Mexican descent. From the corner of Broadway and Highway 11 you can see the Mexican border three miles to the south. A glowering black water tank dominated the town and got darker and larger as the sun hung lower in the sky. It was 5:00 PM, a very stupid time to come to town and investigate anything. The historical museum in the old train station was closed, the streets were empty, and a huge silence crushed the landscape. It was as if all sound and all life had been neutralized. Unnerving, of course. There were no obvious places of business except for the (closed) antique shop in the old jail. On the north side of the village stood a Fina gasoline station which, though dimly lit, seemed to be open, but who knew?  Driving along the few streets yielded nothing  on Villa except for the (closed) Pancho Villa Cafe, a windowless affair with a gnome-like caricature of the terrorist above the door.

The sixty-acre Pancho Villa  State Park was once Camp Furlong, the object of the Villista raid in 1916. The park contains a few old buildings of the era, but as these were closed there no reporting their contents though they are said to contain examples of automobiles of the time employed by Pershing’s soldiers, with poor results, to chase  Mexican raiders.  Villa arrived at Camp Furlong at 2:30 A.M. and then turned on the town as an afterthought on the way back to the border. He shot out the windows of most buildings, terrorized the citizens, and then torched the place. Eighteen Columbians were killed though the Army dispatched over fifty of the five hundred Villistas. But none of this was apparent today in Columbus. No memorial statuary, no fountains, not even a plaque to commemorate who had stood here and who had died there.

Only a graduate student charged with providing something of substance in a research paper or thesis can know the unease which Zoytlow was feeling after nearly an hour of feckless driving and walking hither and yon wondering how Columbus remembered and then capitalized on its history. Desperate and with so little time left, Zoytlow headed for the Fina station to interview any available citizen of Columbus, New Mexico

There were two of them, a young man behind the counter and another, older man, hidden on a stool, reading a newspaper. Three impressions of the place came to the inquiring visitor: (1) the store was devoid of any souvenirs related to the High Point of Columbus History, not even a postcard, (2) the two men present did not appear willing to make small talk, much less engage in historical discourse,  and (3) the place was filled with the a rich tenor sound from a radio station from the south, perhaps in Chihuahua,  singing in a most sentimental and heartfelt style. Time to ask questions, but not too many and the interview as such proceeded quickly and in the mixed-language common to the borderlands .

“Buenos tardes, me llamo Zoytlow. About the Villa raid, do you know what happened to the town clock and might it be in the historical museum? El reloj del pueblo?”

“No se….don’t know.”

“Cuando esta abierto el Museo?”

“Todos los dias hasta las cinco de la tarde, but, maybe only afternoon Sunday.”

“ Y quien canta? Jorge Negrete is singing?”

“No, senor, ..singer, he is Pedro Infante!”

What a fool to have come asking questions in a town where they listened with reverence to the great Pedro Infante. Anyone who mistook him for Jorge Negrete was a a gringo imbecile.  But, Mexicans are usually extraordinarily courteous and the visitor was allowed to leave the Fina station and Columbus with dignity intact.

Zoytlow, an observer, drove north, away from a curious little bordertown with a sinister black water tower, too modest to capitalize on its history.

Saturday morning, still abed in Phoenix, the Observer heard a radio whisper that the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona was marking the 75th anniversary of its discovery of the planet Pluto with a public event scheduled for Sunday evening, March 13.  Straight-away, he made immediate plans to be in Flagstaff at the appointed hour.

The celebration was to take the form of an open house from 6:30 until 9:00 PM at the famed Observatory atop Mars Hill in Flagstaff.  Following the strict guidelines governing these Field Reports, one and one-quarter hours (75 min.) were allocated to studying this unusual event. Then unease: would it be fair to allocate such a small amount of time? Perhaps not, but rigorous training helped the Observer recall the discipline required to keep this research in line with previous reports. But was he already too excited to report dispassionately, realizing he had stumbled on a fiesta given for a nasty planet like Pluto? Tough questions.  To make sure of the details, the Observer drove up to the observatory in the late afternoon to confirm the event. This is only good science: a scrupulous preparation for the observation itself.  A young woman was on duty and assured him that there would be different activities presented in an open house format; that is, the public could show up anytime between 6:30 and 9:00 PM and still enjoy the entire program. Boorish though it was, the question needed asking: would the activities involve refreshments?  “Absolutely not!”   was the answer followed by “an observatory cannot risk sticky fingerprints on the exhibits or equipment.” This Observer had his own reasons for being disappointed at this bit of news, but not for the obvious reason, (free) food. No, he wanted to see, in detail, down to the color of any possible cupcakes or punch what kind of a party astronomers would give to honor the discovery of a dismal planet.

March 13th was also the 150th birthday of Percival Lowell who had founded the observatory in 1894 and set its direction to find a “Planet X.” Lowell hypothesized that a “Trans-Neptunian Planet” would be found, but at the time of his death in 1916, it had eluded him. Later, in 1929 and 1930, a young astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, again took up the challenge and succeeded in finding Pluto on February 18, 1930. The announcement was withheld from our own planet until March 13th so that careful verification of data would protect the Observatory from howling derision.  The worst thing that can happen to astronomers is to discover something that does not exist.  It is very hard on your job mobility. Clyde Tombaugh took no chances. You can tell this by his photographs: there he sits before the eyepiece of some great astral tube, dressed in a three piece suit, nicely groomed and wearing those terrific round and dark-rimmed spectacles that simply everyone with a brain wanted to wear during those times. But  let us return to the Field Report.

When this Observer returned to the Observatory (hmm…) for the open house at  7:30 only a horned crescent moon hung in the black sky above Mars Hill, but there were more than a few clouds in evidence. Inside the lobby of the Education Building a poster announced the events of the evening, but viewings of the sky would not be among them. Unfavorable conditions. Instead, visitors were directed to displays, equipment, photographs and the like here and in an older building, the Rotunda. But first, a multimedia presentation in an adjoining lecture hall. The Observatory was unveiling, for the first time, a presentation which would henceforth orient visitors to the place by telling them something about its history and present work. A slim and well-spoken Lowellian circled around the lobby and encouraged guests to enter an adjoining lecture hall.  Perhaps 25 did so. It should be noted that the open house was not well-attended and most of those present had that wan academic look. The Observer, setting aside objectivity, felt a pang of sadness for Pluto and its handlers.

The lights dimmed and the screen was filled with projected views of the Universe moving either towards or away from us. It was hard to tell. Either way, this silent cosmic floating could cause a loneliness and introspection.  About this time a small child (one of the very few present) in the lobby briefly began making a sort of baboon-like whooping sound, quite joyful really, but annoying as hell.  This was in sharp contrast to the New Age crooning (mainly ahhing and even oohing) by Enya which had been chosen to musically accompany the images on the screen. Was the audience was being manipulated into a mood of powerlessness? We are mere specks after all. Then unexpectedly, one by one, images of  jovial scientists floated across the background of distant stars and galaxies while subtitles identified them and their current projects. Pluto was not among them.  Seventy people, from astronomers to clerical staff, lens grinders and groundskeepers all took their turn floating across in a heavenly parade. Enya’s crooning never let up and then, fifteen minutes later, it was over. But not one word about Pluto, or if there was, it must have been cancelled out by this Observer’s own sense of miniscule insignificance following the Big Bang.

Then it was off to the Rotunda where Percival Lowell had toiled. On display, many lovely brass instruments for measuring this and that and finally, the thing that Clyde Tombaugh had been looking into when Pluto showed up. It was not a telescope!  What a disappointment to the general public to learn that the elusive Trans-Neptunian, Pluto, was not plucked from the sky with a huge spyglass. One by one the guests solemnly peered into the blink comparator that Tombaugh had used for months 75 years ago, comparing photographic images that, at last, revealed the speck that was Pluto. Looking through the device leads to a sobering appreciation, not of Pluto, but of the demands of the scientific method and how infrequently the rewards are as intoxicating as they were for young Tombaugh that evening. As the tale is told, the young man had to re-photograph the sky as one part of the verification process, but as the sky was obscured that evening he went down the hill to see a movie. It happened to be “The Virginian” with Gary Cooper. To quote from the Lowell newsletter, “This movie, incidentally, was based on the first Western ever written, and was published in 1902, the year that [Percival] Lowell first mentioned his belief in a ninth planet.”  What a strange and unexpected notion!  Here was a vision of a Big Bang so immense that it could encompass both hard science and softer popular culture. Only a Supreme Intelligence could have wrought that. Again, one can be reduced to a speck of miniscule significance, right?

It has been already mentioned that there were no more than forty of the truly curious on hand for the celebration and when this Observer returned from the Rotunda most of them had already descended on a sheet cake being cut into squares by two soft-spoken, even reticent ladies.  FORBIDDEN CAKE!!  Capable of gumming up the machinery of planetary discovery!  Did its presence suggest a schism at Lowell, those hedonists who were for introducing party food against those who were of a more severe tradition?  But to return to the cake: this Observer had hoped that describing such an object would have put some frosting (sorry!) on what would otherwise be just another dull Field Report in the annals of science. What would a Pluto-Torte look like? Would it say “Happy Birthday, Pluto” or “Happy 75th” or  simply “Eureka!”   But this white cake which would unlock these secrets of astronomical minds had been mostly consumed. How had the cake been decorated?  One of the ladies thought a moment and said she could not recall, the other one told me that it had been decorated with green representations of Martians. This seemed a rather tasteless, if inadvertent, dig at the great benefactor Percival Lowell himself who had once, in 1905 or so, published his erroneous convictions about life on Mars. The cake itself had a layer of pudding which made it the worst possible choice to serve in a serious Observatory intent on protecting itself from earthly stickiness.

It was now 8:35 and only enough time to ask a few questions and inspect the gift shop. Here were the usual sweatshirts that glowed in the dark, educational toys, wonderful books on astronomy, and many star charts for those who wished to become more informed stargazers.  Again, there was very little to suggest that Pluto had been discovered here. Or its moon, Charon, discovered in 1988.   Where were the coffee mugs with the planet pictured on it, despite the comparative ugliness of the little plant?   How about a poster of the ninth planet? A baseball cap, at least, with the honored lump on it?  Nothing, nada, nichts!  The only thing for sale was a cloth patch: “Lowell Observatory. Discovery of Pluto.1930” which could be sewed on your sleeve. And who has the time do a thing like that?

Time to go. The horned moon was more directly overhead and the sky cleared as it did not for Tombaugh 75 years ago. Too late to crank up the big old Clarke telescope and have the public peer upwards. These things take time and the party was over, the guests straggling out into the parking lot and descending Mars Hill, one automobile at a time

Beaches and bars coexist easily.  In San Diego, California this is no less true than elsewhere and perhaps more so since this city with its miles of beaches for strolling, surfing, swimming and just sitting is also home to numerous colleges and serves as an important base for the U.S. Navy. The Observer became interested in what a bar near the beach might yield as a focus for Field Research because he passed by them on and noted their considerable number and variety. One, the Lahaina, was more deck than bar and was always crowded with a tanned and muscular crowd  drinking out of soft plastic containers in deference to barefoot clientele. Another, The Open Bar, was a short block off the beach featuring a deck usually crowded with heavily tattooed and pierced hairy men and not-so-wary looking women. But which of these would offer the best results for an hour and fifteen minutes of careful and unbiased analysis?

Enter the Informant, a person who knows bars on the West Coast and who proved to be a capable advisor for the critical stage of picking the site as well as designing some of the methodology. Caveat: The Informant became a necessary interpreter during the part of the observation phase as well; so much so, that inevitably he may be folded into the thicker textures of this little study. It’s all a bit hazy on this point.

Since there are always those skeptics who will question whether useful research can be conducted on a site where alcohol is present, let us say at the outset that both the Informant and the Observer consumed no more than 36 ounces of beer each. If this research were only about beer, we would have to say that the bottled beer, Pura Vida, from Costa Rica was too ordinary for comment, the Guinness was disappointing and did not deliver its potential even after a great show of microscopic bubbles, the Newcastle seemed too flat, and only the Sierra Vista Pale Ale was adequate and met expectations. But this research is not about beer though hindsight requires the admission that perhaps that would have been a better choice of subject matter.

The observation took place on Sunday, March 6, 2005 at [the] Beachcomber (known locally simply as “The ‘Comber”) which is located on South Mission Blvd. The time spent in formal, rigorous research at The Comber was between 4:50 and 6: 05 PM. South Mission has other bars along it and all of them share the bar/beach duality since the Pacific Ocean is less than a short block away and can actually be seen from many of these establishments, particularly if they face west. In the case of the Pennant, a bar directly south of The ‘Comber this is enhanced because that bar’s principal feature is a deck on the second floor. The Informant and this Observer toured the Pennant briefly in order to verify that a patron could peer from the Pennant into The ‘Comber and perhaps make a shrewd decision to move from one to the other if circumstances so dictated. It was not clear what those circumstances would be, though the Informer assured me that at times the line waiting to get into The ‘Comber might stretch back along the outside perhaps a block or so. Critical mass, a vague notion if there ever was one, is the only explanation for this phenomenon.  On dense occasions, the most you could expect was standing on a ‘Comber 16 inch square floor tile with one other person. California real estate being what it is, you could not expect much more space than that for the small amount you would spend on a beer. But this afternoon was not one of those occasions, else it would have been impossible to note anything except great noise and heat.

As to The ‘Comber itself, there are worse bars and better ones. If a grade of 0 signifies intense worries about one’s health and safety and 10 a place with the antiseptic appeal of a three-star hotel bar, The “Comber checked in at a 2.7. Was this place being remodeled or slowly dismantled? Many of the walls were a patchwork of particle board possibly affixed to hide something even less inviting. Behind the bar sat ten plastic coolers filled with bottled beer for there were no refrigerators here, just ice in coolers as if the whole enterprise might shift to the back of a truck.  Where did the tap beer come from? Perhaps beneath our feet there was a chamber for that purpose but who would want to find out? The bar itself is a rectangular affair with 23 stools and a few small, high tables closer to the narrow windows which faced the street.  Most of the clientele, on busy nights, would be standing.  Four televisions were silently at work in each corner but no one seemed interested. Towards the rear, away from the windows, a surfboard with the word “Budweiser” hung on a wall overlooking the sole pool table. In the dark recesses of the rear of the bar were small utility rooms  where glasses were washed or stored and where one would find toilets. There was no impression of the women’s toilet possible except to note that it did have a door.  The men’s did not, only a grey plastic curtain shielding patrons from possible observation. The Informant was quite sure that this particular room had once featured a plain trough, but these days three urinals had replaced it.  Overall, The “Comber shared many features with those dingy bars in rural Minnesota where there was a disinclination to plump up the infrastructure: the place would be a gold mine no matter how the owner maintained it.

This was a Sunday afternoon on a beautiful day and that anyone was in a bar at all recalled the quote about millions yearning for immortality who cannot find anything to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  Whatever the nexus between this place and the problem of immortality may be, it’s like the question of who ordered two urinals to replace the trough:  beyond the scope of this research. And yet, as we all know, a decent concern for mortality and its attendant existential dread can seldom be absent from the affairs of humankind.

Some 25-40 persons were present during the research period,  perhaps half seemed to be over fifty and were in many cases probably members of the OMBAC, the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club. Their particular type of athleticism was not clear, but judging by some of the memorabilia on the walls, at least some of it was due to OTL, or Over The Line, a game unknown to this Observer, originating fifty years earlier in San Diego. It seemed to combine some features of baseball (bat and ball) tennis (hitting the ball into zones) and soccer (the fielder having something of the challenge of a goalie in anticipating where the ball might be hit). Each team was made up of three persons and traditionally these teams were distinguished by their intensely lewd and perverse  names. It is beyond the objectives of this research to have investigated this, but it is part of the lore of OTL that it cannot be televised simply because the names of the teams are so highly objectionable and would unquestionably require large fines to by paid by the offending networks  A striking photograph behind our place at the bar showed the game being played on the deck of an aircraft carrier (the “Comber is popular with Navy folk) and two others showing OTL tee-shirts being held by people in Africa and on The Great Wall by Chinese soldiers. Still another photo suggested a  strong connection between this little known game and large-breasted women wearing thong bathing outfits and posing shamelessly, some would say. This is another mystery which cannot be brought to light in a mere hour and fifteen minutes, and isn’t the purpose of True Research to frame questions for those researchers who will follow?

So, if OTL players had selected this bar as a watering hole, then surely there should be something as rowdy as the pierced and tattooed bikers were staging a mile north at The Open Bar where one may see big men roar at each other like bull walruses. But this was not the case here.  These old boys, most of them with their ladies, were tame. The were without the tusks and goofy noses of true bulls down the street. They were good fellows and gentlemen.

More noise came from five maidens  singing something like  “doop doop doo” (this is an approximation)  inspired by some tune played at their request by the disc jockey, a friendly chap who appeared halfway through the research period at 5:25 PM.   The maidens were seated around one of the small high table on stools. Each one had long straight hair down to mid-back. Each one had a fashionably short top and low cut jeans and so exposing  a goodly six inches of tanned torso.. When there was, however, briefly, no music to inspire them to jump off the stools and dance among themselves they were hunched over their drinks. Should you pass by them at this time of hyper-animated conversation, you could not help but note that each has a tattoo at waist level on the posterior.  Mostly these tattoos are symmetrical in nature. A butterfly alighting exactly on the spine. A Moorish design reminding one of the reluctance of Islamic artists to depict other than the abstract.  An arrangement of flowers.  A more involved scene suggestive of a fairy tale, perhaps something out of the Brothers Grimm by way of Disney. These were among the designs which presented themselves easily and without the need to become excessively intrusive as an observer.  I should add that to assay butt art  (or less bluntly stated, the art of the supragluteal) is best done by a disinterested observer when the medium is drunk.  What  had brought these maidens here?  Clear it was that they were enjoying themselves and adding disproportionately to the communal din.˛  The Informer,  apparently disinterested in such phenomena simply noted the category “beach girls” when their yelping momentarily distracted him from the micro-bubbled transformations in his freshly drawn glass of Guinness.

If these two archetypes, the aging, OTL athlete and the tattooed maidens a.k.a. “beach girls” were dominant in The ‘Comber  during the time frame of the research, it must be noted that there were a few variants as well such as the Androgynous Guy who entered  with dark glasses offsetting his bright-blond hair and  garish blue Hawaiian shirt.  As he later happened to stand near us at the bar one could also note gold earrings as part of his ensemble. He told the Informer that his shirt was perforated (small, imperceptible holes everywhere) to help him stay cool and that it came from Quicksilver, an important outfitter for surfers. And that, as tangential as it was, together with the Budweiser surfboard, was the only reference to surfing in The ‘Comber during the period under investigation.  This is not a surfer bar, more a place for OTL veterans, their ladies, and the beach girls. Quite in a category to themselves was the forty-something couple at a table staring at a sheet of paper which they must have picked up while looking for real estate. Charming South Mission Condo! was the heading and towards the bottom of the sheet, $525,000. Sobering! No wonder their beers had scarcely been touched.

Perhaps it was the low ceiling with its particle board treatment that captured all sounds and let them hang there, making talk and eavesdropping next to impossible. The burly bartender, normally the expected source of small talk, was working alone and too busy drawing beer and mixing drinks.  No alternative except to listen in as best one could despite the din and the music coming out of the two oversized towers of Peavey speakers. You could make out words such as “hey!” or “sure!” and even fragments such as the sleek seal-maiden who, having ordered a Pacifico called out “limon, limon, limon!” to no one in particular. The longest sustained communication recorded was something about “old Ronny Reagan took these Marines, see, and….”  with the response “you haven’t seen me at my best!”  Whatever these fragments mean, at the very least they support the likely conclusion that The ‘Comber is a happy bar and that its patrons have a tentative answer for the problem of existential dread.

Time was up!  The Observer cannot risk having these Field Reports become a source of derision and so the time frame of 1hr. and 15 min. will be, it must be(!)  scrupulously observed.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  The first (known) Field Report and one that would set some of

the  parameters of what would follow over the years. Note the curious manner in which

time limits for observation were determined. What is not clear here is whether the writer

was attempting to ingratiate himself with the humanities or the social sciences.

Oh, shining University of California at Berkeley, great compass point of American higher education. One must go there and in the same sprit that Harvard must be visited on the other coast, a mix of curiosity and dread.  Who has not heard of Berkeley?  UC Berkeley! We have heard that you are the hated despoiler of youth, vanguard of all American colleges, object of awkward love and jealous hate by your sister institutions in this Golden State. Besides, it was time, after months of wanderings, to step on academic turf and let the ooze work itself between the toes and into the senses. But, being realists, this visitor wore shoes anyway.

A dull sky and little hope of sunshine this 24th day of February. A good afternoon to cross the bay and all those hidden seismic fault lines. Even the Richmond bridge is being retrofitted to withstand the shocks of quakes which must  come. Soon we are there, the solid ground of Shattuck Avenue and a parking space on the edge of this massive campus, this fortress   There are coins enough to feed the meter for one hour and fifteen minutes; that will have to do.

Ah, Berkeley, you do impress! Hills with groves of monster eucalyptus trees, themselves dwarfed by redwoods and flanked by lesser species not recognized. Hills with cream or  stone pharaonic buildings carved with the names of the great luminaries of the institution and this state: Bancroft, Hearst, Gianini or the solid disciplines, Botany, Physics, and so on. And so on. The map at the edge of the campus shows us that we must make choices. What shall we see?  Oh, ho! Sproul Plaza!  Rings a bell. Yes, we will go there, there must be a marker for the place that changed universities, changed the thinking of students and cast them into new and often difficult relationships with their institutions. Ushered  in whatever era we live in now, whatever name it has. Changed our lives, for chrissake!  Hail to you, you Berkeley are the volcano from which flowed much of that business in the Sixties, right?  You are Vatican and you are Mecca.. Are you not the Big Bang?

Halfway up the first hill, the Free Speech Movement Cafe!  So they have not forgotten. It’s a small place serving a limited menu. Inside and out, students are chatting and studying. Oddly, a piece by Brahms , barely audible, is whimpering thinly out of speakers in the ceiling.  On the wall are photo murals of the events of the autumn of 1964 when a philosophy student, Savio challenged the University to allow use of campus space for the open expression of political viewpoints. Mario Savio, sometimes seen as the progenitor of all campus radicalism died in 1996, according to an information kiosk explaining these events. Prominent on one of the walls are the words Mario spoke at a demonstration on December 3, 1964. (And where were we all on that day?)

There is a time  when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you  can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve  got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people  who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

This reader is smitten by that combination of “machine” and “odious,” but half wishing he had said “odoriferous.” UC Berkeley seems no longer to be at odds with his words. At least not in the environs of the Free Speech Movement Cafe. Here are written expressions of pride which appear to say, take note all you other places of higher ed: This Is Where It All Started!

On to Sproul Plaza itself. Where did Mario stand and utter those words. Where were the 800 standing (or sitting-in) who were arrested that day? “Largest mass-arrest in California history.”  Near the Plaza itself sits an old man playing a wailing Chinese violin and hoping to sell CDs . Students were crossing the Plaza, not in great numbers. Where is everyone? No one seems to be obese on this campus and all are dressed in the same drab colors of the pale stone used for the buildings. Are they the descendants of Savio?  The visitor inspects the bulletin boards and scans the student newspaper (a grave disappointment).  It reveals anger because the janitorial uniforms are made by cheap labor in impoverished countries. Here and there a whiff of socialism. Same old problem with military recruiters coming to campus.  In the restroom, what graffiti exists is pedestrian, ordinary and tired.  Something about true knowledge is about knowing how little you know or something to that effect.No time to inspect  all the restrooms. Perhaps more cutting edge stuff is penned elsewhere.

Here is the bookstore and through the ceiling speakers the Beetles are imploring shoppers to “Love Me Do.”  Oh, Berkeley now you will show your standards are! Aisles of history courses!  How do the High Priests do it? Some guy requires a dozen texts, many of them hardbacks. Really, how do they get away with this? Maybe this is why everyone seems skinny and subdued here. Nearby a student center for Latinos and another for Blacks, but it is the Asian-Americans who dominate here.  Everyone seems to be on a cell phone at the same time. All those little waves of unseen energy cutting through us as we walk among them.

Berkeley, did you and early Anthropologist Kroeber not shelter the last California Indian, famous Ishi,  in a museum here on campus? That would be something to see, where the melancholy story of the last “wild” Indian in California ended after his people collapsed. Turns out that in those days, c. 1916 the museum was in San Francisco across the bay. Maybe his ashes are near, but no., they have been repatriated to the foothills of the Sierras, so they say. What else can we do here?  We dash to the another palace to see if there is any trace of a friend who taught here for many years to some acclaim.  But there isn’t and since now time’s up! down on Shattuck Avenue we have no further time to ponder how fame evaporates. Five minutes left on that ticking meter, barely enough time to lift our eyes again to these dense hills: envied, loathed, celebrated, reviled. Good-bye, University of California at Berkeley. Thanks for the sights and  sound and the faint smell of eucalyptus. Enjoyed the visit, mostly.