Family Vacation
(Yes, KDD was Five Once)
Traffic Jam
It’s a hot Friday afternoon, some day in July, some year in the 1960’s. I’m squished between my two brothers in the backseat of our 69 Impala wagon. Dad’s in front with a can of beer between his legs. Mom and Dad are both smoking like chimneys. The Giants are on the radio. We’re sitting in traffic on the Bay Bridge. Stopped dead still. Heat. Cigarette smoke. Burnt coffee. Exhaust. Warm beer.
All our vacations started like this. 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, sitting in traffic on the Bay Bridge, me and my brothers throwing half-sucked Lifesavers out the windows at other cars for kicks. The parents were too oblivious to us to know that we were committing small acts of candy terrorism. All our vacations were to one destination - Lake Berryessa. We never went anywhere else when I was a kid. Just Lake Berryessa. Always Lake Berryessa. I never went on a single other vacation except for our one trip to Disneyland when I was fourteen years old, my childhood long since gone.
But that’s what it was like in Pacifica CA in the blue collar neighborhood where I grew up. That’s what people did. They went to Lake Berryessa or they went to Clear Lake. Carpenters. Auto mechanics. Plumbers. Ironworkers. That’s what the dads were on my street. My friend Cassandra’s parents were high school teachers though, and they were like some alien species. Her dad didn’t even have any tools in the garage. Not only that, he had an office in the basement with books on the shelves. And he listened to weird old record tube things. Talk about a freak. How could a dad not drive a truck, drink beer, and go to the lake? That’s what dads did. Cassandra and her family went to freaky places like London England on vacation. I didn’t understand London England. Could you water ski in London England? Did you get burning red rash in your armpits from floating on an inner tube too long in London England? Did you have to put white goop on the end of your nose so it wouldn’t get sunburned in London England? I still don’t know. I still haven’t been to London England.
Giant Pickles, Missle Pops, Pee and Puke
It was a long hot drive to Lake Berryessa. Crammed between my two brothers in a car full of smoke and heat. The drive up to the lake was like an endless exercise in hairpin turns. Back and forth. Back and forth. Me being squished between my brothers. Halfway up the winding hill, I always had to pee. Halfway up the winding hill, I always had to barf.
“I have to go pee,” I would declare from my squished place in the backseat.
“We’re not stopping. You’re going to have to hold it,” said Dad from the front seat cracking open another can of Bud.
I remember once I had to pee ferociously. I was five almost six years old and wearing my favorite turquoise blue bell bottom pants. My first pair of bell bottoms. When my Grandma bought them for me, I thought she was talking to the lady in the store about my butt when she said, “Wouldn’t she look adorable in a pair of those bell bottoms?” I mean, you know, I thought she meant my bottom was shaped like a bell.
So I was wearing my favorite bell bottoms and I had to pee so bad, but Mom and Dad wouldn’t stop the car. So I just peed on the seat, letting it out a little at a time all over my favorite pants. All over myself. When we got to Pridmore’s where we always stopped for more beer, I ran into the bathroom and barfed. Then I tried to clean myself up. No one noticed. In fact no one ever knew I peed myself in my turquoise bell bottoms until today when I’m telling all of you.
Mom and Dad liked to hang out at the bar at Pridmore’s while we kids looked at the minnows and sucked on Missile Pops. A jar of enormous football sized pickles sat on the bar. I always had to have one of those pickles, wrap it in a napkin like a baby, then suck on it until I forgot about it, leaving it to dry out on the backseat of the station wagon. Dad always yelled at me for leaving my pickle on the car seat. But the car seat was already full of my pee anyway, what was a little pickle juice going to hurt?
Every time Dad would say I could have a pickle only if I ate the whole thing. Every time I left the hollow carcass of the pickle on the back seat. That’s just how things were on Friday evenings on the way to Lake Berryessa.
American Cheese
We never ate American Cheese at home, but American Cheese was a total staple at Lake Berryessa. This is because we always went to Lake Berryessa with my step-uncle Jerry and his four weird kids who ate weird food. I mean, Uncle Jerry is the one who liked to give us kids cartons of Marlboros and Zippos for Christmas, remember? We used American Cheese for fish bait to catch bluegills. Nothing attracts a bluegill like a piece of American Cheese. It was illegal to use American Cheese for bait, but we did it anyway. Uncle Les liked to listen to Johnny Cash on the radio and tell me about how Johnny Cash was in prison. I always thought I’d be joining Johnny Cash soon because I was using American Cheese for fish bait. Since I was in love with Johnny Cash, that would have been fine with me. I mean being locked in a prison cell with him and everything.
We put American Cheese on salami sandwiches with potato chips and mustard. We sliced hot dogs in half and stuffed them with American Cheese then wrapped the hot dogs with bacon, stabbed them with toothpicks, and burnt them black on the oil drum grill my dad and uncle made. We cut out mustaches from American Cheese and stuck them to our faces. We lined the picnic bench with American Cheese to see how long it would take to melt into one long piece. American Cheese has many uses.
My favorite part of fishing with American Cheese was catching a fish and sliding the metal ring through its mouth and gill so I could hook it on the strand with the rest of the fish. Something about the way that the metal slid through the mouth, resurfaced out the gill, the fish eyes looking out at me while I did this. Then I’d just watch the fish in the bucket for a while, Then take them up to camp, slice their heads off, gut them and cook them. Never ate them though. I just liked to catch them, string them, and slice them open. I was a weird kid too. I guess.
Lake Berryessa Garlic Bread
Seems like I can’t get off the garlic bread thing. We have a term in our house that we still use today. Lake Berryessa Garlic Bread. We had this old beat-to-shit trailer with an old beat-to-shit stove in it. My mom liked to make garlic bread to have with our burnt-to-shit hotdog-cheese-bacon atrocities. Problem was that mom and the rest of the adults were usually already on their way to drunk come dinner time. Problem was that the broiler on the stove only had one setting - INFERNO. So every single time, a giant black cloud of smoke would funnel out of the trailer. All the adults would be sitting at the picnic table with their cans of beer, and all of them would shout “Goddammit! Shit! The garlic bread!” Mom ran into the trailer, armed with oven mitts, only to emerge with black smoking loaves that were supposed to be garlic bread. Happened every time. That’s why when I make garlic bread, I don’t dare ever leave the oven. I turn my back for just the slightest second, and it’s Lake Berryessa Garlic Bread. Black smoke and ash everywhere.
(Dad in The Boat)
Boat and Beer
We had an old beat-to-shit boat to go with the old beat-to-shit trailer and the old beat-to-shit stove. All my friends had new fancy “speed boats.” Not us. My dad and Uncle Jerry had this dinosaur boat from the 1950s or something. They always had to diddle with it to get it running. The boat always smelled like gas and was always running out of gas. We’d take it out to go skiing and inevitably get stuck out in the middle of the lake when the engine stopped working. All of us kids had to help paddle to the nearest island where my dad and my uncle would dink with wrenches and screwdrivers and say fuck and shit a lot and drink a lot of beer. Me and my brothers and cousins played in the mud and jumped off the back of the boat to wash it off. My dad and Uncle Jerry always got the boat running again, but by that time it was just beer time. We loaded back into the boat and headed back to camp for a night of beer and smoke (BBQ smoke, Garlic Bread Smoke, Cigarette Smoke).
I saved the metal tabs off the beer cans and wove them into giant spider webs for my bedroom. One of the webs was big enough to cover my entire ceiling. By the time I was eight, I got to drink beer with the grown-ups. My dad was always the one to teach me to take care of myself. Like when kids picked on me, his standard line was, “Someone hits you, hit ‘em back. Someone says they’re going to kick your ass, kick their ass first.” That was pretty much my dad’s philosophy. Still is. So his line with alcohol consumption was, “Drink all you want, just don’t come crying to me if you feel like puking.” So he gave me my first shot of scotch when I was five and let me start drinking beer freely at Lake Berryessa when I was eight.
One day I sat outside on the bench by myself and drank can after can after can of Budweiser until finally I just lay down on the bench and passed out in the sun. I woke up three hours later with the worst sunburn of my life. No one noticed. No one asked. I spent the rest of the vacation peeling like a lizard.
Lake Berryessa Revisited
So many stories to tell about Lake Berryessa and my family vacations, but I’ll leave it at these for now. I will say that I’ve returned to the lake many times as an adult. Brought Charlie when we first started dating. Showed him where the Zodiac Killer gunned down a couple of lovers. Fucked him on a picnic table.
Funny that Lake Berryessa in summer was even hotter than Tucson. Temperatures were way over 100 everyday. So hot the street tar would melt and get stuck to our feet. Now here I am spending my summers in the heat again. Maybe that’s why I’m thinking about Lake Berryessa today. Who knows.
(Mom, Me, and My Brothers)