Journey

Norfolk or California, sometimes the only way through is...around

I’m thinking about Rat Face, the cashier at our old local supermarket in Cussac France. Focusing on her disdain, her bad moods and foul temper was a convenient barometer of life in general in our small rural village. A tight smile from this young woman (was she young, was she old—it was impossible to tell! I can see her still, the red-dyed hair, thin brows and large eyes that usually narrowed at us but occasionally widened in what felt like a signal from deep inside the shell the job had turned her into, a beseeching message “get me out of here!” I hope she’s happy now, playing with her grandchildren or raising goats, though since they raised the retirement age in France those days may still be a little ways off), a softening or slight nod could make our day.

I’m thinking about Rat Face as we grapple with her Norfolk equivalent, a bossy fear-inducing woman who works at the local cafe. It’s not her fault that this spot is the definition of “crampy” —a word I’ve heard Eric use in referring to a certain type of establishment with fussy furniture, uptight signage and service, where you’re not exchanging money for food and drink so much as recreating a visit to an elderly relative who’s almost willing you to break, stain or damage something. It’s a rite of passage in life to survive one of those visits as a child and seems to be a similar rite when moving to a new town— a game of chicken with a local establishment, who will blink, break or cry Uncle first?

The initial step to putting a foot wrong is to say “Is this your place?” - I know from working in the bookstore/bar all those years this is shorthand for “You’re clearly too old to just be a slacker employee so you must be the proprietor.” The comment has a way of making you the too-old-to-be-a slacker employee simultaneously feel like a loser and inflate with pride that whatever your straitened circumstances, you still have an air of authority or else they’d assume you were there on a work/release kind of scheme. It’s actually a compliment, the customer wanting it to be your place so they can share in their enjoyment of this creation of yours.

I’m just telling you all this because we gave the local cafe with the mean lady another try today. Shabby chic is the decor, and I think the place does look cute. Moroccan rugs and chintz, antique chairs and blankets abound. But break the rules at your peril. There’s something about the paragraphs-long explanation of store hours, food ordering protocol, how staff are to be treated and how long to allow for food orders to be filled that invite misbehavior and infractions. Why is it so hard to just give people some food and drink? Is the general public so miserable and clueless, suspicious and ill-mannered they need to be schooled in Cafe Etiquette 101?

Welcome to Norfolk. Maybe because it’s a big holiday destination for retirees who rarely leave home, ground rules need to be laid down. I don’t know. I just came back from America where the president is an evil clown, the infrastructure is crumbling, the roads are full of potholes BUT even a simple coffee and a sandwich transaction can be such a delight, you want to move in to a random cafe for the rest of your life. This happened for me time and again on the east and west coast, in California—kindness, grace in coffee shops and Mexican restaurants and diners, Starbucks and unique places:

“If that’s a five ounce pour I’d like to see eight!” I say to the bartender at Newark Airport, when he places a brimming glass of wine in front of me. “Jersey baby! That’s how we do it here.”

“How are you today? Thank you so much for coming in. What can I get you - oh excellent choice, I LOVE that sandwich,” says the young woman at Journey coffee shop in Vacaville. Maybe she says the exact same thing to the person after me, but when she calls my name “Order for AMY! Hope you enjoy it!” and places my lunch in front of me, I just want to hug her for her enthusiasm.

Now I’m writing down what I remember from touring out in California:

Flying into SFO at sunset, a lot less stressful than Los Angeles’s huge airport. Within an hour I’ve collected my suitcase and guitar, traveled by airport train to the car rental facility and driven out into the night in a great big Jeep Grand Cherokee. I pull up Chuck Prophet’s Temple Beautiful to listen to, and cruise RIGHT THROUGH San Francisco on my way to the Bay Bridge and up and north of the city. I hear tracks by Dan Stuart, Tom Heyman, the Minus 5. I love when that happens, the streams know me. Warning signs all over the car rental counters proclaimed DO NOT LEAVE ANYTHING IN YOUR VEHICLE IN SF (and I remember this from last visit…was it six years ago already?) and though friends have offered places to stay, I don’t have the energy to deal with the big city. I just need a clean comfy bed and room to explode the contents of my suitcase so I can regroup for the next round of shows; tune up my detuned guitar, run through songs solo.

When I arrive at a Holiday Inn Express up the road in a small town I’ve never heard of, it’s ten thirty at night and dinner will have to come from the refrigerator in the lobby. I can honestly say I’ve never tried a Hot Pocket - until now. I don’t know what it even tasted like, just…it was hot and - required no utensils. Usually when you ask at the desk in these places, a spoon is the best they can do. So the Hot Pocket made sense. A cute little bottle of screw top wine made things fancy.

I slept well and woke up super-early, willing the nearby Target to open so I could find myself a cheap beach bag to decant my clothes into as the behemoth suitcase I brought as a storage space on wheels was too unwieldy to drag in and out of places. My plan of flying direct from the west coast back to England meant anything I wanted to take home with me had to make this interim stop…for two weeks.

Maybe that was the hardest thing about this trip—I kept forgetting where I live. There just haven’t been enough times returning there to our house in Norfolk for it to stay fixed firmly in my mind. That might have added to my enjoyment of being on the road. I was floating, attaching easily to wherever I landed. That’s right, I was a butterfly! I don’t think I’ve ever thought of myself that way before but, yep - it fits. Except I need more colorful clothing.

A butterfly in black - in Mary and Marcel’s Cowboy Room

Chico, I found my feet in Marcel and Mary’s living room. After a week of playing in a combo, being up there alone was bracing, terrifying. So intimate, but I got the hang of it again. I always love playing in Chico, and find myself fascinated by the assorted women and men I meet after the gig. We had so much fun hanging out talking, eating and drinking after that I moved a little slow getting out of the house the next day.

I decided this day off would take me to Davis. In another lifetime I’m a therapist or even a bank manager living in Davis. It’s just such a comfy California place. When I checked into my hotel which was perfectly located right in the middle of the cute little downtown/university area, the desk clerk alerted me to the trains that would be passing right out back regularly. She gave me ear plugs just in case. I loved the sound of the trains! I welcomed them. I thought maybe I could get some work done in Davis—had been hoping I could get back into my book revisions—but it wasn’t to be, I just needed to walk around in the perfect temperature outside (I can imagine it gets very hot here but springtime was perfection after snow a few days before in upstate New York). I stopped in the local bookstore and bought a book, something I try to do in every town I visit to thank them for their service. I thought of going to a movie, there was one showing called Sacramento which felt very meta as Sacramento is just a few miles away, but instead I ended up in the local wine bar and had some nice wine and food. A really interesting woman sat down next to me, an actress and film producer who lives in Mumbai, we ended up chatting for a while and it reminded me how great it is to travel solo-it’s lonely sometimes but you talk to strangers and even the ones I don’t talk to I eavesdrop on so intently I feel like I’ve gotten to know them.

Next day I stopped at the same coffee place again in Vacaville, they made great food and coffee and had the nicest staff - Journey it was called. I wondered if there was some religion or cult involved, that’s how nice they were - I don’t think so though. There was a nail salon right nearby and I got a pedicure. The ladies were so sweet, we had some laughs and I relaxed in the chair, one of those pulsing massage ones. I felt ready to take on Berkeley.

Fred and Linda’s cool house

Fred Dodsworth had gotten in touch via email to let me know if I ever needed a Bay Area gig he’d be happy to host. It felt worth a try as I was worried about getting enough people in the club gig I’d been working on. Fred and his wife Linda live in a perfect Berkeley house, they’d rented a load of chairs, had food and drink. I got there early to wrangle some kind of sound from the PA equipment, everything was looking up, plenty of tickets sold and folks showing up and then - the PA would not work. The room was full of an expectant audience and - oh god I was sweating. I forgot to mention, my daughter and her fiancé Patrick had come to the show. They’d flown up from LA and were going to travel with me for the next few gigs. I could feel my daughter feeling my panic from across the room, so I was trying to calm myself down to keep Hazel from worrying for me while helpful people at the front shouted out “change the cords!” and “Is it the mic?” all a kind of sound system group therapy session. I wished Fred’s Berkeley living room had a trap door beneath me so I could just disappear into a crawl space below the house, where I would land softly in the dirt, soldier crawl out onto the street in front, dust myself off and sheepishly stroll away into the beautiful springtime dusk to score a bar stool at Chez Panisse or some fancy only-in-California eatery where I’d spend the money I was going to have to refund everyone just eating and drinking myself into a stupor.

Instead, I did what had to be done: unplugged my guitar, moved the microphone away and played the first set acoustically. Talk about intimate, this is as raw as things can be. For me the microphone is my soulmate, we work together. I don’t have a loud voice, I love the subtlety of a guitar, a voice and a microphone. But I had to play and project as best I could and if they couldn’t hear everything they had to at least feel it. I think it worked.

After the first set I felt like a fighter who’d gone a round or two and needed a bucket of ice cubes dumped over their head. Fred brought out another speaker, a different amp, we grabbed and discarded cables til sound issued forth. I felt like I could breathe again. Everyone was so kind, I believe they were rooting for me. They were all there because they wanted to be. Hazel and Patrick said I did okay. We were heading down to Palo Alto to meet Patrick’s parents, which I’d been nervous about but after the last few hours felt like a walk in the park.

And it was. They were lovely. I wanted them to be my parents too! As well as seeing Hazel get married, I wanted to marry the whole state of California. And I haven’t even gotten to Santa Cruz or Los Angeles yet.