Editor’s Note: at over 1,400 words, this is the longest Diary entry ever.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Thursday, April 27 & Friday, April 28
Greetings from Orange County, California.
These were two very good days…The best, really…We are going to try and recap them as chronologically as we can…Times are more or less approximate.
Thursday
0600 – Report to the terminal at Sparrow Regional Airport…We looked for an Uber to take to avoid paying $10,000 in two-week parking fees but – and this is hardly the Upset of the Year – there weren’t any to be had in the small town at zero-dark-thirty, so we make the 3-minute drive over…Per standard Sparrow policy (SSP) we’re way early, but we’ve long held these romanticized notions about killing time in airports…These are mostly delusional, but still sitting and reading or farting around online is what we’re all about here, so the time passes harmlessly.
0815 – Again, per SSP, we selected a seat in the back left of the airplane…Our seatmate is Randy, about my age, and a rancher from a town well south of here, on the river, that is actually in another county and who appears to be the sort who has sat in the back left of a lot of places over the years, so it wasn’t a bulletin we got along well…He said he was heading to Tulsa to pick up a cattle truck, noting that if the truck was in good enuff working order he’d drive it back…We inquired as to what plans, if any, were in place should the truck not be in good working order, and he said he didn’t know, but he was prepared to “wing it”…Randy might also be the only person on the planet without a mobile phone…I am not making that up…He noted there isn’t cell service on his ranch, but he allowed how one might be useful and that his wife told him to look for a TracPhone because she wasn’t going to give hers up.
1000 – Off to LA…Directly behind yours truly is a toddler who is making her displeasure for her travel arrangements known by screaming and kicking the back of my seat…There is some zero point to getting peeved here because there is nothing you can do…I mean, it’s not as if mommy is poking her kid with a stick on purpose just to antagonize me, and you can hardly request the stewardess to tape the goddamn kid’s mouth shut.
1530 – Arrival at Mark’s house…Mark was a year ahead of me in school, and while I forget when I first met him, we went to high school together…He is doing very well for himself…He had a good wife, Megan (pronounced MEE-gan) and two sons…Mark, or perhaps, probably, Megan, had made the command decision to barbecue at home rather than go out to dinner, probably so Megan could show off her considerable cooking skills…This was a brilliant decision because they gracious home with a nice view of the ocean from their large backyard.
While I’m showering Doug arrives…Doug and I go back to kindergarten, so it’s over 50 years of friendship…His daughter Sophia, 11, is there, too…Her mom is Japanese (Doug moved to Japan in our 20s and lived there for 30 years) and Doug is half-Mexican and half-German so Sophia has a cute, distinctive look, plainly Japanese, but western enuff to herald there is no shortage of other blood in there.
The evening was wonderful, in no small part because Mark has a nice booze supply, including ol’ Sparrow’s new preferred poison, rye, which we indulged in because we weren’t driving anywhere…We spent zero time reminiscing, which is neither interesting nor productive…Still, we did talk a lot about our sturdy Lutheran upbringing and how it, overall, served us well…Mark still holds these beliefs, tho neither Doug nor I do. Doug noted Lutheranism does not prepare you for dealing with chicks very well, if at all, but perhaps nothing but trial and error does anyway.
Friday
0400 – Despite being tired and drunk, we’re up earlier than you might have expected (see Sleep Log below)…We got some project work done, but some technical crap ate it, which is why there wasn’t a daily entry yesterday…We’re out of Casa Mark & Megan in fairly short order, grateful for a good stay catching up with old friends.
0900 – Arrival at Disneyland…Recall the southern California (small “s” because it is a region, not a legal, demarcated entity) portion of this trip was added so we can attend tomorrow’s life celebration of Uncle Gilbert, but we had today free, enjoy Disneyland more than most, perhaps, and hadn’t been for twelve years, which we strongly suspect is our longest drought.
The big news is Doug and Sophia came, too…This wasn’t expected, tho it was planned…When we were planning yesterday’s visit, we noted we were heading to Disneyland today…Doug, who likes it as much as I do, immediately planned to join me, but they were sold out for today…At about 0830 or so we’re enjoying a stack of hotcakes at a Dennys and Doug texted and it turns out there are tickets available for today now and Doug wondered if I could get an employee rate room (ERR) for him and Sophia…Sure…That is well within both the letter and the spirit of the Employee Rate Program (ERP), however, my hotel was sold out…We were, tho, able to find another hotel, actually closer to Disneyland for him.
I was there before Doug, so we went and saw Great Moments with Mr Lincoln and he and Sophia arrived about 1100…The corn dogs from the red cart at the end of Main Street, USA are still the best on the planet, and there was still enuff old stuff that hasn’t changed (the Haunted Mansion, It’s a Small World, et al) and enuff new stuff to make it fun…The only fly in the ointment is a new Star Wars ride broke before we could get on it and the line for another one was really long so from 1300 to 1600 we spent an awful lot of time in line with only one ride to show for it.
The night closed out with a drive around the Autopia…Sophia let it be known she really wanted to go and we remember what it was like to be a kid wanting to ride the Autopia, so we immediately agreed to this request/demand…Riding the Autopia with Pa Sparrow is still a great memory.
So, of course, Pa Sparrow joined me for this trip…My car had the steering wheel on the right, so Pa Sparrow was on my left…He asked how I was doing and we were pleased to report we “we’re doing OK Pop”, that we woke up every day and did things that were important to us, and that I appeared to have inherited his penchant for younger chicks (Ma Sparrow was not even close to Pa Sparow’s age)…It was hardly surprising to note that we were dressed more or less the same and when I looked at him after turning towards the road he was gone, another good Autopia memory with Pop, 50 years after they started.
Disneyland is not for the faint of financial heart…It was $150 to get in…Some research showed it was $7.50 in 1975, which is a bit less than $50 in today’s money, so Uncle Walt is really profiteering right now, but screw it, it was worth the day.
The thrills weren’t over tho, because ol’ Sparrow, in an unprecedented feat of idiocy, checked into the wrong hotel…I am not making that up!!!…Or tired to check in…We couldn’t because we didn’t have a reservation…The sign for our hotel was on the driveway, but there was also a Howard Johnsons on the property and that was the first hotel we saw, so we pulled in…We were so tired from standing and walking all day that we didn’t notice the utter lack of our hotel’s signage and there wasn’t any HoJo signage anywhere.
The place was a dump, and we did notice that, tho that wasn’t a clue, either…Neither was the rather scruffy-looking clientele…There was a line and when it was our turn there was not, of course, a reservation under my name and this was hardly the first time this had happened to the dumb broad behind the counter and soon enuff I was in a clean lobby with proper signage, greeted by a friendly desk clerk in an appropriate uniform.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: Thursday (Mark’s House): 2200 Thursday until 0400 Friday…6.0 hours for the nite – excellent under the drunk circumstances – and 32.0 hours for the week.
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The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
