THE BOMBER

It's been a while since I drove around the East Bay Hills, and a friend's recent post reminded me of that. Looking at one of my pipes brought back memories of a woman I knew back then who had a thing for bankers, and eventually married one. I am, as you probably know, not a banker. I still have that pipe, but I haven't owned a motor car in many years.

The woman with a thing for bankers lived in the Los Angeles area.
Where I haven't been for a long time either.
Despite being born there.

I miss driving in the Oakland and Berkeley hills.


It turned out that my father enjoyed driving those same undulating roads back when he was in college. Some of his friends had lived up there, and for a period after the apartment on the corner of Telegraph Avenue he had a small cottage up there.

Whenever he went back to the Los Angeles area to see my grandmother he'd purchase pipe tobacco at the place in Beverly Hills which had the blend he liked.
Eventually she purchased a house in Berkeley, and after a number of years he augmented his bomber pilot experience by getting an aeronautical engineering degree and moving down to Los Angeles, which meant he had to visit the Bay Area again fairly regularly.
Which explains him meeting my mother. A post-grad at Berkeley.
Who didn't mind his pipe too much.

And, several years after that I flipped my car going over eighty miles per hour on a dirt road in the East Bay hills. When it stopped moving, my pipe was still in my mouth, and smoking perfectly, and everything was upside-down. Not a scratch on me, but the vehicle (Honda Civic) was kind of very much the worse for the experience.

No alcohol was involved.

All this sort of explains the pipesmoking, the lack of a car, and many of my Berkeley years. Plus my enduring affection for caffeine, nicotine, and highly refined sugar.
Plus the surfeit of books in my apartment, I guess.
Languages, anthropology, culinaria.
Odd bits of literature.


No car. You don't want me driving.



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