Arroyo by Chip Jacobs

Author:Chip Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2019-09-27T21:35:08+00:00

Phosphorous Days

There are things you write your mother to assure her you’re thriving—solar lamps glowing like magic; a girl who might be “the one”—and things you hold back. One of these days, Amelia “Amy” Chance would be receiving a bubbly letter from California. It just wouldn’t be in July from a son living life with blazing wheels on his feet.

This year’s Fourth was Nick’s best ever, one that commenced with a morning Red Car to Santa Monica beach with Jules, Fleet, and Hattie, and climaxed ogling fireworks at a Pasadena park while eating strawberry ice cream. Two Busch Garden football games followed, as well as his best-attended ostrich rodeo yet. “Bravo, flying dog!” the sick children yelled out after Royo leapt onto Nick’s shoulders as he rode Mrs. C. “Bravo, ostrich man!”

His stumbling into a job on the Colorado Street Bridge was responsible for these trappings. Soon, the roadway would be christened, and he’d springboard into his future.

The project only had two more arches to complete, both on the west side of the canyon, before the finishing work started. Bridge rats nicknamed the largest of them the “Big Whopper,” for it’d be taller than any local building, vaulting twelve to fifteen stories above the valley floor.

Nick’s contributions were already in place: thirty-six installed solar lamps salted around the eastern bank. A dozen new ones on the western slopes, not far from where he’d seen Los Angeles City Hall’s scouts licking their chops about a potential annexation, were now trenched, too. Marcus’s pro-forma inspection this upcoming Monday was all that stood between him and his next meaningful step: pitching the city of Pasadena to buy his wireless, bargain-priced devices for its street-lighting program. With that legitimizer, he could sell anywhere.

On the Sunday before he was to meet Marcus, Nick introduced Jules to the grilled-meat wizardry prepared by his Cajun friend. Walking off their leaden sandwiches afterward, they passed the yellow-brick walls of Pacific Electric’s fully rebuilt railcar-maintenance shop. Unlike other times, Nick didn’t shiver with goose bumps or vague sensations of being airborne in proximity to it, just a flush of appreciation about being alive in an era where everything seemed possible.

Under eighty-degree skies, they promenaded south on Fair Oaks, and continued on until they were in South Pasadena at the bottom of the lush hill at Walter Raymond’s resort. Jules admitted never being inside before, and Nick told her it was worth blowing thirty minutes. She agreed, vowing not to fall asleep this time to his narration.

They took the pedestrian tunnel to the hotel’s ground floor where a chalkboard listed the amenities you’d need a week to sample. Shetland pony rides and bowling, golf and other outdoor sports, a house orchestra and private tours: the Raymond boasted it all. “Tally-Ho” coaches to ferry guests to the adjacent train depot, which first delivered sun-seeking Bostonians here in the late 1880s, remained in service.

“What do you think Mr. Lummis’s left-wing friends would say about this, besides it manifesting the excesses of capitalism?” Jules asked, watching a sweating bellboy push a heavy luggage cart.

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