On the Back Roads by Bill Graves

Author:Bill Graves
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Addicus Books
Published: 1999-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

38

Fog, Flowers, and Watermelon Seeds

Lompoc, California

Highway 1 took me into the center of Lompoc on Ocean Avenue. It is “subject to flooding,” according to signs posted here. I envisioned that the person who named this street was on it one day when it flooded. Nothing so fanciful ever happened, of course. Ocean Avenue simply leads to the ocean, so I let it take me there.

It was nine miles to a place called Surf, which is little more than a railroad crossing. Fog was heavy. I parked, pulled on a jacket, and walked across the hard sand to the very edge of the American continent.

The surf rolled out an unbroken uproar like a waferfall, not an intermittent crash, as you might expect. I walked to a fence that closed off Vandenberg to the public. All this beachfront belongs to the Air Force. Seagulls hung in the air like satellites. They were watching me, I think. It’s always curious when nature looks back.

Were it not for the defense needs of our country, this beach would surely be lined with high-rise condominiums and restaurants draped with fishnets and colored lanterns. Besides saving the world from a few disasters, our military has quietly preserved a piece of this Pacific frontier for generations to come. Obviously, it is not the Air Force’s mission to be a land conservator. They get the job by default, and they do it well by just maintaining the fence.

Leaving the beach, I drove through a curtain of fog. The sun and Lompoc lay on the other side. This town is not a saltwater tourist mecca like the others tied to it by Highway 1. I don’t suppose even a Snoopy beach towel is sold here, nor the knickknacks you buy a third cousin who is getting married. Lompoc appears focused on its own people, not those who come in off the highway. That was good enough for me. I decided to stay.

I stopped at the open-air farmers’ market, a once-a-week occurrence at Ocean and I Streets. Vegetable shoppers clustered around the stands, shaded by umbrellas. Behind them, like a colorful stage prop, was a huge mural with sweeping waves of blues, reds, greens, and browns. It adorned the side of a building and took up half a block. Even an open door in the mural did not create a significant void in the picture. It was that big.

The Lompoc Murals Project began in 1988 and probably will go on forever. It now numbers twenty works of art on buildings around town, depicting events in local history. I found ten of them, all within five minutes of where I parked my motor home. One alley is a two-walled, outdoor art gallery. The subjects ranged from people to porpoises.

I settled at the town’s RV park next to the Santa Yenz River. There is no water in it, but a sign still warns of sudden flooding. Guess it could happen here, too, but not tonight.

The next morning, fog off the ocean made the day look chillier then it really was.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.