Trio by Jaime Austin

Author:Jaime Austin [Austin, Jaime]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2022-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Long, Hot Summer

With my trip to Europe canceled, I spent the summer in Escondido. Mom got me a position as an orderly. I thought it was going to be at the hospital where she worked, but it turned out to be at a nursing home affiliated with her hospital. She told me it would be hard work, but I had no idea. Imagine emptying bedpans and wiping the butts of Alzheimer's patients. Hard wasn’t the word for it. Fortunately, the local community college was glad to have me teach several sessions of English as a Second Language and I was able to reduce my hours at the nursing home. Don’t get me wrong. I have enormous respect for the people who do that sort of work. It just isn’t for me.

Angela scored an unpaid internship at the San Diego Union-Tribune, so we only saw each other on the weekends. After Vegas, Connie refused to reply to any of my text messages and she declined all of my calls. Twice I tried to waylay her on campus, but both times she saw me first and turned away. I don’t know if it was pride or shame that kept me from running after her.

My mother was now an administrator, which freed her from the shift work nurses usually endure. This meant I could borrow the Rav 4 plug-in hybrid I helped pay for to drive to Angela’s home in La Mesa on evenings I was free. On weekends, she would pick me up and we’d head to the beach.

When we both lived in La Mesa, the Silver Strand was our go-to beach. A bit farther than the San Diego beaches, but less crowded and easier to find parking. Leaving from Escondido, we scouted northern San Diego County beaches like Oceanside and Carlsbad. But the crowds and parking issues drove us farther north.

If you know anything about Southern California, you probably know we have this strange habit of referring to our highways using the definite article. We don’t drive on Interstate 5, we drive on the 5. Escondido isn’t located on I 15, it’s on the 15. You head east on the 8 or the 10 and to get to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, you take the dreaded 405. Yeah, people rarely say just the 405. It’s that notorious.

So, when we headed further north for beaches, we would take the 78 to the 5 and hope traffic wasn’t too awful. The first exit north of Marine Corps Camp Pendleton is Basilone Road, and from there you can access San Onofre State Beach. The beaches were quite a hike from the parking areas which kept the crowds thin. Even in the height of the summer season, we never had trouble finding parking or a place to pitch our umbrella on the beach. And with it being just the two of us, we never got into the sort of mischief that would get us kicked out.

The big debate all summer

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