I rolled over to Reed’s pad in Pomona on Friday. Together, us intrepid adventurers, as we did the year before, were driving up to Seattle via Wongmobile, the most luxurious and opulent form of travel known to man. Legend has it that the Pharaoh of Egypt once was offered the bitch seat in the Wongmobile, and politely declined, saying that even the bitch seat was “far too great a throne for a man so humble as I to sit upon.”
I stepped into Reed’s room aghast. Reed had accumulated, over the course of his college career, an amazing amount of shit, a great deal of which, was to end up in the back of my car. Hours of me yelling at him to pack and clean while I watched Google videos later, we gave up for the night and fell asleep at 5 am.
After a great amount of effort, negotiations, and damaged egos, we finally loaded up the car and left Pomona campus at around four in the afternoon, but not before taking 96 Mexican freezepops (which Reed calls “El Sabradors,” for some unexplained reason) and crushing them all with my car in a spectacular fountain spray of sugar syrup and good ol’ fashioned American wastefulness. As we drove away, the syrup dribbling down the concrete, Reed non-chalantly waved out his window, and I thought that overall, it was an awfully unique way to bid the college experience farewell.
Me, full on Pimpin Mode
Unlike most years, where we’re both so gangbusters to get up to Seattle that we would urinate out of the side windows if that meant we’d get home sooner, this year we decided to peace out and take it slow. The first day was slow going, having been stuffed by as much Pomona cafeteria food I could eat after bumbling my way past the card scanning lady and getting a free meal (which I assure you, I fully took advantage of – I had pepperoni pizza leaking out of my freaking ears.
The first night, we rode across the 210 to I-5 North, we ended up in a small town called Buttonwillow.
I might note that I initially only read the first half of the sign, and in filling the rest in with my perverted mind, assumed that we had arrived at Buttsville, USA. This moniker stuck, for reasons that will become clear, and various more colorful versions all were acceptable substitute names for this place (Anusland, Coloncentral, etc. etc.)
Being as it was our first night, we decided to hop into the Buttonwillow McDonalds for some McChickens, thems being the greatest dollar sandwich ever concocted by the hand of a clown. We wanted to start this trip off right – well fed and well rested. Last year on the road trip up, Angee, Reed, and I stopped at a Monterey McDonalds and brazenly declared our demand of seven McChicken sandwiches. We were greeted by stunned silence by the man at the drive thru – “Pull… pull ahead into the drive thru waiting zone, please… sir.” His shaking voice indicated great fear at the kind of man mountains who would place an order of such magnitude, I noted as I pulled into the space and set my car in park. We could only imagine the general tremblings of knees inside the McKitchen as the McEmployees fired up the McFryers and went into overdrive to sate the hungers of the veritable titans, who grew more impatient by the moment just outside, who had so generously graced their humble store with their awesome presence. The McManager, standing at the head of the kitchen, would shout, barely able to keep his voice from shaking in fearful pride, that TODAY, Ladies and Gentleman, TODAY was the day the drills and the training and the blood and the grease and the sweat and the tears would pay off! Like a proud commander of a German U-Boat, machinery steaming around him, he raises his fist in the air and all under his command return a sharp “hurrah.”
Meanwhile just outside, the three of us were getting bored. There was a homeless man who passed by, asking for change. Angee one upped that request and gave him several bottles of Liz Blizz, aka the worst tasting Sobe we had in the car. We started jumping in our seats, pounding our fists, and shaking the car in anticipation and impatience. “Where the FUCK are our McChickens?” I shouted.
Just then, a timid tap at my window. A frail Indian man stood there, obviously having drawn the short straw, and forced by his coworkers to approach the vehicle of the Gods in the parking lot. “Hello,” he said, voice heavily accented. “Seven McChicken.”
While Reed and I could not hope for such an epic McDonalds experience this time, we expected it, at least, to not be completely ridiculous. Unfortunately, the signs seemed to point that way. Across the street was a pupuseria drive-thru, and being both well known connoisseurs of Salvadorian cooking, we checked it out on a whim before pulling into the McDonalds. This was the drive through sign:
That’s right. Nothing. What the hell was going on here? Was it just a drug front? We may never know.
Pupuserias notwithstanding, we walked into the McDonalds and we were both FLOORED by how cold it was. It was seriously like walking into a meat locker while crappy muzak played and people getting paid minimum wage blew dry ice into your face. I went back to get my sweatshirt from the car, wondering what the hell was going on with these people. Reed noted that behind the counter, there was manager, as well as five employees. Seeing as, over the course of about an hour, we were the only people to use this restaurant, it seemed like a fantastic waste of money. I was forced to conclude that the McButtsville McDonalds was seen as some kind of last bastion of employment for local youth.
As I ordered my food, I attempted to engage the humanoids behind the counter in petty banter. “It’s pretty cold in here, yeah?” The cashier ignored my offhand comment. Reed had a little better luck – he managed to get the cashier to admit that it was much warmer behind the counter, and by extension, admit that this particular McDonalds could give two fucks about the comfort of their patrons. We sat down, rubbed our hands until the blood started flowing through them again, and proceeded to consume.
Finished, we got a room at the cheapest motel in Buttonwillow. As the clerk gave me a key, she offhandedly commented that I ought to open up the windows because the room was probably pretty warm.
I assume she spent her childhood living on a house in the center of the Earth, because this room was like a freaking sauna. Reed, having come from one temperature extreme, confidently declared this was the hottest room he had ever been in. Not only was the humidity stifling, the fan was completely broken, and offered no air flow whatsoever. Our shirts were almost immediately damp with sweat as we pried open the only window to the outside world. The temperature difference from outside was astounding – we concluded that this room somehow lied in the center of an invisible volcano, or was perhaps one of the secret gates to Hell. All that stood between us and the outside world of reasonable temperatures was a flimsy screen, which will become important in a moment.
Not wanting to sweat our balls completely off, I suggested we return to the McDonalds. We got ice cream and watched movies off my laptop there. This was, in my mind, a somewhat inauspicious beginning to what I assumed would be a fantastic road trip. “Oh well,” I thought as I finished off my crappy McDonalds ice cream, “There’ll be plenty of time to improve.” At about 11, we returned to our sauna room and proceeded to sweatily fall asleep into a light, uncomfortable slumber.
It
‘s 2:07 AM.
I’m up. My mind is foggy.
My heart is pounding, and I’m at full alert. I don’t know why yet. I’m confused.
Loud, hard, repeated pounding on our door. Silence. Now I’m up completely.
I elbow Reed. He shushes me and we lay there, balls well sweated off, in complete absolute terrified silence. Ten minutes, and then more pounding. Utter silence, and then more pounding. The person pounding does not identify himself.
This continues until 3 AM, when it stops.
We flip the fuck out. Reed ducks into our bathroom and dials 911, while I stealthily approach the door and check outside. Nothing. A white SUV circles the parking lot twice. Reed indicates that he’s been on hold for five minutes – we both wonder what the hell kind of stuff Kern county PD could possibly be dealing with? Cow tipping?? If they don’t answer soon, they’ll have a double rape/homicide on their hands to clean up! Finally he gets through, and twenty minutes later, a McButtsville cop shows up.
“What’s up, bro, what’s the problem,” he tells Reed. I have placed myself strategically behind the door in case he is a crazed homicidal rapist. By placing oneself behind the door, I ensure Reed goes down first, and I can maneuver around them to get to my car. Reed explains the situation and the cop leaves as suddenly as he came, seeing as the threat was no longer there pounding on our door. Needless to say, this is reassuring. We close the only window we have and decide to fall alseep in the sauna.
Before any of you internet tough guys call us wimps, I’ll let Reed explain. As he says, “Freddie and I are both certified Real American Heroes, and we were scared. Understand that means that a normal person would have had fifty heart attacks that night.” An hour of pounding on a door with no answer is enough to scare most people to death. Us? We are only mildly freaked out. Ok. Really freaked out.
It is dark and hot and we don’t get to sleep for another couple of hours. The next morning, as I check out, the clerk asks me what the hell was going on last night – this was the first time police showed up. She scolds me, and tells me to call the front desk next time a potential murderer is banging at the door. “Thanks for the advice,” I tell her.
It’s a bright morning, and I pop a Dublin Dr. Pepper from my soda stash in my cooler. Chugging it down, the fright of the night before disappears, and things begin to look up. The road lies before us, beckoning, as I get in and gun the throttle to get the hell away from this forsaken town. As we start again, I tell Reed that it’s a good thing that we won’t have a night like that again.
And once again, as I have countless times before, I prove myself completely wrong.
-fw.
