While I had traveled to England and Italy in my early twenties, I was basically a Massachusetts guy. Worcester – 60 miles from Boston- was the West for me. An occasional trip south to New York City or north to Maine and New Hampshire were the limits of my domestic adventures. California was Hollywood and the telecast of the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. Imagine going to a football game on January 1 wearing shorts and a T-shirt and basking in the sun while denizens of the Northeast froze.

My dear friend and Boston City Hospital co-worker, Steve Eurenius, had visited California and had New Hampshire friends in Lake Tahoe so he was down for a road trip to the West Coast. Neither of us had cars that would make the trek so we decided to do a “drive away”. My old buddy from the Lewd Moose Commune Buck Bagot had relocated to California a few years back and was living in San Francisco so that was determined to be our final destination.

A “drive away” car was not a new concept. My father had driven some wealthy businessman’s wife and daughter across country from New York to California when he got back from WW II. My Dad had memories of visiting the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles and going up the coast to Santa Maria and visiting the Norwegian parents of his brother-in-law, Winston Johnson. He then drove Winston’s car Back East.

“We were hungry but not takers!”

Steve and I found an Italian American retiree from Framingham, Massachusetts who was relocating to the “warmer” climes of Scottsdale Arizona, at the time the Spring Training home of the Boston Red Sox and the city where the BoSox slugger Ted Williams’ brain has been cryogenically frozen and preserved. We drove out to Framingham and encountered Angelo Fosco sitting on his shaded porch surrounded by grapevines and wearing a classic sleeveless T-shirt, known in some circles as a Guinea T. Angelo seemed very happy in Framingham, but his children had encouraged him to retire to Arizona to avoid the New England winters. We found Angelo through a service that paired up soon to be Sun Belt retirees with drivers desiring to get somewhere without the expense of air or bus or the wear and tear on your own car. 

The “Captain” and I packed our bags into Angelo’s car and headed off to Maricopa County, Arizona to deliver the car in Scottsdale where he would be flying to shortly. We left Boston in mid-August and the trip across country was pretty uneventful. There was a stop in Nashville to visit some friends and hear my cousin David Olney play music. Before arriving in Arizona we stopped in Amarillo Texas and had a meal at the Big Texan restaurant. This is the home of the Famous 72 oz. steak. The way this works is you just tell your wait staff person that you want to take the 72 oz. steak challenge. They escort you to a table on a small stage at the front of the humongous main dining room. Beside you on the table is a large digital count down clock. If you consume the 72 oz. steak and all the trimmings that go with it in 60 minutes (one hour) the steak is free. If you fail, you pay $70.00. We were hungry but not takers!

We arrived in Scottsdale in the scorching summer 100 plus degree heat of the Arizona desert. This was travel before GPS so we needed help finding Angelo’s new residence. There was no one on the street to ask directions so we found a fire station and rang the call button, and a fireman came out to point us on the way. We were not in Boston any more! I’ll never forget finding Angelo sitting in his air conditioned living room looking miserable –confined to the indoors and without his community of friends in Framingham. He was physically altered and ruing the move to Arizona. It probably hastened his passing.

While I have since come to appreciate Arizona and particularly Maricopa County and the greater Phoenix area – I spent two weeks there helping to get out the vote for Biden/Harris in 2020, we were not interested in spending any more time in the air conditioned desert. Even liquor stores or “packies” as we called them in Massachusetts had drive thru windows so that customers did not have to get out of their cars and face the extreme heat. We got on a Greyhound bus bound for San Diego and California. Most of our trip was on Interstate 8, which in the California section hugs the Mexican border. At one point the bus was stopped by the Immigration and Naturalization Service border patrol, and we were boarded by their agents asking everyone on the bus for their papers.

“… it was a Friday evening September 3^rd encounter that would be life changing”

Greyhound left us at their downtown San Diego terminal on National Boulevard. At that time downtown San Diego was a gritty entertainment center for the Marines and Navy. We stayed at a fleabag motel and the next morning we got ourselves a car from “Rent a Wreck” and started our drive north to San Francisco. We traveled north on Interstate 5 and just south of downtown Los Angeles we encountered a stretch of highway enclosed by high concrete walls and a citadel like building in the style of an Assyrian palace. This was an empty factory building that had been closed by Uniroyal in 1978. This stretch of concrete was very intimidating and suggested to me that Los Angeles was not worth stopping to see so we kept on trucking until we got over the Grapevine into the San Joaquin valley. We steamed northward on the 5 freeway and then crossed over westward on Lost Hills Road to Paso Robles where we encountered a huge gathering of cowboys on horseback participating in the San Luis Obispo County fair. Then it was further west to Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) which took us up to Big Sur traveling north and finally arriving in the picturesque resort town of Carmel where in 1986 actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor on a no growth platform, serving one term. The Italian Communist party in Rome celebrated Eastwood’s no growth stand when they did battle against the siting of a McDonald’s fast food restaurant. Strange bedfellows!

From Carmel it is a short 121 mile hop – in California terms – to San Francisco our ultimate destination. I was at the wheel when we crossed the Bay Bridge from Oakland to The City. I can still remember being dead tired but transfixed by the iconic view of the San Francisco skyline as we crossed the span from Yerba Buena Island to the Embarcadero. We had arrived, and I found my friend Buck Bagot and his house on 400 Gates Street in the Bernal Heights neighborhood on Wednesday, September 1, 1982. Buck caught me up on his community organizing exploits and led me around the neighborhood introducing me to some of his close friends and allies. We visited Jean Hamer at San Francisco General Hospital. She was on oxygen and suffering from emphysema, but still outspoken and a dynamic community force. She was Native American and married to a 300 lb. Tongan. She was the first Board President of the Bernal Heights Community Foundation, which Buck helped to found. We also connected with Sharon Johnson on Clayton Street. Sharon was a long time aide to the legendary State Senator John Burton, and was a single Mom raising three challenging teen-agers. All of these encounters were interesting and stimulating, but it was a Friday evening September 3^rdencounter that would be life changing. 

That afternoon Buck and I went out jogging in the neighborhood and were relaxing in our shorts in the basement apartment in advance of his departure for Cleveland on the red eye that evening. There was a knock on the door and Buck yelled, “Come in Christina!” In walked the most stunning looking woman I had ever seen. She had jet back hair, brown skin and high cheekbones and indigenous features. I wasn’t in Boston any more! Buck later told us that the “mutual attraction was scaldingly obvious.” The moment calls to mind the wonderful Sinatra tune, “Strangers in the Night”. While many can critique “Ole Blue Eyes” for his rightward political drift in old age, it is important to remember his early stands on civil rights and the fact that he almost alone among the Italian American crooners kept his original Italian name at a time when the assimilation bias changed the names of such notables as Tony Bennett and Bobby Darin. This about sums up our meeting on September 3, 1982 one night before I was scheduled to return to Boston and my job at Boston City Hospital:

“Strangers in the night exchanging glances
Wond’ring in the night what were the chances
We’d be sharing love before the night was through

Something in your eyes was so inviting
Something in your smile was so exciting
Something in my heart told me I must have you

and

Ever since that night we’ve been together
Lovers at first sight, in love forever
It turned out so right for strangers in the night”

That chance encounter, Christina Perez just happened to be visiting Buck on the same weekend, completely changed the course of my life. Do opposites attract? Can a New England Yankee blue blood find love and happiness with a Southern California Mexican American with Chichimec indigenous blood? Stay tuned as a transcontinental romance blossoms in Olney Odyssey # 20.

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