I was driving behind this dirty, white Volvo from the ’90s earlier today and it made me think of death. It threw me back into a rabbit hole. I was thinking of my childhood friend Derrick. His mother, Lorrie, owned an early ’90s white Volvo.
I was born in Ventura, north of Los Angeles, on the coast, along Highway 101. A community of surfers. In 1991—when I was eight—we moved to a small mountain town called Ojai, inland from Ventura, nestled in the Topa Topa Mountains. Ojai had a population of 8,000 people: Old hippies; artists; retired Hollywood directors; people escaping the chaos of LA; pot-smoking, angsty teens.
It was here, around ’93 or ’94, that I met Derrick.
He and I were opposites, inverted images of each other. He was tall and skinny. I was short and thick. He was athletic. I was terrible at sports. He had blue eyes. I had brown. He lived between divorced parents, his father in nearby Santa Paula, his mother on a small farm in Upper Ojai on Sulpher Mountain Road, a bucolic region up in the hills above town. My parents had been married for close to two decades and were still very much in love. His mother was dirt poor. My folks had money, mostly handed down from my paternal grandfather.
I spent most of my time with Derrick at his mother’s. We were eleven and twelve. It was fun and surreal for me, back then, to leave my safe middleclass world behind and enter Derrick’s world. My folks would drive me across town, through Ojai, passing the main drag—East Ojai Avenue—the theatre and post office and video store, Libby Bowl (where bands played in the small stone auditorium), Rains Department store, the Golf Course, the bridge which led over the Ventura River.
Then we’d pass Boccali’s Italian restaurant where the road forked, Reeves Road to the left, Highway 150 to the right, which led into Upper Ojai and eventually, if you followed it for long enough, Santa Paula. They’d veer right and we’d slowly careen up the windy, twisting 150, gorgeous views, steep, dangerous cliffs and suddenly we’d rise and flatten out and we’d be in The Country. We could have been in Colorado. It was like another world.
Ten minutes later we’d slow and turn right onto Sulpher Mountain Road, the long uneven pebble drive, tires crunching. A quarter mile later they’d pull up to the property, a shabby two-story cabin-like farm house. All the windows shuttered. Slanted, V-shaped roof, ancient shingles. A wind chime hung from the brick porch and lightly dinged. And there’d be Lorrie’s Volvo, cracked black leather seats, yellow stuffing creaming out, the stench of thick leather, clutter everywhere, the scratched-up navy-blue dash, the interior of the car reeking of the clove cigarettes she constantly smoked, the stink competing with the leather. I remember how Lorrie used to get mad at me when I slammed the door too hard. “It’s an old car, James; treat it with respect.” I felt like some scolded child when she said that. Looking back, I see now there was some hidden class resentment.