CHA CHA CHA CHING!

Our arrival to the Peninsula coincided with the major dip our nation's economy suffered back during the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.  You could feel the pinch here in Monterey and knew you were going to be awake for the entire nightmare.  Attendance was down at our local tourist attraction, there were fewer cars on the road - albeit they were still driving slower than frozen honey, and you could get tickets at the Jazz Festival's window a few minutes before the main arena's showtime.  That has changed.  Apparently, when everyone was busy stooping over to pick up that stray penny, the economy took a swing for the bleachers.  

As many of you who know me know, I spend every other Sunday at my volunteer job at the local tourist hotspot.  Lately, the crowds have been overwhelmingly, well, crowded.  Stroller parking is a premium, and entire families are posing under the life-size model of an orca, trying to get that perfect Christmas Card Photo to share with all their friends.  And that isn't the only place that seems to be booming...  Downtown has added another bar (because that is what Alvarado Street needs) - which isn't technically a bar, but a brewery.. where you can buy beer... and alcohol... and pick up women at the, oh wait, yes.. bar.  Not only that, but Golden State Theatre (spelled the old-fashioned way) has taken on new owners who are determined to bring a sense of culture and adventure to the  locals and tourists alike.  We recently went to hear a Beatles tribute band (not good) and got passes to their National Geographic Series (much better!) set for the summer months.   There are now long lines at the grocery store, the drug store, Trader Joes, and Starbucks.  Well, for the record, Starbucks never had a short line...   Last weekend was the reggae festival at the fairgrounds.  Sold out.  Crazy busy on the streets.  People walking up to the bus as it was stopped at a red light, begging to be let on (regulations say no).  

Traffic.  Yes. We have traffic.  Being a transplant from Los Angeles, I used to scoff at the locals' idea of traffic.  Three cars at a stoplight was considered traffic.  But now there is serious traffic.  On these one-way, two-lane streets, it has become common to sit through two or three revolutions of a red light, waiting your turn.  Everyone is still slower than frozen honey, but at least now they have an excuse.  I still do my environmental part and ride the bus - but these days I'm not alone and it is taking nearly twice as long to get home.

And Summer, although by the calendar it's not here yet, has unofficially arrived.  Do you know how I know? The trolley is running.  You can hear its bell clanging as it goes down the middle of downtown, headed for its loop back and forth to the Aquarium.  And you know how I know the economy is on the mend here in Monterey?  That trolley is loaded with people.  In the middle of the week.  I can only imagine what it is going to be like on any given weekend during the summer.  I think I'll just walk thank you.

God's Church

My father was a gardener. Oh, a fancy title that didn't quite fit on the business cards he printed up by hand was "Landscape Design and Architect" but I am pretty sure he was okay with the gardener title. He used to say, "it's a noble profession. Afterall, the first job God gave Adam was to tend the garden..." He loved puttering about, creating spaces for plants, putting seemingly unrelated bushes together, knowing that when they bloomed they would create a canopy of color for the birds to nest in. He helped me plant a seed in the front yard one time, without telling me what it was. Thirty years later, it was a towering redwood tree, right there in the middle of a Los Angeles suburb. I wonder if the humans of the future will marvel at its placement and wonder from whence it came?

Dad used to say he wasn't a practicing Christian, but rather a practical Christian. Oh, he would stuff himself into a starched shirt, put on a bolero tie, dress up in a fancy suit with suspenders, polish up his cowboy boots, slap on some Old Spice and with three fingers, place his Stetson on top of his head just so. We would climb into the truck and head out to our brick and mortar church. Sometimes, we left really early in the morning, all gussied up, only to wind up in the little church 150 miles from home where they looked forward to our visits because I was the only person they knew that could play the piano. Those church days would turn into singing days, sermons forgotten, protocol and structure set aside just so they could sing their praises to Jesus on the days they had someone to play along and keep them on tune.

But the best church days were the days when I would find dad in his easy clothes and he would tell me to put on my jeans and my boots and grab my jacket. I knew we were doing something different because he would have the all the fixins' for a picnic lunch spread out on the table. Peanut butter sandwiches cut into fours, oranges and apples all cleaned and polished, celery sticks and carrots cut up and put in baggies. He put as much care into prepping our lunch as he did primping for regular go-to-meetin' church services. We would pile into the old green Chevy and head for God's Church. Dad wasn't one for maps, so we would just head for the hills and see where the road took us. Many times I remember him saying, "I wonder where this road goes?" as he would make a sharp right and head off into the unknown.

Out of the city, into the mountains above our home, sometimes exploring out into the desert that sat behind the mountains, I discovered a whole new language of God. I discovered spiritual lessons that made more sense than my book lessons were trying to teach me. I found that all of God Nature is connected to a Source of Life, that, if you pluck or pull or detach nature from its source, it will stay pretty for awhile, but it will eventually wither up and die. I learned that God Nature is not to be feared, but it is not to be disrespected either. I learned that there were plenty of paths to explore, but it was wise to always look to where you were putting your hands or feet before you actually put them there. I learned to be quiet in God Nature and to listen with my heart to the different creatures that surrounded me. I found out that you cannot see wind in God Nature, but you can see how it moves the trees and the bushes and even the smells through the forest. In God Nature my father showed me the true circle of life - how nothing goes to waste, but rather, even when it dies, it goes back to God Nature to nurture and nourish the next generation. In God Nature I learned that I never had to fear death, only to embrace it as part of living. On these forays into God Nature, I discovered colors that just couldn't be reproduced out of my crayon box. The purple lupines that looked like a royal carpet spread across the hills, the shy pale violets resting in the rotting wood of a fallen pine tree. The shades of green that varied from the graceful palm fronds by the pool of water to the moss on the rocks behind trickle of a stream as it washed over a cliff.

All of these things my father showed to me... he didn't lecture, he didn't try to impress me with his knowledge. He would simply place his big hands on my shoulders, quietly willing me to stand still and listen and watch. His delight was in my joy of awareness. In watching as my eyes grew big with wonder at the deer standing in the clearing or the fascination with the fuzzy ants carrying their larger-than-life finds back and forth with the determination of a creature with a purpose. He would ooh and ahh at my discoveries, as though it was the first time he had seen the seeds some squirrel had poked inside a pine cone or had ever smelled the pungent sage I had crushed between my fingers. Getting dirty was never punished, nor was getting my feet shoes wet and muddy. Clothes could always be washed or replaced if needed. God Nature was to be experienced full out, no holds barred, with eyes and arms wide open. I was taught what was to be left alone (skunks, porcupines, and poison oak) and what you could pick up and touch (fall leaves, pine cones, and frogs if you could catch them). I learned what you could use in God Nature to survive and what to do if you get lost. I was never afraid in God Nature.

Long after my dad was too frail to go to God Nature, I would do my best to bring it to him. I still brought my discoveries, my wonders, my fascinations. And on warm spring days, I would get my father dressed in his easy clothes, three-finger place his hat on his head, and wheel him out to the garden where we would sit quietly, watching, listening, and breathing in God Nature. Look over there, do you see it? Shhhh.. quiet now. If you sit real still, you're gonna see something beautiful.. Something God created just for you.

It's the Little Things....

Every week in my town, on Tuesday afternoon, we have a Farmer's Market.  I've erroneously called it a "Street Fair," "Downtown Marketplace," and "That Thing Where People Sell Stuff That I Don't Really Need."  The last title seems to be the most descriptive.  Apparently, however, there is, indeed a market for alpaca sweaters, fake cashmere scarves, and cups that turn a different color when you pour something hot into them.  The most visited part of the Farmer's Market is the food "court."  Here they hawk homemade soul food, complete with sweet potato pies, gyros, churros, frozen salmon, some sort of middle eastern food that looks strangely like a burrito to me, and the ever present - smell it all the way down the block - kettle corn.  I see old people on their bright red (is that the only color they make?) electric scooters.  If their basket isn't filled with a little shivering dog of some sort, it is laden with fresh fruit, yams the size of Popeye's forearm, and gerber daisies in a rainbow array of colors.

I tend to stick to the end of the street where they sell the fruit and veggies.  Strawberries.  One will fit in the palm of your hand, and, if it is mid-season, you can buy three baskets of these monsters for five bucks.  There is one table that has mushrooms of every variety known to man.  I can only imagine what their garden smells like.  Not to be outdone, there are apples, plums, apricots, and something called pluots.  Apparently the plum tree and apricot tree got too close to one another one night.  There is even a guy with a bucket in his hand, tongs in the other, asking everyone if they feel like a nut.  I always tell him that sometimes I feel like a nut, but today I don't.  Hey, it seems like the appropriate answer.

I always stop by the incense table.  You can't beat twelve sticks for a dollar. I always peruse the homemade jewelry.  The problem with their table is that I have stood in the aisles of the local craft store and seen how much the beads are and how relatively simple it is to make those damn earrings... and I refuse to pay twenty-five bucks for a pair of earrings that I know the parts to make it only cost about two dollars.  I always check out the lady that makes and sells knitted scarves.  I knit scarves.  I have enough in a bag behind my couch to probably make a profit if I set up my own stand.  I always wonder how on earth she knitted that many scarves in a week.  I can get one or two done in a month and then my thumbs start to hurt and I drop stitches. She claims she gets one done per day. She has about two hundred or so of them in her kiosk. Either no one is buying them, or she has a machine. She sits there quietly knitting the newest edition... acting like she pumps out 200 of the suckers a week. No way. They are reasonably priced though. At the rate I take to knit a scarf and how much I charge per hour, my scarves would have to be priced somewhere in the three hundred dollar range.

The end of the street has a big truck that sells rotisserie chicken.  People are lined up for that.  I'm guessing they don't want to go home and cook dinner, and a whole chicken and a bag of fries is the next best thing.  It smells good, but I am just not convinced that it is the healthiest of environments in which to cook chicken.  Behind the chicken truck, an odd place for this next display if you ask me, the local humane society puts up little cages with sad looking little puppies just begging to be taken home.  They sit there quietly, fooling you into thinking they don't bark or yap or beg.  Their big, sorrowful eyes make me actually stop and consider scooping one up nearly every week.  I am always thwarted by the price tag though.  I've often wondered if the dog pound really wants to get rid of the little buggers.  At those prices, the earrings a block down the street seem like the better bargain. I wonder if this is where those old people scooter baskets are picking up their passengers?

Tuesdays are great.  Farmer's Market makes it that much better.  Oh, I rarely go home with anything more than enough strawberries to keep us fruited up for the week and a pack of patchouli incense sticks to make the house smell like ... well, patchouli... but the crowds with their environmentally safe reusable bags stuffed with flowers and leafy vegetables, the hawkers trying to sell me their wares, the smell of kettle corn and a quick nuzzle of the puppy at the end of the street makes Tuesdays one of my all-around favorite days of the week.

ASSORTED PLEASURES

Tuesdays in downtown Monterey proudly presents Farmer's Market, a hodgepodge of hastily but efficiently constructed eazy-ups, rickety folding tables, buckets of brightly colored produce, and a cacophony of marginally talented musicians. Thrown in the mix for good measure are peddlers, street hustlers, and the occasional Jesus freak predicting the end of the world. You can follow your nose to the kettle corn, gyros, churros, and, of course, the instant dinner rotating on an spit that opens out of the side of a shiny aluminum paneled truck. Fresh strawberries, grown organically of course, sit alongside an assortment of seasonal berries, twisted yams, leeks the size of your wrist, fragrant garlic and onions, and the ever-present, often confusing world of mushrooms. The next block will bring hand crocheted baby gear, hand woven baskets from Africa, knitted scarves, hats, and mittens. There are tables brimming with mouthwatering desserts - and not just your basic caramel apple. Oh no, these are golden delicious apples, dipped in white chocolate, rolled in honey, smothered with nuts and all promising to be absolutely the best thing you've ever tasted. There are causes with their carefully lettered signs, political hawkers, and even a bookcase with free books for anyone with a penchant to read between the dusty covers of a long-forgotten Stephen King, Victoria Holt, or Martha Stewart tome. There may even be a Dr. Seuss tucked in between the manuals on breast-feeding and how to win people and influence friends.

The people strolling along the closed-off avenue are as varied as the stands they are visiting.  There are middle-aged first time mothers with their baby stylishly strapped and wrapped against their breasts and fathers tugging behind them a radio-flyer with the toddler happily playing with the radishes just purchased. You will see the regulars, haggling over the price of fruit, toting their own reusable bags brimming with fresh cut flowers, bundles of lettuce, and three or four perfectly round, perfectly red tomatoes resting on top.  The tourists are looking at the local crafters and their overpriced jewelry, stone cups, and jade necklaces.

Weather is not a reason to pack up and go either.  The vendors have figured out how to batten down their stands with clever ties, buckets of sand, and a whole host of solutions to the Mary Poppins effect that the wind has on their canopies.  Rain is combated with umbrellas and more tarp.  Sunshine is always welcome because everyone slows down and enjoys the warmth and the camaraderie of a beautiful afternoon.  Summer markets will find everyone out and about until the last tent is taken down.  Winter Tuesdays brings out the locals bundled up with their scarves and hats and gloves while the tourists line up to buy one get one free hundred percent cashmere wrap in some god-awful color that your aunt Matilda wouldn't wear.

Farmer's Market in Monterey is truly a sensory adventure for all who wander into downtown Monterey.

SLIGHTLY USED

The cars are in town. Slightly used. Described by the decade they were put together on the assembly line by workers who knew the value of precision. Price tags don't show, but some are not as expensive as you think they might be and others call for pocket change that only a sheik would carry around - if he had pockets. Old men remember days of their youth when they envied their daddy-rich buddies who woke up the day of graduation to find one of these shiny new sports cars sitting in their driveway, resplendent with big bow and a key fob bearing the maker's logo. They still stand around, beers in hand, talking about cars. Only now, they've saved up their retirement money and have come with bid sheet in hand. If they're lucky, they'll go home with one of these carefully preserved memories. Funny how the slightly used women come out of their distant garages for this event as well. Also described by their decades, many of them are assembled with the precision of a runway model, most are put together with the detail only a circus could appreciate. Like the cars, you can tell how expensive it is by how well kept it has been. Old men still stand around, checking out the slightly used models - wondering if they can afford it, too afraid to ask how much. No bid sheets here, just a glance, a nod, and a meet and greet behind the fountain. If they're lucky, they'll wind up with one of these slightly used, but still good for some action, memories. Monterey has a seedy side to these glamorous events. Hotel bellboys keep lists of local hookers and get a kickback when one of them is summoned by some guy with money to burn. The big hotels have the better lists. A call down to the concierge can get you

just about anything you want in a matter of minutes. Many of the girls working the hotel lobby as greeters are actually high-priced call girls. It pays that ridiculously high rent that is charged on the peninsula. The prettier girls stand inside the lobby or sit at the hotel bar. The broken ones walk the street or sit at the bus stop. These are secrets that the local visitor's center doesn't want you to know. Prostitution in Monterey is just about as old as Monterey itself. In the 1870 census, sixty percent of the women listed in Monterey were ladies of the evening. Many of them were Chinese immigrants kidnapped, sold into debt peonage, and forced to service the rail workers, boatmen, and other laborers here along this beautiful coastline. Today,seedy memories are relived in seedy motels all up and down the Pacific Coast Highway. In the twenty-first century, Mexican immigrants, with nothing to harvest in the summertime, are sold into prostitution slavery along the Peninsula. Not much has changed in nearly 150 years. The cars are in town. So are the girls. Along with these baubles for sale, come the bored with wads of cash to burn. Most won't ask the price, but many of them will go home with a slightly used memory of Monterey.

No Shirt. No Shoes. No Service.

I know in some California beach towns you'll see all sorts of people walkin' around half dressed. Sun-bleached blond gods with their board shorts, surf gear, sporting nothing much else except their sand blasted Hurley flip-flops. Honey tanned just turned eighteen girls with their long hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, sporting that Roxy bikini, Havaianas, ten perfectly manicured pink toes, and a butterfly tattooed across the peach fuzz of their lower back and not much else left to the imagination. But those are California beach towns where the weather's warm, the sand is hot, and the sun is baking all those coconut oiled specimens of human perfection. But this is Monterey. Where summer is defined over a drink at the bar as a couple of weekends sometime in August. It never gets really hot enough to start shedding street clothes. The tans you see on the locals are purchased along with a fruity drink and a pair of plastic eye cups to keep you from going blind in the UV coffin at the local tanning salon. Summer here boasts of the chance to shed a layer, bare the arms above your elbows, and maybe go out without a jacket... but only if you're coming home before dark. Walking around half dressed isn't usually a sight you see on the streets of this beach community. Even those who dare the frigid bay, walk out of the water in a wet suit, shaking off the cold and jamming their bare butts into a pair of sweats and a hooded jacket as fast as they can... not because someone might see them naked, but because it's freakin' cold when that breeze off the bay hits your soaked hair. So you can imagine my double-take when I saw a man walking down the street today, half dressed. Mind you, not a street that runs along the ocean. Not even a street with an ocean view from the top balcony of any of the buildings. No. This was one of those inland streets that can smell the ocean, but not quite see it. He had on a Gilligan hat, tank top with a long-sleeved denim shirt fastened all the way to the collar, a pair of old-man sandals, black socks, and.. well, nothing else. I'm guessing there might have been a speedo underneath the hem of his worn button down, or maybe some tighty-whiteys... but, well, pretty much he looked naked. And not in an Adonis god of beauty and desire sort of naked. No, this was old-man-pale naked. Flabby knees naked. Grey hairy legs naked. Not pretty. Definitely not California naked. And it got me to wondering. Where was he going? There is a beach about a mile away, but he wasn't headed in that direction, and he certainly didn't look like that was where he had been all day. No, he was casually walking down the street, as if he was out for his twilight constitutional and simply forgot his pants. I watched him as he stopped in front of a local diner and counted the change he kept in his shirt pocket. The hand-lettered warning in the window says "No Shirts. No Shoes. No Service." Well, I suppose he qualifies for a dinner at their fine establishment. Either that, or their going to have to change their sign. Because, like Mr. No Pants, the diner seems to have forgotten something.

HOMELESS DOGS

There are over five hundred homeless people barely existing in one of the oldest beach communities in California. Their numbers surge along with the tourism industry, and you can't take a stroll downtown, along the bike path, or by the shore without encountering the outstretched hand, cup full of pennies, and a weather-worn backpack with a lifetime of dirt and grime worn into the fabric and shredding seams. Here, along the California coastline, you would be hard pressed to go any distance without seeing at least a handful of these hobos. The mild weather, the laid-back attitude of the year-round residents, and the free lunches that the local charities seem so eager to prepare and handout - thus appeasing their filthy-rich guilt and fulfilling their Christian duty to feed the hungry - all of these events conspire to draw the nomads to Monterey like a thirsty camel to an oasis. They have become woven into the tapestry of our neighborhood and are no longer come as a shock to the fastidious systems of the uber rich you find on the Peninsula. What never ceases to amaze me though, are the dogs. "Homeless Dogs" I call them. A steady diet of burritos, hotdogs, marshmallows, and, I suspect, the ocassional seagull has left these dogs looking nothing like what you would expect. They are big. With big, studded collars, a rope for a leash, and that Carmel Clint Eastwood look in their eye that says, "go ahead, make my day..." It seems like there are as many homeless dogs as there are homeless people. Some of these dogs have been trained to beg. I found one dog sitting on a corner, bandanna around his neck - along with a sign - and a cup in front of him. The sign said, "I've been a good boy, don't make me beg..." The ravaged plastic Transformers cup actually had about twenty bucks tucked down in it. Across the street, his owner played a guitar and had his own cup sitting on the blanket in front of him. He had about forty five cents in his cup. The dog was clearly doing a much better job. I've spoken to a couple of the girls who sit in the doorways bumming cigarettes and money. "Why the dog?" I ask. Keeps 'em safe they tell me. Apparently, when you're sleeping out under the stars, you are game for anyone wanting to toss you for your coins, your shoes, and any thing else you might have. Having a dog helps. They all have a story about a girl or a guy who got stabbed and thrown in the ravine. "Shoulda had a dog..." they all say. A couple of times I've been compelled to take a sign-holder into the local fast food joint and buy them a meal. I am always at a loss as to whether or not I am expected to buy a burger for the dog too.