Odyssey on the Santa Cruz Metro

In honor of Father's Day, and with a nod of thanks to Sharron Bassano of Leaves for the inspiration, here's another Dad story.

photo source unknown

When my daughter, Val, and I drove from our cabin in Boulder Creek, CA to pick up my Dad at the Santa Cruz Metro station, we didn't know it would become an odyssey. Since he didn't like to fly from Salt Lake to visit us, he decided to take a Greyhound bus across the Great Basin. That's a two-day trip fraught with stops along the way that could confuse my elderly father.

At the time, I wondered if he remembered the trek we took when we loaded up my car and a U-Haul truck to move me to Santa Cruz. I had to get out of my stagnating hometown life and he followed me to make sure I got wherever I thought I was going.

"I hope you know what you're doing," he would usually say whenever he couldn't talk me out of my latest hair-brained scheme. With that adventure, I'd done research for months. I had a plan … or at least a rough idea of one. It was my usual flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants life decision. I wasn't worried, but he had plenty of reasons to do so.

Now, the tables were turned. All the way to the depot, I envisioned my Dad wandering aimlessly in the middle of the desert or, worse yet, the wilderness of San Jose's bustling streets.

So here Val and I sat, watching buses come and go, breathing fetid diesel air, and noting each passenger stepping off a San Jose-Santa Cruz bus. There would be three more until the final bus arrived at four p.m. So far, he hadn't made the connections. He wasn't too coherent last time I saw him a year earlier, but there's got to be some higher agency that protects dotty old men, right? He had told harrowing stories about his youth that confirmed, to me at least, that he was covered with angels.

To kill time between buses, we checked out stores on Pacific Avenue Mall, then returned to the depot to check each bus. Again, no Dad. The worry meter ticked up a notch. At four, when the last bus failed to deposit Dad on the sidewalk, we surrendered all hope and started homeward. The drive seemed longer than usual, winding up Highway Nine through the little mountain towns of Felton, Ben Lomond, and Boulder Creek. At last, we veered into our driveway.

"Grandpa! There's Grandpa!" Val exclaimed.

photo by Sue Cauhape

From the front steps, Dad slowly rose, stretching his body into upright alignment. He waited as we rushed up to him with lots of hugs and questions.

"How in the hell did you get up here? We've been waiting for you at the depot. How did we miss you?"

His presence only served to release a torrent of angst and panic as I held his diminished frame in my arms. His bony body seemed so frail compared to the younger man who strode with energy after working all day as an electrician. After a brief nap on the living room floor, he would push his lawn mower up and down our quarter-acre of grass until it lay neat and tidy. Those days were long gone.

He merely shrugged and smiled at us obviously glad his long journey was over.

We escorted him into the house where lots of water and a sandwich landed in front of him on the table. The saga he told between bites blew my mind.

Somehow, he'd gotten on an earlier bus and, not seeing us anywhere around, found another one to Boulder Creek. That bus was the lifeline for many people living in communities back in the hills. Santa Cruz mountain towns were like a west coast version of Appalachia with little cabins like ours tucked back in redwood darkened hollows where roads were barely paved and folks were barely civilized. With real estate prices skyrocketing, former vacation cabins became full-time residences for people of meager means. At the time, that included us.

Dad rode the bus up to the Mountain Store, two miles from our home. That was the terminus of the route, as far as he could go by that transport.

I tried to imagine him exploring the Mountain Store, a rustic remainder from the lumber camp days, with household commodities stacked upon haphazard shelves. A few dozen mailboxes banked along one side of the store for all the houses back in the forested hills. A Hmong family owned the store at that time. I wondered what Dad would've thought had he seen, as I had one day, three Hmong ladies, dressed in pearls and high-heels, squatting on their haunches in the dust to wait for the bus for a trip to town.

Trusting in the kindness of strangers, Dad snagged a ride with one of the customers and made it to our front steps. I was thrilled Dad remembered the address. For years, he'd had trouble using a phone to call me long distance. Somehow, all those numbers got lost on him. With armed marijuana farmers and other questionably sane people in the neighborhood, however, the chances his last ride in this odyssey would indeed be his last.

What's really amazing is he didn't seem perturbed that we took so long returning home. Didn't drill us about where the hell we had been. Didn't rant about being abandoned at the depot. We knew he was coming, right?  

Instead of waiting at the depot, though, he was determined to get himself to our place. He would figure it out. He was still Dad, the head of the family, and fully capable of solving any problem. Even while living with my sister, he refused to go to bed until she retired for the night. Then he would check that all the doors and windows were secured. It drove her nuts, but something in the way he was raised and achieved his manhood dictated that, no matter his age and mental acuity, he would take care of his family.

My perspective changed that day. His brain leapt out of its usual fog to seize this adventure and finish his quest. And my belief was confirmed that whatever unknowable essence controls the Universe does indeed watch over dotty old men … with the help of a host of angels. And I had to admit that last driver was one of them.

photo by Sue Cauhape

If you enjoyed this story, feel free to explore more in the Ring Around the Basin Archive. Also, please comment if so inclined. Let’s start a conversation.