In 1975, I was living with a lady I'll call KT, from Florida, while we were working in the Student Financial Aid Office at U.C. Berkeley; and, after our collaboration on writing a book of advice for California applicants for student financial aid had failed (due to my hard-headedness), we decided to take a trip from the Bay Area to Baja California in a very used 1967 VW bus I was driving at the time.

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In 1975, I was living with a lady I'll call KT while we were working in the Student Financial Aid Office at U.C. Berkeley; and, after our collaboration writing a book of advice for California applicants for student financial aid had failed (due to my hard-headedness), we decided to take a trip from the Bay Area to Baja California in a very used 1967 VW bus I was driving at the time.  Both of us innocent as hell and not sure if we were still in love.  

We crossed over at Tijuana, and proceeded slowly down Mexico State Highway 1, grooving on the rapidly changing sea- and landscapes and loving Mexico.

T. Jefferson Parker is the best police procedural writer I've ever read, and California Girl may be the fifteenth book he's written. Three of his earliest books -- Black Water, Red Light, and The Blue Hour -- feature Merci Rayborn, a very strong woman working for a Southern California Police Department; these three books were smash-hits in the 1990's, but Parker published California Girl in 2004, and his awesome fame and prolific-ness decided me: if I'm going to appreciate California Girl at OEN, I'll simply present excerpts from Chapter 30.

In fact, California Girl's Chapter 30 stands alone as a perfect little jewel of T. Jefferson's art - after 284 pages of Southern California during the Vietnam War, of John Birchers, Nixonites, motorcyclists-hippie-druggies, a Drive-In Theater Converted to a Drive-In Christian Church, beautiful women and beauty queens (one of whom gets murdered and her head cut off), hard-headed men, and of course Southern California Law Enforcement persons.

By Chapter 30, two San Diego County Sheriff officers -- Lucky Lobdell and Nick Becker - have decided to drive incognito down into Baja in pursuit of their primary suspect in the beheading of a local (Tustin, California) beauty queen, the suspect being a highly intelligent and vicious motorcycle-riding-drugdealer whose base of operations is in Baja California, well south of Tijuana.    

Back in 1975, KT and I had our first memorable close encounter with Mexicans at a beach on the coast side of Baja, near I can't remember what town, probably Mulaje or close to it. There was a secondary dirt road off the primary dirt road off Mexico 1, with a sign saying "A La Casa de Todos" and even our limited Spanish told us this was direction to "Everyone's House."   So we followed the secondary dirt road, while the sun dropped toward the ocean. And we got to Everyone's House a half-hour or so later, only to find it deserted. There was a big ocean breaking down below us, and we smoked some weed we'd brought from Berkeley, descended the cliff below the House and above the beach, strolled the beach while the sun set, decided to eat saved-stuff for dinner before crashing in the house, and climbed back up the cliff.   Which was when an open jeep-load of four youthful Mexicans drove up and parked; and two of them - with wet suits on and spear-guns - got out and walked over to talk to us. I tried to converse with them in my 25-year-old high-school Spanish, and at least I got over the idea that we were friendly, happy and harmless tourists. So the four of them ran down the cliff and across the beach, hit the water, and commenced to fish out of inner-tubes in the big surf.  

The first page of Chapter 30 of California Girl begins:

"Nick steered the red rocket south on I-5 while Lobdell smoked a cigarette and looked out at the new nuclear power plant at San Onofre.

The Country Squire had two surfboards strapped to the top and food and water and camping gear in the back.   Nick and Lobdell had tried to dress more like surfers than cops but Nick figured they just looked like cops in sandals"." (p 285)  

When the four Mexicanos had caught and saved enough fish for a nice cook-out, they climbed back up the cliff, and started to roast them in the pit outside the Casa; and the same dude who I'd talked with before invited us to share dinner with them.   Which we did -- and that open-fire-cooked fish was extremely wonderful. After dinner, the four Mexicans drove away, and KT and I slept the sleep of the dead inside Everyone's House.

Chapter 31 of California Girl continues with the following sentences:

"Mexico State Highway 1 led south through La Gloria and Costa Azul. Then Rosarito, Popotla, and Punta Descanso.   El Morro and Santa Martha.   Satini Las Gaviotas and Puerto Nuevo"." (pp 287)

". Lobdell burst into the main house with his weapon up in both hands. Nick followed close behind him scanning the dark interior. Big room. Big house. Smell of blood and gunpowder. Marcello dead on the floor right under them, gun out. Looked like he had been shot eight or ten times. Two guys dead across from him Nick didn't recognize. In the far end of the room, Cortazar slouched dead on a big steerhide couch. Hands at his sides and no weapon out. Like he'd come in, sat on the couch, and been slaughtered. Another man on the kitchen floor Nick didn't recognize. Marcello had taken down three but not enough." (pp 294-5)

In 1975, KT and I continued on down Mexico State 1 the next morning after our fish-feast with the four locals, and the next memorable event occurred after we stopped that afternoon on another beach. The beach was nice but after an hour or so, a young man came around the corner and walked toward us with a distinctly hostile swagger.

He told me that where we were was not a public beach, so I owed him dinero to stay the nite. I remember that he asked for a hundred pesos and I told him I'd give him ten and held out a ten peso bill; but, I told him, I don't want to see you again, and we'll be leaving in the morning. There was an awkward moment, and then he took the bill and sauntered off. KT and I didn't enjoy the beach much at all afterwards, and that nite we just got stoned in the bus with shut and locked doors, with the top pulled back to watch the stars, and then we shut the top and went to sleep. In any case the nite passed uneventfully, and we went on our way the next morning.  

The last section of Chapter 31 of California Girls begins as follows:

"The border wait {returning to the U.S -- GLR} was long, though Nick had no way of knowing this. He was aware, then unaware, lucid one moment and nearly unconscious the next. Lucky had covered him with a blanket".Then he felt Lobdell putting something between either his right hand or his left (and) heard Lobdell explaining he was going to light this just before they got up to the Mexican customs guy, and if Nick could take one puff on it and nod, that would really help them out"." (p 300)

KT and I made it the rest of the way to the tip of Baja without incident that I recall, really grooving on everything Mexican and Baja-an.   We weren't exactly hippies and we weren't exactly not-hippies; and now in remembrance I know that I could never have faced down the local guy on the second beach if KT hadn't had her leg crushed in an auto accident when she was a little girl and subsequently always walked with a cane.   The guy doubtless saw her debility and decided we weren't worth the trouble.   In fact, we were very very lucky.  

I say we were lucky but the Baja component was only half of it: when we got back to the street in San Francisco where KT lived, the bean's brakes had been fading and I'd been pumping them from L.A. to the Bay Area.   And I swear, I got him parked legally and we got him unloaded; but the next morning when I went out and started old bean up, the brakes were totally gone.

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Authors Bio:
I have a law degree (Stanford, 66') but have never practiced. Instead, from 1967 through 1977, I tried to contribute to the revolution in America. As unsuccessful as everyone else over that decade, in 1978 I went to work for the U.S. Forest Service in San Francisco as a Clerk-Typist, GS-4. I was active in the USFS's union for several years, including a brief stint as editor of The Forest Service Monitor, the nationwide voice of the Forest Service in the National Federation of Federal Employees. Howsoever, I now believe my most important contribution while editor of the F.S.M. was bringing to the attention of F.S. employees the fact that the Black-Footed Ferret was not extinct; one had been found in 1980 on a national forest in the Colorado. In 2001 I retired from the USFS after attaining the age of 60 with 23 years of service. Stanford University was evidently unimpressed with my efforts to make USFS investigative reports of tort claim incidents available to tort claimants (ie, "the public"), alleging the negligence of a F.S. employee acting in the scope of his/her duties caused their damages, under the Freedom of Information Act. Oh well. What'cha gonna do?