Greetings from Redlands California, “where the only people that remain are the people that you never wanted to see” I believe with the exception of Orem, Utah this statement is true for most places. Four years after high school Redlands’ once lively social scene is now a skeleton. I am left to associate with my brother his friends. The last functioning organ of my own personal Redlands interaction is about to move Ireland and so after this there will be no reason to return.
With this being stated I am really enjoying my stay here in Redlands. While I have been here for only two days it has been two days of rest and recuperation. This morning I decided that I wanted to go to a hair salon to get my hair cut. This is partially due to the fact that Redlands, a town of 60,000 people has over six hundred hair salons and so there is bound to be one that is good. I happened to walk into to a salon called The Wild Hair. Today was Monday and so it was the only salon in the downtown area that was open. When I arrived I asked if they were taking walk-ins and luckily for me there was a cancelation recently and so I would be seeing Carola. Yes her name was the name of a car. I was immediately called back and when I met Carola, I noticed one thing in particular. We will just state that Carola was perhaps next to some woman I met in Vegas the most well endowed woman that these eyes had ever before done known.
Carola began to cut my hair and I sat and wondered how on earth she was able to manage cutting my hair without falling over. She was middle aged. Her hair was dark and her eyes were blue. Remanance of once beautiful women still remained. At the present moment she still looked good, but you could tell that she was past her prime.
So Carola and I began to talk. Now it is at this moment I will give reason 3,534 of why you should not be a hair dresser. Every hairdresser has the crappiest things of all time happen to her. Without fail, if you become a hair dresser you will end up penniless, with child, and abandoned by your spouse. I dare anyone outside of Provo, Utah to go to a hair salon and talk to a hair stylist who is not single and has two children. If you find one I will purchase you a Salisbury steak. Hair stylists are the gypsys of the work force. They always are persecuted no matter where they are or what time they are in.
Carola by no means was an exception to this time honored tradition. I will recite the story that she told me word for word. Carola has two children one who is twenty three and one who is thirteen. She is currently raising her twenty three year olds daughter. When I heard this was I surprised? No. Shocked? No. Saddened? Yes.
But not as saddened by what she would tell me next.
I asked why she was raising her granddaughter.
She then proceeded to tell me.
A week prior to her daughters marriage, her soon to be husband experienced a fall and ended up as a quadriplegic. Wait there is more… Love prevailed and so for the first year and a half of the marriage the daughter loved her man unequivocally, bowel movements and all. He smoked medical marijuana and who could blame him. She got pregnant (don’t ask me how) Then, he left her. I will say that again. A quadriplegic unable to control his bowls left a fully functioning woman. For who? For what? I will tell you. He left his good wife for the love of another paraplegic. I am not even kidding.
After the walking out, or should I say the rolling out, of her husband the twenty year old shacked up with a drug lord who has two other girl friends. So shes now living with a drug lord. The mother is now taking care of the baby.
I don’t know what was more interesting the fact the story that she told me or the fact that she had the equivalent of thirty pound weights attached to her chest and was still managing to cut my hair.
After washing my hair out my new friend Carola gave me a head massage and then said if I really wanted a relaxing time I should go on down to the Chinese foot massage place next to the downtown Cantonese restaurant and get a full body massage for twenty five dollars.
So I did.
I arrived at the foot message place and began to talk to the Vietnamese workers. I always try to do so but to no avail. The place was shady to say the least. It was adorned with pictures from the dollar store, small bamboo trees and of course the golden cat that waves to the paying customer. I then proceeded behind the rice paper thin divider to a bigger room. There were cracks in the floors and in the walls. I sat down on a comfortable chair. A middle aged man that I named Ling gave me a towel and began to soak my feet in water. I looked to my left and saw that there was a back room covered up by curtains. There is no doubt that this place doubled as a Vietnamese prostitution ring, but who cares when your getting an hour long deep tissue massage. I felt bad for taking advantage of Ling who undoubtedly was being paid minimum wage for this job. However, I appeased my guilty conscience by thinking to myself in comparison to the working in the rice patty fields that ling worked in prior to coming to the states this is probably a pretty easy job. My mind for the rest of the hour long massage was occupied by trying to imagine the life of Ling prior to moving to the U.S., the probability of ling and his family living in a one bedroom home in San Bernadino, and the interesting flight that Ling must have taken to make it to the U.S.
Thus ended my very interesting day of relaxation.
Greetings from the shores of long beach, "where Latino's, blacks, and whites mix about as well all oil, water, lead." I am here with my parents for their thirty-third anniversary (don't ask me why they took their son on their anniversary, but they did) and if there is one thing that I have noticed it is the fact long beach is most certainly not a racially friendly zone. The attitudes exhibited by one race to the other is reminiscent of a Mississippi town during the late fifties. For instance, my parents decided that it would be in their best interest if they went to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles for their anniversary. Roscoes is an excellent choice for any occasion, including an anniversary lunch. I swear to anyone Roscoe's is the best food ever to be tasted by mankind. For the most part and in all but one of their five locations waitresses are respectable and kind to white gentry like ourselves. However, Long Beach was a different story. We entered into the house of fried chicken and waffles only to be snarled at. We were directed the most uncomfortable of seating. My father wanted to move but I decided that it was important for us to experience just the slightest bit of what our waitresses fore fathers and foremothers experienced on a day to day basis. Indeed it could be stated that if Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles were a nineteen fifties bus we would most definitely be on the back of it. What we had over the people of Birmingham and the deep south was the fact that no matter what happened at the end of our visit we would overcome and eat a delicious stack of waffles draped with syrup, butter, and the likes.
