We were frenetically excited. Today all five of us were headed to the San Diego Zoo,about a two hour drive away. We piled in the car, which, like the housemotel had air conditioning,(I had never been so cool so much of the time in the summer in my life), and started out north, eventually turning west on Highway 80 which led through the Cleveland National Forest and Cuyamaca Mountains along a road that scared me to death. I could hardly make myself look out the back window although I thought it was dangerously beautiful looking down a thousand feet or so of cliff to the forest below.
Daddy was a really good driver, but I had to give myself a reprieve every now and then and just lie down in the seat, staring at the floorboard to make my eyes stop spinning from looking down from such a height.
Jan had fallen asleep in the front seat. Susan had looked once or twice out the window, then immersed herself in The Secret in the Old Attic.
My dad was smoking a cigarette and every so often stubbed out the butt in the ashtray. The smell didn't bother me too much, but if the tobacco stench got very strong, I just opened the window, stuck my nose out, and breathed deeply. My parents would usually have a reaction, like, "oh my gosh, did a kid fall out?", but they'd quickly recover when they saw I was only hanging my head out the window.
I had actually fallen out of the car once when I was about three. My mother was driving, and there were four of us kids in the backseat, arguing about where we wanted to sit. I wanted to sit by the door and finally persuaded my brother to let me. When I moved there, I suppose my knee bumped the long metal door handle, pushing it up and unlocking the door, which swung open as my mother turned a corner.
I rolled right out, propelled by the force of the turn. A man in a white triangular hat, probably a service station attendant on that corner, rushed out and was standing over me, his kind and concerned face giving me immediate comfort.
I wasn't hurt at all, but it caused a great stir in the extended family, and my mother almost had a heart attack.
After stopping the car abruptly, and telling all the other kids to stay in there, she jumped out and rushed back to see if I was hurt. Then I started crying just from the shock and embarrassment of falling out, but I knew I hadn't been injured.
I was afraid I'd get in trouble for insisting on having my way. That lecture came later that day from my dad, but never from my grateful mother. She just kept saying "Oh, you're okay. I'm so relieved. You're okay." as she huggged me and carried me back to the car where the other five kids were all looking out the windows.
They looked more worried than curious, a fact which gave me some measure of reassurance. They loved me-yes, they did. I had no special place in the family, being neither the youngest nor the oldest, nor the smartest, most talented, or prettiest. I knew my parents loved me. They really didn't show any favoritism. But every now and then it felt good to have it affirmed--I was loved, even by my siblings.
My mother hated my father's smoking and dogged him about it even though she knew he had been smoking since he started high school. She must have felt some moral compunction to make her objections known. We wished she'd let it go. All it did was start a disagreement if my dad chose to engage. Usually he puffed away and ignored her comments.Sometimes, though, if he'd had a bad day at work, her words could start a flashfire. I wondered if the fact of his temper igniting so fast was related in any way to why people said he had a hot temper. Anyway, today was to be a fun day, so she didn't pester him about the smoking.
We took the main road all the way to Alpine when my father decided he wanted to take the scenic route on the little roads that ran here and there to even smaller communities than we had been passing through. Towns smaller than Purdon, even. That was okay with us because he had a finely honed sense of direction. He seemed to never get lost, no matter where we were,how big the city, or how rural the roads. He would just keep talking about where we were going and turning, and turning, and soon, we would be there, like magic.
My mother's sense of direction was as poor as his was fine. Neila had told me that once Mother had been trying to get home from a basketball game in Blooming Grove with a load of kids in the car and had turned and turned and turned and ended up in the middle of a cotton field. It was about 11 o'clock at night, and all the kids were scared as she spun and spun her tires trying to get out of the deep rich blackland soil of the cotton row, but Mother just laughed.
She told the kids that if she couldn't get the car out, they'd all just walk to Purdon, and some of them started whimpering saying they would be too scared. Mother gunned the motor, and all of a sudden they were bumping over the cotton stalks, dry bolls scratching the sides of the car like hands clawing from the grave, and most of the kids were now sitting at attention, their eyes wide open in terror.
Neila said some of them told their mothers, but the parents told them they shouldn't have been such sissies. For her part, Neila knew Mother was telling the truth. She would have hiked home or found a way to get them there safely. She didn't seem to be afraid of anything at all.
Daddy took a few twists and turns on little roads, maybe for about 20 miles until I got sick and had to stop on the side of the road to throw up. After that, he decided he'd get back on the main road. It was more of a straightaway, he said, glancing back at me.
Daddy said he was going to take a "sashay", to see a different part of San Diego away from the zoo, and we crossed a big bridge and we could see the bay. We thought the ocean was beautiful, but today wouldn't be a day for swimming or building sand castles. We would see lots of animals that we had never seen. All of us loved animals, and the Lord knew we had them everywhere around our house, our animals or someone else's, but we had never seen wild ones, at least not any from Africa.
Once inside the zoo, we wandered from exhibit to exhibit, looking in awe at the elephants and giraffes. The elephants stood in the middle of a large concrete expanse eating hay and drinking water.
"They say elephants never forget," my mother said.
"Yeah, but how much do they have to remember?" I asked, noting the bare accomodations and lack of toys.
Daddy was already checking out the food vendors. He'd buy anything we wanted to eat. We all knew that, so we started looking at what was available. As far as the food, it was somewhat like the Dallas Fair, but with fewer choices. They had corny dogs, hotdogs, and hamburgers, cotton candy, caramel apples, ice cream, and candy bars.
When it got hotter, after lunch, I knew I'd want some lemonade and ice cream. But for now, I'd stick with a hamburger and cotton candy. I felt fine after getting sick to my stomach earlier. Mother kept telling me I should go easy on food, but it was too tempting.
I ate everything I wanted. I shared a little with Jan; I'd give her little pieces of the cotton candy, but she was really messy and had it all over her face after two bites. Sticky, pink sugar mixed with spit was all around her mouth. Mother had to wet a tissue in the water fountain to clean her face off.
I liked seeing the big cats, but it bothered me some that they were in their little caves with such a tiny yard in which to move about. Our cats were a lot smaller, but they liked to roam everywhere, all around Purdon. They visited the Rogers, then the Bittners, and sometimes they showed up over at the gin, across the railroad track, where they chased rats as big as they were. I was sure these big cats would rather roam around in the jungle. I was still glad to get to see them up close though.
My favorite was the orangutans, though they acted so much like humans it was creepy. They watched us for a while, smiling, showing off by playing on the bars, just like I did at home.
Then one of them used the bathroom in half of an orange rind from which he had just eaten the orange pulp. I was just thinking what a great trick they had taught him, to keep things neater around their cage, when he picked the cup-shaped rind up, pulled his arm back like a major league pitcher winding up for a throw, and let it fly forward. Twenty or so people watching him backed up simultaneously, some of them stumbling over one another. A man stepped on my foot and didn't even say he was sorry.
The rind came straight ahead like a fastball and hit hard-the missile spread its contents all over a four foot area of the glass enclosure. People laughed nervously realizing the invisible glass panel had protected them and moved on to the next exhibit. The orangutan watched all of us, scratching under his arm and looking pleased with himself.
We were all very interested in what we would be viewing next. Susan, Jan and I moved closer to the cyclone wire of the enclosure to get a good look at the huge bird. His black iridescent plumage shone in the sunlight, and he looked with curiosity at all of us staring at him. He gazed into our eyes, his white-feathered head tilted at an angle, like he had a question to ask us.
Mother, ever inquisitive, had walked right up to the substantial metal fence and put her fingers around two of the strong wires that formed the thousands of little squares composing the structure.
Susan pointed up silently to a sign posted above our heads.
"What?" I asked, my pride not allowing me to remind her that I still couldn't read. I was holding Jan's hand, tighter now, as I sensed a warning in Susan's tone.
"DANGER! Keep away from fence. Do not touch," she said, just as the huge bird accelerated from standing still to a sixty mile an hour run in under three seconds. The three of us stood rigid, eyes wide, screams frozen in our throats, looking at our mother, bent into the fence, her face almost touching the rigid metal.
He made it to the fence, sticking his large beak through the square right where Mother's face had been a second earlier. His rapid movement and obvious attempt to bite Mother stunned us. She looked back at the bird from about four feet away where my dad had pulled her to safety by the shoulders.
"Wow," she panted. "I didn't know ostriches were that aggressive."
"Did you see the sign?" Susan asked.
I looked around. People were staring. I wanted to fold in upon myself and momentarily disappear. Mother didn't seem to notice the crowd.
"Well, I did, but I just thought it was meant to scare people, not that you could really get hurt. I guess I'll have to read the signs from here on out."
"Now Lib," my daddy said, laughing. "Tell the girls the truth. You never think the rules are for you. Just for everyone else. Remember when the policeman nearly arrested you for pulling a flower out of the landscaping at the Dallas Fair?"
"It was just one," Mother pouted, unrepentant. "And it was so pretty."
"Girls, let this be a lesson to you," Daddy's standard teaching phrase. "Follow the rules, and read the rules for yourself. Well, that is, as soon as you can all read."
It had been an exciting day, but we were getting tired. The last exhibit housed the rhinos. A crowd stood in front of the stucco wall observing the enormous beast while he chewed on some grasses and lazily observed us with one eye. He looked bored.
Apparently the animals had a clandestine code of ways to get even with humans. After what we saw at the rhino compound, I became convinced that the orangutans were behind the covert plan, their screams a secret animal Morse code.
The rhino started slowly moving and lumbered around in the most inauspicious way imaginable until he was "facing" the crowd with his rear end. There was a strange sound like a popping noise, then excrement shot from his bottom end like seltzer spraying out of a bottle. People started running, expressing disgust, and trying to get out of the way. We were just to the left of the foul stream, in a tight little knot, and we didn't get dirty, but the man next to us was not so lucky. He exhibited a pretty good attitude as he vainly tried to brush the goo off his khaki pants.
"Well, guess that's the end of our zoo visit," he said, a little too jauntily, I thought. "Time to go home. I didn't know rhinos could do that."
"Me either," I thought to myself. "Wonder if it had the same sort of sick stomach I had earlier today. Or maybe the orangutans just put him up to it."
"Where do you kids want to eat supper?" Daddy asked as we moved toward the zoo exit.Installed
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