Down the Kern

When you get arrested in town and nobody posts bail you go to the Kern County Jail in Bakersfield. It’s a one and a half our drive out of the High Desert up to the Sierra Nevada mountains and into the Kern River Valley. In this mountain valley sits Lake Isabella which releases the lower half of the Kern River Down a dangerous and narrow canyon into Bakersfield where the river is used to water the Central Valley crops.

The road to the county jail runs down this steep canyon and, besides being a long and unnecessary trip, is an exceeding dangerous one as the single lane road twists and turns edging beside the powerful river. The river at this time is at full swell. A raging torrent that crashes down ten thousand feet in a few hundred miles. Nothing can stop the flow to the valley bottom, not even the withering dams of Isabella can hold it back.
I’m going to the jail again to pick up a friend I know. My car pulls up at release time, the gates open, the car door shuts and we head back home to the desert.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Oh, just visiting my room again.”
“You're getting to know it pretty well?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Why do you keep going back there?”
“Where else am I going to go?”
“Stay at home. Its gotta be better than being there.”
“Well you have never been there.”
“Well you got to do something. You can just keep going back there.”
“All I ever wanted to do is create. Make my mark on the world. You know, remember your grandpa?”
I do remember the last time I saw him in the hospital. Not the house in the desert. Not in his home where he lived for fifty years surrounded in the by the art of his life. He was surrounded by whitewalls, nurses, tubes and death and dying.
The house sat out in the desert plains. A place so scorched anything could find death if it choose to lie outside exposed in the empty span. As we drove past the scrub brush and rocks he sat next to me in his hospital gown with the oxygen tube under his nose and I asked my grandpa,
“How did you live such a long happy life?”
“Well, I just lived and as life goes on you build up a life and the things and places in that life make you happy. But, as I sit here in this hospital room with my house gone, family missing, my wife dead, and with all those things in my life absent in this hospital ward, I guess I regret never having something all my own to have when everything else is gone. I wish I had painted guitars.”
“Really? Paint guitars?”
“Yes, I always played them and I always thought to create one that looks as special as it sounds. Make it true. Make it everything you thought it could be.”
“Well grandpa I play guitar too, maybe I’ll have to paint one for you.”
“That would be great. Do you still know that painter? I think we are passing his house now.”
Rising out of the desert into the Sierras the view is spectacular. You can see for miles behind you going up the grade and just imagine all the things that were there. His house sat on the side of the road near the top. I remember spending days there getting high and playing video games. But, I really remember where I met him at work, in that dingy burger joint, hour after hour, working our sweat into those machines while getting minimum wage. The stainless steel, the fryer, the steam table, the makers of my livelihood and the reason for our association. We would small talk over the grill. He was older than me and painted guitars in his spare time. It was his passion and you would have never known it from looking at him in that burger shack. The car revs up as we leave the desert climbing over the peak into the valley.
“So how’s the guitar art going?” I asked him.
“Oh, I sold one a couple days ago to this high school kid. He though it was pretty rad. But, mostly just working at the big burger.”
“You still working there? You must be running that place.”
“Yeah, I am manager.”
“Well good for you man.”
“I guess.” He shrugged.
“What it doesn’t pay well enough?’
“No, its good pay. Its just I have been there for years. I paint all these exotic places and things and try to be all creative and shit. But, I realize that that shack is more me than anything, well, than anything else. Might as well paint fries on my Strat.”
“Your art is great man! You are doing great.”
“But it’s not me. I wish I had taken the time to develop myself and learn about my place in the world. You know, like how you did when you went to school.”
Going into the valley it is green. It is not usually green, usually the hills are a tan brown covered in dead grass with crags of granite jutting out intermittently. It is green now because Isabella is full. It’s a reservoir and the snow melt from the Kern has filled up behind the dams and pours over the spillways. The result is an artificial green in this mountain valley that will dissipate after flood stage has passed. Looking at the uncommon green hills feels like looking at someone else that you thought you knew.
Like when I would sit there in class looking up at the professor. Usually they were old, some were foreign, and none looked like me. They all fit well with the desks, fluorescence, and the whiteboards and looking at them you would think the students were one and everything else was the other. I never really saw the other students and I never really saw the teacher. What I did see was a different myself. Looking at myself on that podium I was studying myself to learn what I should be.
Sitting in the passenger seat looking out as road left the valley and entered the river gorge I asked myself, “How did those guitar and painting classes work out for you?” As I drove the question made me uncomfortable.
“I’m still painting guitars. Sometimes.” I said to myself.
“Still selling them to high school kids?”
“I sold one to a plumber the other day.”
“Wow, good for you. Is that your full time job then?”
“No I still work at the burger shack. I’m a manager.”
“Well I guess no demand for masterpiece instrumentation eh?”
“Someday they will be my livelihood.”
“No they won’t. Nobody needs a guitar with the fucking Mona Lisa on it. You play a guitar idiot. You just wanted to be special. You wanted people to look at you and say ‘that boy sure is something.’ But, they won’t remember your painted guitars; they won’t care about what you created. So resign your self to the things, people and places that make the art of your life. Or, I guess you can hold your guitar tight when you are alone on your death bed.”
A good teacher will tell you things you don’t want to hear. It’s at this moment facing such a stark reality that the classroom clears, the lights dim and only the sunlight shines in through blinds. I sit alone at my desk. And in a room full of people I see only one person sitting across the classroom. I see you.
The river pounds, it roars, it crushes anything in its path. The crags are coated in whitewater, the banks are loose and eroding quickly, and many uprooted things ride the torrent. The river is so full and powerful it hugs dangerously close to the canyon road and flows all the way down to the central valley’s bottom; right past the county jail.
“So why did you come get out again?” You ask.
“Because you needed me to” I said
“I don’t need you.”
“I just don’t want to see you going back there again and again.”
“Well you have never been there so what do you know?”
“I know one day you will never come back.”
“Well I always got you to come and get me.”
“I don’t know why I do.”
“Because you love me. Because you need me.”
“I don’t need you.”
“Then why did you come to Bakersfield? Why didn’t you just stay in your room?”
“Before I left my house today I was in my room. I looked at my brushes, my paint, my guitars and I saw nothing. The vanilla lotion, the fruity candles, the soft blue sheets and everything else smelled of you. I had been through so many rooms with so many people and never did I feel as alone as I did in my room today.”

Bakersfield Californian- Current Issue-Pg.8-Police Log:

939am: A single driver lost control of his vehicle on Hwy 178 south of Isabella and drove into the Kern River. The river was at such a high flow the vehicle was carried all the way down the canyon into downtown Bakersfield.