Gypped by the GPS

I drove down the dirty and rutted Olympic Boulevard in unfamiliar Los Angeles. Relieved, I glimpsed the sign up ahead.  Olympic Chiropractic; our destination.   I breathed the first deep breath since exiting the freeway and hitting the surface streets of downtown Los Angeles.  

The big city always frightens me.  I can never get past the immensity and impersonality of it all.  Everything is so oversized.  Too many things crowded in on each other give it a feeling of suffocation and strangulation - and jet coldness.  Buildings too close and too tall; sidewalks blackened with grime.

I had been commissioned to drive my former boss (who is something like a cross between a mother figure/aunt/mentor to me) to a continuing education seminar for her radiology certification units.  I was playing chauffeur.


We were running down to the last minute, so though I really didn’t like it, I had to drop the doctor off at the curb and let her make her way to the seminar herself.  It was only a few yards from the curb to the door, but still, she's tiny and frail, and I am overprotective.


There was no stopping in front of the office – not with the traffic flying by at this clip.  I barely dared to slow enough to round the corner. 

But just around the corner, I let her out – with her cane in hand – and bade her farewell.  At least she didn’t have a briefcase with her this time, I worried with a scowl on my face as I anxiously watched her in my rear mirror until she made it around the corner to the big glass door.  Surely someone would see her and open the door for her…

And now what?  The instruction sheet we’d received said there would be free parking in back – but only on the second floor.  That turned out to be a small private lot that held about half the number of cars driven by the attendees, and they were all now already parked in two deep and there was not an inch of parking. 

I considered parking somewhere on a street a block or so away, but this was a really scary proposition.  The graffitied walls, broken chain link fences and filth-strewn side-walks didn’t speak to me of restful waiting, and I had five hours to kill.

Reaching over and grabbing my camera with my right hand, I spun the driving wheel around with my left.  Two right turns and I was headed back into the belly of Los Angeles. 

If I had to be here, why not take on the belly of the beast with my camera?  Who knows when a chance like this might come alone again?  And surely there will be a minimum of terrifying traffic at 7:00 on a Saturday morning.  I might actually find parking!

But first, I really needed to find a gas station.  And before that, it would be nice to find a bank. 

I hated the idea of walking around with the hundred dollar bill the doctor gave me that morning.  I just don’t like carrying that kind of cash. 

In a normal suburban neighborhood, I could find one in a heartbeat.  They are easy to locate – or to predict where one might be found.  But looking around me, I had no idea where in the world to look for one here.

It was then that I remembered the little GPS my brother and sister had given me for my birthday.  


I’d only had occasion to use it once or twice, but it was there tucked away in my purse! 

I pulled over and pulled it out.  Once I turned it on, it took only a few seconds to remember how to tell it what I wanted.  It said there were no gas stations in Los Angeles! 

Ummm, okay…?

I guess I had to ask for them by specific name.  It’s only then – when you are under pressure, in a scary neighborhood, with serious lack of sleep, using unfamiliar technology, at an unheard of hour on a Saturday morning that your mind can’t come up with a single name of any kind of gas station!

Okay then….  Let’s find the bank.  That one I know.  I type in the bank: C…H…A…S…E….  


It thinks and calculates and tells me to drive 900 yards and make a right hand turn.

Alright!  We are in business!  I happily put my car in drive and drive 900 yards.  I turn right and smile down at the little screen where the red arrow now straightens out and shows a straight course.  


“Drive 400 yards and turn left.”

“Turn left and in one hundred and fifty yards you are at destination.  


Destination!”

Hmm….  To my right there is nothing at all, and to my left is a building that most definitely is not a bank.

I look back behind me to the left of the building.  

Nothing there.  


That’s the overpass of the freeway.  


To the right there is no bank either.


Hmmm…  But the GPS said this is the place.  Not even anything that could possibly be hiding an ATM?  I look around, but find nothing whatsoever.

Oh well, let’s get back to trying to find a gas station.  I can always deposit the money later on at home.  It can wait.  Nobody will know I have it in my wallet.  I can’t think of Arco, but Shell comes to mind, so I type that in and one pops up fairly near by.

I follow the GPS to the Shell station and fill up.  Still a good 4+ hours to kill, so I smile at the joyful prospect of a morning of fun with my camera in an exotic locale.  


I’m still not sure how to approach this – I mean there is no game plan.  I guess I’ll just drive into the belly of the beast – until there are the tallest buildings on all sides, and then find a place to park, and start from there!

But at the thought of all those walls closing in on me, I think once again of that hundred dollar bill in my wallet and decide one last time to try to find a bank.  


So I pull the car over and type into the GPS: C…H…A…S…E…. 

It calculates and gives me step by step directions.  


Relieved that it has the answer to my worries, I follow directions implicitly…. u-turn … left... right… right… destination!

Arrgh!  But wait!  This is the same spot!  


I’ve been here before and there is no bank here!  Just an empty lot, a freeway overcrossing and building that’s definitely not the bank.  


Arrgh!  


Stupid GPS!

I unplug the stupid GPS  in disgust and frustration.  Then realizing that it it not its fault, I carefully tuck it back into my purse.  


Then I turn around and head back deep into the midst of the high rises, camera in tow.

I spent a few delightful hours wandering up and down the streets of what I found out later are mainly the jewelry district and the garment districts of downtown LA., shooting whatever caught my eye.

And when the noon hour closed in, I had to pack the camera away and head back toward the chiropractic office to pick up my poor doctor who was just about falling asleep in the back of the crowded seminar hall. 

I got some good shots out of the day and would even go back again all by myself just to shoot more. 

But I still can’t help but think about that GPS sending me back twice to the same spot  to look for a bank.
  
...And me following along just blindly because I knew I was following someone who had all the answers!  I even let it lead me down the wrong road not once, but twice because I was so busy just focusing on what it told me to do.

There’s something to be learned there.
We all can relate that to at least some time in our lives, when we found ourselves in the wrong place (whether physically or metaphorically) because we followed along because we trusted someone else’s judgment better than our own.  Or we just let someone else lead us astray without thinking.

Just because our friend looks so smart (or has the invisible letters GPS tattooed on him somewhere) doesn’t mean we need to follow him.


God warns us to be careful lest we be led astray.  I guess that extends to GPSes too!  lol




.

Uncle Clarence

We moved to St. Croix the summer after I turned eight. Driving from the airport to our new house, I could hardly contain the excitement. Our own house right on the beach! With palm trees and banana trees and everything!


The car crunched into the short, gravel driveway of our new house after the forty-five minute drive from the airport. We flung open the car doors and all six of us kids piled out, eager to discover our new home. No matter how many times we had made our mom and dad describe it to us, the real thing looked nothing like the house I’d imagined. Bougainvillea bushes with papery-thin fuscia, peach, white, red and purple blossoms hugged the front of the house, which sparkled a brilliant white against the blue sky and the turquoise sea.


Inside, a vaulted ceiling gave the house a light, airy feeling. A large kitchen opened into a larger living room and dining room. Several sets of sliding glass doors opened from both of these rooms onto a screened-in terrace running the entire length of the house, and overlooking the ocean.


Oh, how I loved that house! The long terrace’s terrazzo floor turned out to be the greatest slip’n’slide any kid could ever want. In stocking feet, we would take turns getting a good running start and then sliding as fast and as far as we could, comparing marks to see who took the prize. Who needed video games?!


The vacant lot to the west of our house became our land of exploration. Tall grass waved over our heads in rainy seasons, hiding a labyrinth of trails we’d created. One led back to the far corner where we had a clubhouse under the spreading branches of a tamarind tree.


Our rocky front yard sloped down to the beach where we had our own private reef. I loved to wade out, don a mask and spend endless hours swimming back and forth watching the fish: sergeant majors, wrasses, butterfly fish and the occasional puffer.


One day I noticed a pile of clamshell halves at the base of the coral wall. Diving down to the shallow ocean floor, I grabbed a handful of shells and brought them to the surface, pushing my mask up off my face to rest on top of my head.


Turning the shells over and over in my hand, I wondered who had put them there in a pile, and why. Then I noticed each had a small, perfectly round hole drilled in its side. Now I was really puzzled. Why would anyone drill holes in the shells and then put them all in a pile at our reef? Letting them fall from my hand, I watched them spin and pirouette downward through the clear water to settle on the sandy ocean floor again with little “poof splashes” of sand. I pulled my mask back on, and continued on my wondering exploration, careful to steer clear of the spiny black sea urchins.


Before I realized it, I’d wandered much farther from shore than I had planned. Turning back, I headed toward shore, turning my head this way and that, wanting to see all there was to see.


Suddenly off to my right appeared a barracuda, about three feet long, swimming along side me. His long lower jaw jutted out displaying a row of sharp teeth. But I knew not to be frightened of him. He was merely curious about the new creature that had ventured into his domain.


I saw him again the next time I went out, and we became buddies after a while. Every time I donned my mask, he miraculously appeared by my side, as though he’d been waiting for me -- always just at arm’s length away. I often wondered how he knew how far I could reach and managed to stay just beyond my fingertips. But he just seemed to know. If I reach toward him he seemed to smile back at me, as though to say, “You know better than that. I am here, but you may not touch.”


I soon discovered that the pile of clamshells had not been placed there by any two-legged creature at all. They had been discarded by the octopus who lived in the hole in the reef just above the abandoned shells. He had brought the live clams back to his home, bored a hole in them to paralyze them and had them for dinner!


But oddly enough, one of my most thrilling discoveries was a crudely built pea green sloop that sailed by the first day we were there. As I stood at the water’s edge, a sailboat slipped by, its heavy canvas sail rustling in the stiff ocean breeze. 

As it sailed close to our beach, it came about into the wind, and I saw a single sailor on board; a grizzled old man whose black face was agelessly wrinkled. He saw me standing there and waved a callused hand and called out, “Halloooo there, young miss!”


When I looked around to see who he was calling to, I heard his rich laughter. By the time I realized he meant me and turned back, he had sailed around the point and disappeared. I turned and ran back up the path to the house calling out in breathless excitement.


“I saw the neatest thing! It’s here. Right here in St. Croix! I saw the “beautiful pea green boat!” For as a very young child, I had loved the poem “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear. Whenever my mother read it to us, I would chant along, enraptured by the rhythm of it as well as the pictures it created in my head.


“The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to seaIn a beautiful pea green boat…”


And now I had seen the pea green boat! Okay, I knew it wasn’t the pea green boat. But I allowed myself a little creativity. It looked exactly like I’d pictured it for years!


Everyone came running when they heard me yelling as I ran up the path. But, of course, by the time I got there, the only thing out on the water was tiny whitecaps.


I soon realized that the “beautiful pea green boat” was to be a regular in the bay out in front of us, tacking its way upwind between the shore and the barrier reef a hundred and fifty yards off shore. It didn’t take me long to become curious enough to scurry up the hill to the east of our house and find out where the “beautiful pea green boat” was headed. Amazingly enough, it came from the next cove over!


At school he next day, I asked Debbie Skov (whose father was a local fisherman) if she knew the man who sailed the boat. I found out everyone called him Uncle Clarence, though it was not clear to me exactly whose uncle he was. Uncle Clarence had a smile that split his wrinkled ol’ black face from ear to ear. And his yellowed eyes crinkled every time he smiled. I loved it when he would sail close enough to shore to call and wave to me before coming about and sailing back out toward the barrier reef. Oh how I wished he was my Uncle Clarence!


I began to look forward to his boat sailing by our cove. I would sit on the rocky bluff

above the reef and watch him sail by, dreaming of all the places I could sail to if I had a “beautiful pea green boat” of my own.


Those were magical days. Summer afternoons, I would swim with “my” barracuda and try to catch a glimpse of the shy octopus friend who left me shells every day. And after dinner each night, when the dishes were all cleared, we kids would gather ‘round the dining room table as my mom would read to us the book of the week.


Whether it was The Hobbit, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Swiss Family Robinson, or any number of other books, we would all sit around, from sixteen-year-old Chris on down to six-year-old George, and share in the magic of my mother’s story-telling.


Sometimes, if the vocabulary went too far over my head, I would find myself staring up at the lights above and daydreaming about my “beautiful pea green boat” and the places it would take me, carried along on the melodic sound of my mother’s voice. Or I would stare up at the orange- and turquoise- and yellow-globed lights hanging above the dining room table in the airy vaulted ceiling, and smile at the colors and thank my lucky stars we had moved to this wonderful house.


One day we were between books. We’d finished the previous book the night before, and had not been to the library to get a new one yet. So that night after dinner we turned off the beautifully colored lights over the table, and had to settle for tv in the living room instead of a story. We soon lost interest and wandered off to bed.


The next day, there was a knock at our front door. “I’ll get it!” I shouted, running to the door. We had not had a single guest knock at our door since we’d arrived, and I was very curious to see who was there.

“Uncle CLARENCE!” I squealed as I opened the door.


“Well, young miss! It seems yo’ know my name, but I ‘ave not as yet learned yors…”


Just then my mother came up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “May I help you?” she asked politely, looking over my head at the stranger.


“It’s him, mom! It’s HIM! The man who sails the ‘beautiful pea green boat’!”


Uncle Clarence looked confused, but smiled and accepted my mom’s invitation to come in and have a glass of lemonade.


“I come to see if yo’ is al’right,” he said, his melodic Calypso baritone voice echoing in singsong rhythm in the lofty room and dancing between my colorful globed lights overhead.


Now it was my mother’s turn to look confused. What an odd thing for a total stranger to say…


“Um…” she began, not sure what to say next.


Noting our confusion, he chuckled and then began again. “I am sorry, miss,” he laughed. “I mus’ explain m’self. ‘Tis your light,” he said, raising his eyes to the colored ceiling lights above the table. “I d’in see de light shinin’ last night, and I was worried. I tell m’self I mus’ come and see if yo’ is al’right.”


My mom and I looked at each other, still not comprehending.

He looked up into the vaulted ceiling at the globed lights above and sighed. “I t’ink I need to explain…” he said. “Can we sit?”


“Oh, I am sorry. Please, come and sit and tell us what brings you here.”


“Firs’ I mus’ introduce myself’,” he said. “My name is Clarence. Clarence Blackwood. They call me Uncle Clarence. I have a fishin’ boat over in de nex’ cove. I been out checkin’ my traps ou’side the barrier reef an’ gettin’ back afta dark. But I neva haf’ to worry, because I have yo’ light to bring me home.


“If I line up the bouy light on de break in de reef with yo’ blue and orange lights, I know I can make it safe t’rough de trecherous reef. Yo’ light is my “light on de hill,” like in de Bible. Well, las’ night I did not see yo’ light, and I tell m’self, Clarnece, somet’ing is wrong. I do not see de light on de hill. I mus’ find out what is wrong. So here I am to fin’ wha’ happen to yo’ light...”


Amazingly, sitting in a circle around our family table, sharing family time, we had also unwittingly been letting our light shine to others alone and tossed at sea!


From that day on, we kept our dining room lights burning up until bedtime, whether anyone was in the dining room or not. What a lesson – the realization that our light had been shining unbeknownst to us. And what a reminder to live our lives in such a way that they might be a light to others who might be observing us without our knowing.

That night, we prayed for Uncle Clarence and all those in life who were looking for a light on the hill to lead their way home.


And from that night on, we always left the dining room lights on, whether we had a story to read or not.

Liz Carson Rosas
6 May 2009

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."
Matthew 5:14-16