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Mohr
hippocampusmagazine.com/2013/06/blue-eyes-at-the-wheel-by-anthony-j-mohr/
6/30/2013
We drove down State Street, past the courthouse that, with its Spanish architecture, could have passed as one
of California’s Franciscan missions. Then we turned west along the coastline. To our left, twenty miles across the
water, lay Santa Cruz Island. It appeared closer that day. So did the Santa Ynez Mountains, which reared up on
our right, two miles away, their ridges brown with green and gold flecks in the chaparral.
An hour or so later, we started to get hungry. We were supposed to be near the University of California at Santa
Barbara, but nothing was around us but citrus trees. I rolled down the back window as far as it could go, stuck
my head out, and breathed the thick warm air with its hint of salt from the sea. We were the only car in sight. The
fields came up to the road. Stan wasn’t a fast driver, which delighted my nervous mother and annoyed me. I felt
we were meandering to nowhere. I was too young to realize that that was the point.
Ahead and slightly to the right was an on-ramp to a highway that had yet to open. A sign said Do Not Enter. This
was not a unique sight in the California of the early 1960s, when the state was building freeways to everywhere,
even to these orange groves.
The barriers and orange cones did not completely block the entrance.
Stan turned to me. “Let’s see where it goes,” he said. His blue eyes danced with life. I hadn’t noticed how blue
they were until now. His face, normally impassive, acquired a hint of a grin.
“Stanley,” my mother said in a nervous voice that I knew so well. Disobeying that sign frightened her. She was a
Depression-era woman who saw bad consequences around every corner and down every straightaway,
avoidable only by obeying the instructions.
Stan’s grin widened as he said, “Relax. This will be fun.” I agreed and shouted out a “Yes!” when he weaved
around the cones and we ascended to the freeway.
Stan almost, but not quite, floored it. The entrance felt like a ramp to a Valhalla in the distance, where the
mountains cut the summer sky. We were zooming over new pavement, maybe the first private car ever on that
stretch, a concrete ribbon that was wholly ours. There were no oil stains or tread marks, and there were no
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police cars. We were above the fields, howling north at a speed that made me feel as though we were about to
take flight and made my mother yelp that we’d drive off a ledge. She was sure the road wasn’t finished. But Stan
relaxed into the ride and said, “Honey, it’s fine.” And the tone of his voice made me believe him and made me
happy.
My mother was wrong. Our slice of new highway fed us into US-101 where, on prominent display, was a sign for
food. Stan eased us down an off-ramp and within moments found his daughter’s favorite type of place to eat—a
“nineteen-cent hamburger pad.” I’m sure I ate two of them, covered with pickles and a bun soaked with ketchup.
The four of us shared the French fries.
My view of my new stepfather changed that day. I saw him as a man who’d slip the envelope when the time was
right. Over the years he taught me how to do likewise. He was a man I’d grow to love and whose blue eyes I’d
never doubt again. They would hold their glint until April 25, 2013, when he died at ninety-six, after traveling
many more roads ostensibly closed to the public.
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