Crossing the Border
By Lee Goldstein
It was 1950, and I had never been in trouble with the police until this year (except for when I was 9 and threw a clump of mud at a shiny black car which turned out to be a plain-clothes cop car). Yet in the next month or two, I would be fleeing from the California Highway Patrol with two ladies who were on the lam with me.
My dad had just read a Life Magazine story about an amazing university in California that was encouraging wheelchair-user enrollments, one of the first universities in the nation to do so. The article explained that there were curb ramps, classes which could be moved downstairs, and even elevators in some newer buildings on campus. UCLA’s resolve to provide opportunity to wheelchair users, particularly vets who had served in WWII, put it at the forefront of disability awareness. And Southern California had perfect weather for such an undertaking.
I was 18, a partial quadriplegic from a diving accident, and a new high school graduate from the small town of Winnetka, Ill. Suddenly the family, except my mom, was excited about sending me all the way to Los Angeles. The question was how the devil to get me to California with my chair, medical equipment, full body braces for exercise, and little knowledge or experience in how to drive over 2,000 miles in the new hand-controlled Oldsmobile Dad had bought me months before.
Well, my folks found an answer, such as it was. I had a gorgeous physical therapist, Helen Steinhour, who had become a close friend of our family after working on strengthening my arms for the last four years since my accident. Not only was my family in love with her, even I had a terrible crush on this woman who had movie star looks and charm. And as it turned out, she needed a ride to California to visit ailing relatives there.
My mother volunteered to go if Helen would accompany us to help with my needs and do some of the driving. So it was settled. The three of us — Mother, who didn’t know how to drive, but whose job on the trip was to dispense iced tea to keep me hydrated, and to read maps backward and constantly try to send us back to Illinois; Helen, whose duty was sharing driving with me and to continually remind me to shift off my tender behind, and who wiped my eyes when she saw me secretly crying from the torture of leaving behind my long-time high school sweetheart; and there I was, already suffering from a terrible case of homesickness and sadness of leaving friends and the only home I’d ever known. And the trip had only just started!
But the most amazing time of that already eventful, sometimes hysterical trip happened the second-to-last day. It was my first incident of running from police. And it happened this way.
We were about to enter California’s Mojave Desert in the middle of summer on historic Route 66, and it had grown uncomfortably hot. The car was not air-conditioned — it was long before that comfort was available in cars. Helen was driving as things got worse for me. Like many quadriplegics, I could not take heat, nor could I sweat to reduce body temperature. Mother kept wiping me with cool water from a thermos, and when she ran out of that, she began feverishly using a thermos of iced tea.
We raced toward a motel we had picked out in a guidebook. It was the only one shown for the next 100 miles. It was just inside California. By the time we neared the California border, I was on the verge of passing out. I was unable to hold my head up and was fading in and out of consciousness. I thought I heard Helen yelling, “Lee, hold on … it’s only 10 more miles! It will be air-conditioned!” Sounded like she was trying to convince herself that it would be air-conditioned, since the book did not specify.
Then I faded again. Suddenly I was startled into semi-consciousness by Helen shouting, “I’m not going to stop! We don’t have any damn fruits or vegetables!”
* * *
She had come to the California border vegetable inspection station, and a long line of cars was stopped in the sweltering heat as state police questioned drivers and inspected car trunks. Helen wheeled the car around the line and yelled at one of the men in uniforms, “I’ve got a sick person inside, can’t stop!” And she shot past the wide-eyed trooper, gunning the engine and speeding away from the station.
“Hang on, Lee, we’re almost there! Hang on!” The words faded in and out of my sick haze.
As they told it to me later, the motorcycle officer, siren screaming and red lights flashing, caught up with them as they were pushing the wheelchair with me slumped in it, over the rough gravel path of the motel driveway. The blonde lady from the office was helping them rush me toward an air-conditioned room. As Mom and Helen pushed the chair through the difficult gravel, the blonde clerk held me in the chair, until the state patrolman caught up with us and took over for her so she could open the room door.
I woke up to find myself lying on a bed in a strange, freezing cold room. A blonde lady in a tiny halter top and shorts was pulling off my clothes, while a trooper in full uniform and Smokey Bear hat sloshed a thermos of iced tea in my face.
Helen was there, yelling, “Wake up Lee, we’re there! Wake up … you’ll be OK … wake up!’
Mother was in the background, rocking from side to side, clucking and mumbling, “Never again, oh, never again!” and holding her head with both hands.
I raised myself on my elbows to take in this apparition, and everyone suddenly hugged me, except the state trooper. He grabbed me by the shoulder and said in an official sounding voice, “Welcome to California!”
In a moment, my mother brought snacks and sandwiches from the car and fed everyone at the small round table in the room. The blonde lady wanted to know where Helen bought her slacks. The state trooper exchanged tuna fish recipes with Mom. Another lady from the office came in with dishes and a gallon of ice cream. She told the blonde lady she closed the office for the day and turned on the “no vacancy” sign.
The entire ensemble stayed through dinnertime and finally exchanged names and addresses and promises to visit one another when in town. The trooper and I watched Gunsmoke together on the small black-and-white television in the room. He left about 9 p.m. I was so exhausted that I don’t recollect Mom and Helen preparing me for bed.
I only recall waking up in that room the next morning and wondering if what I was remembering of the previous day had been just a dream.
Milepost 38
By Cheri A. Valle
It’s July 24, 2014, a few miles outside of Ludlow, Calif., on I-40 eastbound, the “new” interstate that roughly parallels old U.S. Route 66, on what feels like the hottest day of the year, or maybe the century. I had left my brother’s home in coastal southern California a few hours before and was on my way back to my home in Colorado. But first I have to drive my old van through the Mojave Desert. I am 61, have had a progressive neuromuscular condition since birth and use a power wheelchair. It is an incredibly hot 110 degrees, and the van is very unhappy about it.
The transmission overheats and begins slipping. No exit in sight. In fact, pretty much nothing in sight — just sand and rocks. A parched desert.
When the highway starts up a gentle grade, my van decides it is done. I get to the right shoulder, as far off the highway as possible, but the shoulder is quite narrow and traffic is charging past me a couple of feet from the car door.
OK, no problem. This is why I have a AAA membership. I call, the operator asks where I am. Somewhere in a 20-mile stretch of I-40 eastbound between Newberry Springs and Ludlow, I say. The operator can’t seem to comprehend this. She wants a more specific location, a milepost or call box number. I explain that my wheelchair unloads out the driver’s side, and I am not going to unload it onto I-40 with cars going by at 75 miles an hour just inches away. If a tow truck just starts driving east, they will find me. How many gold vans with Colorado disability plates are likely to be stranded out there?
But the operator will not dispatch the tow truck, because I cannot pinpoint my location.
One hour and three calls to AAA later, I finally get an operator who suggests a way out of this dilemma. She tells me to call 911 and the California Highway Patrol will dispatch an officer to find me and tell AAA where I am. This seems like overkill to me — I need a tow truck, not the Highway Patrol! But it is very hot, so I swallow my reluctance and dial 911.
In fact, all it takes to get a tow truck is having the 911 operator make the call to AAA instead of me. The 911 operators apparently have AAA Roadside Assistance on speed dial, and they have rather more credibility than does the driver herself. So she tells the AAA operator to have the tow truck driver just start going east on I-40 until he finds the gold van with the Colorado disability plates. This time, the AAA operator finally dispatches a tow truck.
While I wait, a pleasant young CHP officer shows up. Finally we know exactly where I am — milepost 38 — and we convey this information to AAA. The officer and I both get our workout for the day moving me out of my car and into his, where we sit in air-conditioned comfort for the hour it takes for the tow truck to appear. Even though the day, and perhaps my entire cross-country trip, is ruined, I feel guilty about monopolizing a CHP officer and car for such a long time when he could be out distributing speeding tickets and watching for drunk drivers.
The officer assures me that in his eyes, by helping me he is doing exactly what he should be doing. We have a lovely conversation about the challenges of raising strong children in an atmosphere of gangs, drugs and violence.
When the tow truck driver arrives, he is also supremely helpful. He and the officer manage to get me into the very high cab of the tow truck. An hour later, we drop off my car at the nearest transmission repair shop in Barstow, just at closing time. There is, of course, no wheelchair-accessible taxi in Barstow, so the tow truck driver loads my power chair onto his flatbed and hauls it and me to a hotel. My lonely little power chair looks ridiculous shackled down on a flatbed meant for large cars as we drive down Main Street in Barstow. At the hotel, I slither out of the tow truck — getting down is so much easier than getting up! — and my chair and I are finally reunited. I am reminded of two things that I already knew: It is often way harder than it should be for a wheelchair user to solve relatively simple problems; and, most people really will go out of their way to help, once they understand what the wheelchair user needs and how they can help.
* * *
My elderly gold van ended its days in Barstow. It wasn’t worth the cost of repairing, so I donated it to an organization that serves homeless veterans — they could repair it more cheaply than I could. Hopefully my van can putter around a small town being useful and will never again have to brave the trek across the Mojave Desert trying to get back to its former Colorado home.
The week and a half I spent relying on other people for transportation was not fun. Really not fun. But I have a new used van now, 13 years younger than my sad gold van. A platform lift for my wheelchair unloads out of the back, which means I can get my chair out just about anywhere. In an inaccessible parking space. In my brother’s driveway. And yes, on the shoulder of a busy highway. Someday I expect I will have to quit driving cross-country by myself. Just like my old gold van, I will have to limit myself to puttering around a small town. But for now I am home in Colorado, back in business, getting myself anywhere. I want to go without needing to ask for help. Life is good.
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