Fragment:

I saw the face of what I’m up against. It was in the form of an artistic director of a “Shakespeare in the Park” for a small city in central California. The play was set for the evening in a park on the edge of town, and after I had already sold books in the downtown area during the day--all the cool old buildings--I was just killing time. I drove out past the airport and found an old adobe that was historical--Estrella Adobe I remember, because I know estrella in Spanish means star.

So I check out the adobe and the old American graves from the late 1800s, and I get back in the car, and it’s all vineyards on rolling hills the color of lions, dotted with oaks. I turn down this one road into fields of grapes. As I’m driving, I look to my left and see an old dusty ranch house with a corral out front, I notice a camel set down in it, and I’m like “Whoa, a camel.” As I drive past I see it’s some type of wildlife waystation, where they take in animals that have no business being in captivity. I was still kind of hung-over from the night before, which is a whole other story, and I’ll tell it later, but right then I wasn’t really interested in checking out the waystation. I had to crap. A little further I saw a portable outhouse the wine people used. It was a weekend, the gate was open, so I drove right up and had a visit with nature. As I’m headed back down the road, a fox runs out of the vineyard, stops to look at me, and runs back in. I knew I’d pass whatever row it ran into, and sure enough there it was. I stopped, said Hi and drove on. Feeling better, I decided to pull into the waystation on the way back to the park.