OK, so when I was young and even stupider than I am now, I did as youngsters growing up on the east coast of the US do (and did) who want to remake themselves: I hitchhiked to LA to start anew. https://twitter.com/ChesterHrt/status/1344780353236578305

This is totally an aside, but it was the 80s, and I had exactly $1,000 cash with me. I have all sorts of stories about that trip — but those will have to wait for another day.

I landed in LA, and had a friend of a friend who lived in Santa Monica (not the good part, over by Pico and Westwood), who was renting rooms. After the trip, the first and last and deposit, I had about 100 bucks left.

So, after a good night's sleep, I went job hunting. That day, 1st day in LA!, I went to Westwood (the business district near UCLA) and applied for a job at what was then a discount bookstore chain called Crown Books. They hired me on the spot. So I had income coming.

I then went to the grocery store & bought enough food to last me the 3 weeks until I'd get my first pay. It was heavy on peanut butter & beans.

I had something like $1.78 in change, and for the first time in my life, I bought a scratch off lottery ticket. Won another 100 bucks. Talk about a horse shoe up my ass.

Anyway, I did well at Crown. They soon made me an assistant manager at the Santa Monica store, and then one day they asked me to take over as manager of the West Hollywood store, corner of Santa Monica and Vine.

It was funny as hell. They were blasting for the new Screen Actors Guild (the oscars org) building immediately next door. All these celebrities would come in, but I had no idea who they were, because I had no pop culture knowledge at all. My staff made fun of me, which was fine.

But here I was, in the heart of Hollywood and the gay village, running a bookstore with no film or gay books (because it was the typical chainstore stock instead).

So I stripped out all the junk, and with no permission from upper management, created a "film" and "gay" (or some such, I forget what I called it now) section. Sales like tripled in a month. I was boy genius, as far as the company was concerned.

Along the way, this nice older woman came in and asked for a job. I hired her. She was Australian, and her husband was a heart surgeon at UCLA. She was bored, and just looking for something to do. I was I think 22. She must have been 55. We became fast work friends.

So, Crown was making noises about promoting me to district manager or some such, and I hated the idea. I didn't want to be stuck in corporate America. In fact (I should've mentioned this earlier) I moved to California so I could go to college (what Canadians call university)

See, at that time, in-state college tuition in California was $0. All I had to do was establish residency (get a state driver's licence and live there for 1 year), and then I could go to college for free. Plus, I was saving all sorts of money from my management job.

And so, I decided to give notice on my job, I think a month. It was early summer. And just then, my Australian work friend invited me to a party at her house, and I gladly (and really, rather stupidly) accepted.

So I wind up at this party in this enormous house in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the entire LA basis. Years later, it occurred to me that it would've made a great place to watch the Rodney King riots unfold.

I was a fish out of water at this party. There were famous people (who I couldn't name), movie stars, directors, high powered music industry execs, every LA society stereotype you could imagine.

I figured out I was out of place long before I could drink enough to make even more of a fool out of myself, so I found my Australian friend and say, "hey, thanks for inviting me, but I can't hold my own here, so I'm heading home." Then she did something amazing.

She said, "well the main reason I invited you here is I wanted to give you this car." Turns out, her son had fled back to Australia a couple of years before, and had left this Volkswagon Rabbit sitting in their driveway. Then and there, she gave me the key, and I drove it away.

So, a couple of weeks later, I packed up this Rabbit with all my stuff, and start what I thought would be a circular loop of California universities, so I could decide which one I would attend.

I left my room at Pico and Westwood at about 5am, and started driving the Rabbit north on the Ventura Highway. I started rooting around in the car, and found a couple of cassette tapes the kid had left in the car, and I plopped them in the deck.

As I say, I had zero pop culture knowledge, and was not up on music at all.

So here I am driving up the Ventura Highway, the sun rising over the Malibu hills to my right, the Pacific Ocean to my left, and the first tape is... Tom Waits and Bette Milder. I had never heard either before. I was blown away.

The next tape was Southside Johnny, with Having a Party coming up.

There was something magical about all this.

I visited San Luis Obispo, and then Santa Monica, and then all the colleges in the Bay Area, before starting over the Golden Gate Bridge, when the Rabbit started overheating. I was literally ON the bridge when I broke down the first time.

But I was able to limp along to the 101 heading towards Eureka when it crapped out entirely around 11pm one night. There was nothing I could do, so I just pulled over, lied down with my feet out the window and fell asleep.

The next morning, I get woken up by this enormous biker dude, wearing what years later I realized was a 1%er badge (the Hell's Angels thing). He was the nicest guy in the world (to me, anyway) and somehow got my car up and running and sent me on my way.

So I continued my journey up to Humboldt State, and then up and over the Coast range on Highway 299. It was quite hot, and the mountains were just too much for the rabbit. I actually made it to Chico, but then the car just up and died. I was stuck.

It was early morning, so I picked up a newspaper, and in the classifieds there was a room for rent in an old (1870s) complex that had been built as housing for the workers building the railroad. I got a room for $25/week.

Then, I walked downtown, and there's a Tower Books. I went in and asked for the manager. Told him I had managed a Crown in LA, and he hired me. It wasn't even noon, and I had a place to live and a job.

Around the corner from Tower was a burrito place name Hey Juan's! I went in and ordered a burrito and a pitcher of beer. It was less than $5. You must have forgotten the beer, I said. No, said the woman behind the counter, that's the full price. What is this place? I wondered.

I sat down at one of the tables. Understand, I was a complete dork, but this couple — Jack and Brandi — were at the next table over, and we started talking, and the next thing I know, we're ordering more pitchers and I'm partying with them til 3 in the morning.

And so, I lived in Chico for the next 16 years.

The end.