Mad about Saffron

Reflections on Lives Never Lived

Papa, Grandma, my mom and my brother dropped me off, carless, at college in the fall of ‘71. That year I met my future ex-husband Dave working in the dish room. And I met Steve, who owned Saffron, a 1966 Plymouth Valiant with a slant 6 engine.

By June I’d had enough of being stuck at school with no car. Airline tickets from LA to San Diego were $8 on sale, $11 otherwise. Steve sold me Saffron for $180. The catch: Saffron had a leak in the gas tank about a quarter of the way up. To be safe you never filled the tank, just put in a couple gallons when the gas gauge hit empty.

Around that time my brother got in a bit of a scrape and my mom asked me to transfer home and go to UCSD. She needed backup, and my dad, who had been an atheist my whole life, had run off with a born again Christian two years older than me. Dad turned street corner preacher and wasn’t around much.

UCSD was way cheaper than my liberal arts college. Their Financial Aid Office handed me a check for the money left over from my scholarship. I took Saffron to a shop and said I needed a new gas tank. A couple days later I picked up my car and the mechanic explained there was so much wrong that they’d spent my scholarship money fixing other things. I still had to put in just a couple gallons when the gas gauge hit red.

My brother got his life together and in 1973 I transferred back to my liberal arts school. On my way home for winter break I stopped in Hollywood to visit Papa and Grandma. My grandfather had been a World War I hero. He had a drawer full of medals but never talked about the war, except to say that if the Germans had caught him they would have killed him outright because they hated machine gunners. That evening while Grandma and I talked after dinner, my grandfather snuck out with my car keys. As I left for the drive to San Diego he proudly told me he’d filled my gas tank. What could I say except “Thank you, Papa.”

I drove down Interstate 5 dribbling gasoline, passed Disneyland on my right and wondered if I’d ever see it again. The night was clear and moonlit as I drove through Camp Pendleton, hills to my left and ocean to my right. If somebody ahead of me tossed a lit cigarette into my lane I’d go off like a bomb and the soldiers would wonder what was up. I passed the Western White House where Richard Nixon was fast asleep not knowing that an incendiary was driving by.

When I got home my mother woke up long enough to ask why I put a bucket under my car. But not much gas was left; maybe half a bucket dripped out by morning.

I sold Saffron to Steve’s friend Joe Palca for $180. He drove around Mexico without blowing up; then Saffron went on the scrap heap and Joe became an NPR science correspondent.

So far at least seven people would not exist if my car had blown to bits: Dave’s and my three kids and their four kids. I don’t know how many Saffron saved by not blowing up Steve or Joe.

In 1995 my first born graduated middle school at the top of his class and gave a valedictory speech about how unlikely it is that any of us get to be born. He analyzed the mathematics of succeeding generations, where the numbers are bad enough; he didn’t even get to decisions we make that could kill us before we have children.

In 2018 my partner Graham and I went to France for the centenary of the end of World War I. Graham had researched where Papa was every day of the war. Our guide in the Meuse-Argonne took us to the middle of a forest where there were still German foxholes on both sides of a tiny dirt road. Ahead of us was a hill. The guide said to me, “You’re standing right where your grandfather and his unit were, when the Germans came over that rise toward them.”

Somehow my grandfather, unlike Graham’s great-uncles, made it home from that war. When he volunteered at seventeen, Papa could not have known how many people would live, but almost never lived, because of the choices he made.

---

Or you can buy me a cup of tea. That’s lovely too.

Reflections on legacy, creativity and more. At all the online places, on order from your local indie bookstore, or direct at the Stella store.