Dropping all my current projects to once again start
another story that I probably won't finish on time for the contest.
Or ever. My first few hour's labor on it seems "so far so good",
But then they're always so far so good at this early point...

(EDIT: Just changed the title, the old one gave away everything)
~hugs, Veronica

You never forget your first Manic Pixie Dream Girl...
FREE SPIRIT
Laika Pupkino ~ 2022

“OK, we get it. We're not in Kansas anymore...”

I forget who said it this time. Probably my sister.

May father had cracked his 'I don't think we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!' joke the second we crossed the state line into Oklahoma; and then again in Amarillo, Albuquerque, Gallup, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, and several times in Vegas. And now as he steered our rented Winnebago down this twisty little highway out of the California coastal mountains and I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time he said it again.

It was driving my little sister Katie nuts, but at least it had broken him of saying “We don't got to show you no steenking badges!” in a bad Mexican accent. I don't know if my father invented the 'dad joke' but he sure refined it...

I was blown away by my first glimpse of an actual ocean. It was so blue, and it went on forever. Photographs and movies just hadn't done it justice.

And the coastal town of Santa Teresa spread out below us was as picturesque as you please. Everyone loved it except my dad, who cried out, “Oh Lord, the RUINED it!”

In February 1983 when we took this trip we didn't have the internet to research things on, so he'd been bringing us here based on what he remembered it being like in the early 1960's, when he'd lived and surfed here. A carefree beach bum's life in a little bungalo next to a continously bobbing oil pump that he rented with two other young guys, sets of perfect waves just a short run (lugging a rediculously large and heavy surboard) from their front door. Where that shack had stood were blocks and blocks of tract homes, not tht different than some of the suburbs we had in Kansas. Except there were palm trees.

“Where did all these houses come from?” he groaned, “That mall? That golf course? That boat harbor? My God it's all so built up!”

“I'm sure it'll be nice,” said my mom, “We're here for five days. It might not be just like you remember it but I'm sure we'll find things to do. The kids can go to the mall,” said my mom, the eternal optimist. She pointed, “And is that a roller coaster?”

It wasn't some giant state-of-the-art Six Flags type roller coaster, just an old wooden thing, but the sight of it cheered him up. “Thank God the Little Dipper's still there! And Funland Pier, It's kind of a junky little place with your basic carnival rides and rigged games, but me and Skip and Fritos had a lot of fun there. It'll be good to see it again.”

“You see?” said my mom.

Our vacation trip had all plotted out in advance. Sixteen days, traveling in a big circle through the southwest desert on highway 40, hitting the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, and then stopping here for five days before hitting some of California's must-see places- Disneyland, Hollywood, Big Sur, San Francisco and then home by way of Utah and Colorado. But this formerly little beach town was what Dad had been looking forward to the most, enough that he'd reserved us a campsite at Santa Theresa Stte Beach for five whole days.

And as it turned out our stay here is the thing that really lingers in my mind from that whole vacation, more than any of the big tourist destinations. Because this is where I met Holly, who I spent most of my week there with.

I won't say meeting her changed my life, but I will say she broadened my horizons just a bit...