How many tacos you going to eat, Ma?
Mabel wiped a dribble of Tapatio hot sauce off her chin and bit into another loaded spicy halibut taco at a freaky fish shack on the Harford Pier overlooking the wonderful spot where Port San Luis meets the Pacific Ocean.
As many as I want, she said.
Mabel slurped and finished her drink.
Now, somebody please order me another margarita, she said.
The cross-country trip went well in the fully refurbished VW bus Casey picked up from an aging pot dealer in New Jersey. Casey decided to stop on the Central Coast because his favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon episode took place in Pismo Beach. Disappointed that the clams for the local restaurant chowder now come from New York, he wanted to give this famous beach a sacred hippie blessing to maybe help bring the long-gone mollusks back where they belonged. Then the Bay Area’s newest commune could drive north through Big Sur before landing in Berkeley where the three expected to live.
With Casey’s teacher’s pension and Social Security, proceeds from the sale of the Scranton house, Mabel’s Social Security and library pension and the little money Zerelda saved from her mother’s insurance policy when she died, they felt confident they could rent a tiny apartment and contribute to the community.
Mabel planned to form and organize the Purple Panthers, a radical group of beret-wearing feminist senior citizen women to “take it to the man,” as she put it. Casey leaned toward going back into environmental patriotism that laid waste to capitalism and its bastard corporate spawns with destruction that only harmed parasitic profiteers, an act of liberty he considered societal self-defense. Zerelda wanted to make and sell “radically scented” candles at farmer’s markets with aromas she envisioned such as “The Moment” and “Enlightenment.”
Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything, Casey said.
Neither Mabel nor Zerelda knew about Casey’s secret cash stash he earned from a handful of select international online LSD transactions over the past few years. Only a choice group of super acid headliners knew about the world’s most notorious underground LSD producer known as “Spacy Casey.”
Scranton might have seriously progressed if our hero had unloaded a couple of barrels full of product into Lake Scranton and turned the city drinking water supply into a magical mystery tour. But, good boy that he is, Casey listened to his mother. Maybe that’s the moral to this story, Scranton lives matter assuming your mother has a functioning social conscience and isn’t a member of the Scranton Junior League, the Chamber of Commerce or the Democratic and Republican parties.
Zerelda leaned across the table and patted Mabel’s hand.
Do you think we’ll get homesick, Mabel?
No, I do not, dear.
Casey jumped up from the picnic table and ran to the juke box. Punching in the numbers, he returned and stood with his open hands extended. Zerelda clapped in time to Mexican Norteño music as Mabel stood and embraced her son. Sliding slowly to the left and sliding slowly to the right, they danced as smoothly as perfectly whipped guacamole spooned onto a warm tortilla chip.
Knowing they belonged in California, this intrepid trio had successfully escaped the dark political corruption, cruel provincial peasants and their priests who turned a good little city bad. Raising his hand over Mabel’s head, Casey gently spun his mother in a slow pirouette to the blaring brass horns and accordions that played on small speakers and echoed throughout the restaurant. Then they returned to a basic two-step, the way Mabel had once taught Casey how to dance on the night before his high school senior prom.
As you might expect, Mabel led.
The End
