I was driving up the grapevine out of los angeles when traffic came to a dead stop, near the top. we were all clocking about 80 miles an hour before it turned into a parking lot. ahead of me was a prefab house tipped off a truck bed on the freeway. i wanted to stop and give the poor trucker the down on his lucker, a hug. he likely lost his job today. maybe they will let him move his family into the new lot he created. rent should be nothing if he sets it up for some tolls, his kids can take turns in the booth making change. governor jerry brown can stop in for dinner once a month and his cut. sure they will have to soundproof the walls and string up some blinking lights. no back yard and no neighbors and the air quality will suffer from the constant emissions. none of it will be legal but they'll be roping so much cash they can buy the courts off. the only great obstacle will be the haunting. the ghost of the family who once lived where the freeway now runs had something to do with this, for sure, a spiritual reclamation of material space. a frontier family gone west and staked a claim long ago. only to be ousted by the D.O.T. commission lobbied hard by big business. no more day hikes to pyramid lake. no more immaculate alta vistas. just a small payoff and a bus to LA, and a new life sucking fumes in carson city. the patriarch promised vengeance. he was the one, long long forgotten, who jumped the trucker's nerves and caused him to jack knife that day. the matriarch got ahold of his wife. you can see the translucence deep into the night when you drive up there and wait for your toll. the kids are all demons possessed.
