The Road to Los Angeles Read Online Free PDF

odor of crude oil in barrels bound for distant places, the odor of oil on the water turned slimy and yellow and gold, the odor of rotting lumber and the refuse of the sea blackened by oil and tar, of decayed fruit, of little Japanese fishing sloops, of banana boats and old rope, of tugboats and scrap iron and the brooding mysterious smell of the sea at low tide.

    I stopped at the white bridge that crossed the channel to the left of the Pacific Coast Fisheries on the Wilmington side. A tanker was unloading at the gasoline docks. Up the street Jap fishermen were repairing their nets, stretched for blocks along the water's edge. At the American-Hawaiian stevedores were loading a ship for Honolulu. They worked in their bare backs. They looked like something great to write about. I flattened the new notebook against the rail, dipped the pencil on my tongue and started to write a treatise on the stevedore: "A Psychological Interpretation of the Stevedore Today and Yesterday, by Arturo Gabriel Bandini."

    It turned out a tough subject. I tried four or five times but gave up. Anyhow, the subject took years of research; there wasn't any need for prose yet. The first thing to do was get my facts together. Maybe it would take two years, three, even four; in fact it was the job of a lifetime, a magnum opus. It was too tough. I gave it up. I figured philosophy was easier. "A Moral and Philosophical Dissertation on Man and Woman, by Arturo Gabriel Bandini." Evil is for the weak man, so why be weak. It is better to be strong than to be weak, for to be weak is to lack strength. Be strong, my brothers, for I say unless ye be strong the forces of evil shall get ye. All strength is a form of power. All lack of strength is a form of evil. All evil is a form of weakness. Be strong, lest ye be weak. Avoid weakness that ye might become strong. Weakness eateth the heart of woman. Strength feedeth the heart of man. Do ye wish to become females? Aye, then grow weak. Do ye wish to become men? Aye, aye. Then grow strong. Down with Evil! Up with Strength! Oh Zarathustra, endow thy women with plenty of weakness! Oh Zarathustra, endow thy men with plenty of strength! Down with woman! Hail Man!

    Then I got tired of the whole thing. I decided maybe I wasn't a writer after all but a painter. Maybe my genius lay in art. I turned a page in the book and figured on doing some sketching just for the practice, but I couldn't find anything worth drawing, only ships and stevedores and docks, and they didn't interest me. I drew cats-on-the-fence, faces, triangles and squares. Then I got the idea I wasn't an artist or a writer but an architect, for my father had been a carpenter and maybe the building trade was more in keeping with my heritage. I drew a few houses. They were about the same, square places with a chimney out of which smoke poured. I put the notebook away.

    It was hot on the bridge, the heat stinging the back of my neck. I crawled through the rail to some jagged rocks tumbled about at the edge of the water. They were big rocks, black as coal from immersions at high tide, some of them big as a house. Under the bridge they were scattered in crazy disorder like a field of icebergs, and yet they looked contented and undisturbed.

    I crawled under the bridge and I had a feeling I was the only one who had ever done it. The small harbor waves lapped at the rocks and left little pools of green water here and there. Some of the rocks were draped in moss, and others had pretty spots of bird dung. The ponderous odor of the sea came up. Under the girders it was so cold and so dark I couldn't see much.

    From above I heard the traffic pounding, horns honking, men yelling, and big trucks battering the timber crosspieces. It was such a terrible din that it hammered my ears and when I yelled my voice went out a few feet and rushed back as if fastened to a rubber band. I crawled along the stones until I got out of the range of the sunlight. It was a strange place. For a