Always Chasing Rainbows

It was nearly sunset. Long shadows crept across the icy landscape, edging toward the shoulder of the highway. Mariah sped south on I-25. She kept her eyes focused on the road, trying not to think about the cold or the evaporating daylight. She knew she would not reach Santa Fe, not on schedule, not before dark. It would be difficult to locate the rendezvous point at night.

The red needle of the speedometer pegged at seventy-five. Mariah wanted to go faster, she needed to go faster, but she knew eighty was too fast. State Troopers would not stand for eighty. Mariah held steady as the highway bent westward and sunlight filtered through her windshield. She watched the sun as it trailed behind her on the horizon, hopskotching along the snow-capped peaks. The view reminded her of a film she had watched in college.

She often thought about the film. It was during her freshman year; she was young, excited to be in her first psyche class. The screening was in a small, box-shaped classroom with squeaky tile flooring. The film featured a woman interviewee with a shaved head and a hippie-sounding name. Mariah remembered the woman’s name as Shanti. The bald woman, Shanti, had stood beneath the harsh, documentary-style lights. As the projector clicked forward, she confidently explained how the sun followed her everywhere. Everywhere! This, she remarked, was why she was the daughter of Jesus Christ himself. The class had laughed when Shanti referred to Jesus as “Dad.”

After the film ran out, the professor explained how the documentary subject had misinterpreted a simple law of perception, and she used this “error” to suspend a remarkable delusion.

The word “delusion” provoked Mariah. She raised her hand. “How do we know exactly what she sees?”

The Professor quickly explained the phenomena of the parallax view. This didn’t satisfy Mariah. She raised her hand again. “I understand all that. But how do we really know what she sees? Like, the path of the sun might appear different to her.”

“Do you think she is the daughter of Jesus?” the Professor said. Several of the students laughed.

When Mariah raised her hand again, there were more snickers. It was too much; she let her arm drop and did not bring up the point again.

The memory was crystal clear yet difficult to process. Mariah knew she had had a point when she raised her hand, but she was afraid to express it. She relented when faced with the snickers. Relenting had been a weakness. Mariah no longer relented.

The sun dropped behind the westward range, leaving a fleeting orange glow in its wake. Soon it would be dark and the details of the landscape would disappear. Mariah’s mind pulsed. Who cared about a parallax view when there was nothing to see? Who cared about perception when everything was awash in blackness? The darkness was her enemy. She was going to be late. She would not be able to see. The rendezvous would not happen.

After the long drive, the uncertainty of her destination was troubling. It was impossible for Mariah to avoid the negative thoughts, but she could not let them consume her. Mariah reached deep into herself to find something positive. She was moving toward her destination. She would get there. Positive thinking delivered positive results. This was Mariah’s mantra, part of her new outlook on life. She believed in herself. When she had signed up for Rainbow Pura Vida™ there were plenty of naysayers. Her father had warned her against multi-level marketing. But what did he know? He made a living out of helping people cheat on their taxes.

Mariah had gone to her mother for the $500. It seemed like a lot of money, but this was not just about getting a foot in the door. This was starting anew. Mariah told her mother that she needed emergency dental work. She never would have come up with this idea on her own, she got it from her advisor at Rainbow Pura Vida™. The RPV people really wanted her to become a part of the team.

Once she became an associate at RPV, things really did change for her. The owner, Max Hardwell, put her through an intensive training. She became a valuable asset to the company. Max rewarded her dedication, Mariah spent weekends at his house in Vail, and Max took her to restaurants – expensive restaurants that even her parents had not been to. Mariah learned every detail of the RPV story. It seemed everyone was against the company. The FDA had suspended the company’s first product shipment. There was some rumor about mercury. But it was only a rumor. Max had explained to Mariah how big corporations were afraid of new competition. RPV was a life changer. Everyone who started drinking it would no longer need vitamins, or even aspirin. It was that amazing. Max had found the recipe while traveling in the Amazon. It was ancient. One tribe had been drinking it for centuries and they were the fittest, healthiest people on the continent. The food and drug conglomerates did not want RPV to reach the general market. The conglomerates knew RPV would impact their market share. Who would use normal health drinks, or even eat normal food, once they realized the power of RPV? The giant companies bribed the FDA to keep Max’s product out of the country.

On the highway, the last remnants of dusk gave way to nightfall. The darkness seemed heavy, pushing down below the horizon. Mariah could only see what was in the focus of her headlamps: the striped white line and the dull black pavement. She was still thirty minutes from Santa Fe and no one had phoned. She kept looking at her phone, waiting for the screen to light up. The plan was that the man – the man at the rendesvous point - would call her if she did not make it by dark. Mariah had never met the man, but Max said he could be trusted. Mariah trusted Max. She was supposed to hand over the duffel bg and then check into a motel room. That was it. Max would call her when things were straightened out.

Things had not gone well for Max in the previous week and Mariah knew that she was his escape plan. Even through all the difficulties, she still believed in Max. If you were going to change the world, there would always be obstacles.

You need money if you are going to go head-to-head with the big corporations. Max became depressed when the FDA waylaid the second shipment of RPV as well. Suddenly, there were no more weekends in Vail or fancy dinners. When the RPV associates started quitting, Mariah held strong. She had faith in Max. She understood the importance of RPV, it was too valuable to keep out of the hands of consumers. But, Mariah was also a realist, she knew they would have to sell some of the product before they could make their money back.

It was her idea to go to Max. She explained to him that if they knew the product was coming, that if nothing could stop it from coming, and it was a sure thing, then they should be able to sell it.

“But it hasn’t come yet,” he said.

“But it will be coming,” she said.

This was the stroke of genius that put their plan back on the map. Max found a print ad from one of the big vitamin companies. He scanned the image and put his own banner on it. Mariah thought they should have their very own advertisement, but Max explained that they had neither the time nor the money to generate copy from scratch. “The greatest changes result from the smallest indiscretions,” he said.

They would also have to come up a new name for the company, since RPV was under some sort of investigation. The new company would be Rainbow Health Products. RHP. Max finished the ad and put it out on the Internet. He told Mariah that it was important to sell the product at a good price, in order to get momentum. They priced it lower than the acai drinks, lower than even most vitamins, and RHP was a really amazing product.

Orders flooded in. How could they not? Max and Mariah collected the assets as quickly as possible. Mariah knew that, because they had money, it would not be long until they could get their product into the United States. Success was inevitable.

Mariah reached Santa Fe and exited the highway. She followed a frontage road until she reached a row of concrete buildings. She did not know the town, but Max had told her that rendezvous spot was close to the railroad yard. When she crossed the first set of tracks, she stopped the car. She waited for the phone to ring. Max had told her that the man would call her. She trusted Max.

Within two weeks RHP had amassed $60,000 worth of orders. Max said they needed $100,000. That would be enough to afford the legal team, so they could fight off their detractors and get their shipment released to the U.S. They were so close. Mariah knew success was just around the corner. Max left her in charge when he had to go out of town for a few days. She was happy that Max trusted her, but she was nervous about being in charge. Max consoled her. “Just keep the operation running. We’re going to make it,” he said.

Max’s trip did not happen though. Those were his words to Mariah, “It did not happen.” There were rumors about some problem with his passport. There were also rumors that the police were involved. Max phoned Mariah because he knew she was worried. This is when they hatched the Santa Fe plan. He asked her to meet him at his Vail house the next morning. She followed his instructions, but Max did not arrive in the morning. Uncharacteristically, he was several hours late. She waited until he arrived with the duffel bag. It was so late. She knew then that she would not reach Santa Fe on time, but Max told her to go anyway. “Things will work out,” he said.

Mariah idled on the dark street. Her phone remained quiet, but Mariah could not sit still. She rolled slowly across the second set of railroad tracks. She had to be close to her destination, but it was too dark to tell exactly where she was. She crept forward, studying the shadowy outline of the concrete buildings. Then, she got her signal. A set of headlights clicked on and off. It seemed that Max was right, things would work out. She headed toward the rendezvous spot.

There was a certain comfort in the cloak of darkness. Mariah was invisible and anonymous in the darkness. She was moving toward her destination unfettered by obstacles or distractions. The flashing red lights cut through the night like the wail of an ornery child. Mariah came to a full stop as the patrol car pulled up behind her. The officer exited the car, silhouetted by a flood of white light. Mariah kept her eyes forward and her hands gripped firmly to the wheel. She would not relent.

Betty Only Needs One

I grew up on a wide tree-lined street. Every home had a matching lawn - spacious and fertilized, water and mowed. Every home had a two car garage.

There were several families on the block, and the neighborhood children often convened on the street. It was our street: Glenwood Drive. Our street was a great place to kick balls, ride bikes and play tag. Cars slowed and waved when they passed. Our parents knew each other, and the neighborhood kids knew to go inside when the street lights came on.

Below our street were smaller tree-lined streets with older structures and older cars parked curbside. These houses and apartments were mostly rentals - younger couples, roommates, short timers - people we didn't know. For the most part, these streets seemed safe, and only seemed to lack the polished suburban veneer of Glenwood Drive. Not every lawn was green. Not every garage door was left close. And while most of the residences on the "other" streets were well kept, there always seemed to be at least one anomaly. One house that would stick out - an eyesore with with broken screens, chipping paint and rusty cars out front. Sometimes the cars even overflowed onto the lawn. This was, according to our parents, where the hippies lived.

I doubt my parents, or most of the neighborhood parents, had much of a concept of what hippies were. They probably took their profile from the Seven O' Clock news: Hippies took drugs, lived in communes, had naked babies, and rarely, if ever, took showers. Sounds pretty awful. As a child I took this all at face value. My world consisted of dirt clods, kickball and riding my bike. I didn't have much time to learn about free love. So when I passed a house with too many cars out front, with music blaring or with incense burning, I kept walking - Glenwood Drive was where I idled my time. Nothing below my street really sparked my interest. I wasn't an elitist; I was just a bike riding, tag playing, ball kicker. I never gave any thought to the hippies until the chalk board showed up.

Now, to be fair, I don't even know if the chalkboard was in front of one of the so-called hippie houses. I do remember exactly were the chalkboard stood (for those of you keeping track on Google, it was on the corner of 11th and Pine in Riverside, CA), but I don't know who the occupants of the house were. We never met them. We never saw them. We just drove by their yard and saw their daily message.

At first the messages were pretty innocuous - "170 Days to Christmas" on a hot July day, perhaps, or other slightly funny remarks about pop culture, about life in Southern California, about what it meant to place a chalkboard on a suburban street corner. I'm not certain, but it seemed no one minded the messages in the beginning.

I always looked forward to the messages. They seemed to be a window on a world I knew nothing about. My father also admired the chalkboard. He was never one to stray from a joke or a witty remark. Our family car trips always seemed to bring us past that corner. Dad would often read the messages aloud, just to make sure we were all privy to the quip.

Over time the tone of the messages seemed to change. What was once innocuous became satirical and pointed, and perhaps a bit controversial. This was the post-Watergate era, and politicians were ripe for skewering (as they still are today, but in the 70's there were no blogs, no twitter and no TV chalking Glenn Beck for that matter.). The keepers of the chalkboard had positions and beliefs. They had a voice, and it often countered the official "party line" of the time. Gerald Ford was in office and our country was involved in sloganeering. Perhaps this is what Nixon had learned by going to China. We had new slogans for every new cause: we were "Whipping Inflation Now," "Beating the Energy Crisis" and doing something or another to the Vietnamese. The chalkboard had it's own less-traveled propaganda, seemingly made up by the chalkboard proprietors. I can't remember much about the anti-slogans, I was only eleven, but I know they were subversive, because people started talking and people started complaining. Apparently, making fun of the weather was covered under the 1st Amendment, but posting political messages on the street corner broke some sort of zoning laws.

I do have a clear memory of one particularly pointed chalkboard headline. It was posted on a sunny summer day. We drove by it as we went to church. The chalkboard read: "Betty Only Needs One." I did not get the joke until my sister explained - Betty Ford had just had a mastectomy. My mother complained. She thought the message was mean spirited. When I tried to defend the chalkboard (I always sided with the chalkboard), she wouldn't hear it. Mom was firm in her belief that such matters weren't to be taken lightly. She was particularly sensitive about the issue because her mother had just had a mastectomy as well. She knew the truth up close and personal: Breast cancer is ridiculously awful. The mastectomy is a painful operation (probably even worse then) for any woman - trading a chunk of your body to save your life. As a child I did not fully understand these consequences, but I knew one thing. Beside my grandmother, Betty Ford was the only woman I knew who had had the surgery. Betty Ford's was all over the news. We watched updates every night during the dinner hour.

Betty Ford may have had the first public mastectomy. I'm sure that wasn't easy for her, and I understand my mother's inclination to decry the "easy" humor of the chalkboard. However, I'm not sure the message was mean spirited. It didn't say, "Betty Only Has One," it said "Needs." In the pageantry of the public eye, all players must somehow be perfect, and whole. It is hard to be perfect when surgeons just ripped off part of your body. Betty kept going, she went public and she stayed strong. She kept up her end of the bargain even after fate gave her a difficult choice. I'd like to think the keepers of the chalkboard were celebrating Betty. Even though they decried the politics of Nixon, and satirized the stultifying slogans of the Ford administration, I hope they could still find a bit of sympathy for Betty.

The chalkboard did not survive the summer, let alone the Ford administration. Betty Ford did survive. She survived cancer and addiction (and who knows what else) until she died last week at the age of 94.