Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty
Tim Sandlin
Language: English
Pages: 296
ISBN: 0989395731
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Guy Fontaine’s time has passed. His wife is dead, and the small-town Oklahoma newspaper for which he covered sports has forced him into retirement. He sold his home and moved to northern California to live in his daughter’s guest cottage. It’s all over but the golf. Then, in a heartbeat, Guy’s life goes from boredom to nightmare. After he blacks out on the golf course and drives a golf cart down the San Bruno Freeway, the dream of independence through his golden years flies out the window. Guy finds himself an involuntary resident in assisted living at Mission Pescadero, which its administrator, Alexandra Truman, calls “the premier retirement community in Half Moon Bay.” Only this is 2022, and old-timers at Mission Pescadero are nothing like the old-timers in south-central Oklahoma. After surviving fifty years of corporate ladders, carpools, mortgages, and insurance annuities, these senior citizens yearn for a time when life was fun – 1967, the days of sex, drugs, peace, revolution, rock and roll, and more sex. So they transform Mission Pescadero into their own version of it. Even the dining hall is divided into where people were during the Summer of Love: Berkley, Old Haight, New Haight, Sausalito, New York. The drugs may be different and the sex driven by girls instead fo guys, but for residents, rock and roll goes on forever. And what a bunch they are, There’s Ray John, the cynical writer of letters to the editor, who will never again be in a situation without complaint; Winston, the drug-dealing, womanizing wheelchair mechanic; Sunshines #1 and #2, still fighting over who is the original; Henry, lonely and perpetually cold; and Phaedra, the self-proclaimed creator of feminism, who hates everyone young, straight, healthy, or happy, including her lifelong companion, Suchada.
law enforcement’s imminent arrival. “How do you know the law is on the way?” he asked. “There.” Judith nodded toward the Administration door where Georgia stood beside Glenda. Glenda had a hand hooked over her belly, the way women stand when they are pregnant. Georgia was talking into her wristband phone. “You didn’t gas everybody.” 104 tim sandlin twenty-one Ten minutes to the moment later, Deputy Sheriffs Bobby Christmas and Esteban Vasquez throw open the double front gate to discover two
Che Guevara would have made of Dixie. “Suchada likes to talk tough, but she’s a sweetie pie,” Dixie says. Alexandra stands closer to Dixie than is usually considered regular in the West. “Let me give you some advice, honey.” 154 tim sandlin “I don’t need advice from a woman who dresses like my mother.” “The old farts have nothing to live for. But you’re young. You don’t want a felony on your record.” “Lots of kids my age commit felonies.” “I’m trying to save you from ruining your future. This
everyone?” “I’m not. Lots of us aren’t. We could leave whenever we want, but where would we go?” “What difference does it make where, so long as you have the freedom to get out?” “I mean, we have nowhere to go if we leave for good. Everyone takes day trips into town.” “Not me. I’d give whatever money my daughter’s left me for a day trip to town.” Rocky gave Guy a look. “Can you ride a bicycle?” It turned out there was a second tunnel, besides the one to Nursing Care. “I knew it,” said Guy.
“Every Zorro I ever saw has a secret tunnel out of the Mission.” “Nothing secret about it. The tunnel goes down to an entry pavilion at the Cabrillo Highway bus stop. The employees use it every day.” “And we can get out?” “Nicolas left this morning. He went to Radio Shack and bought the walkie-talkies. Where’d you think they came from?” “I figured you people had them all along, as part of the plan, knowing cell phones would be jammed.” Rocky laughed. “The takeover was planned. No one thought
imaginative life wondering what it would have been like to raise a healthy child. “Your turn,” Guy said. “What’s your happiest day?” She blinked into the remaining swallow of wine. “Same as yours, but for the opposite reason.” “You might have to explain that.” “There was no being excited about the future when Roderick came out. The nurses wouldn’t look at me. I thought it was because I had no husband and my parents were ashamed of me, but they hurried the baby away without letting me see him, and