For several weeks, Joe The Plumber has been telling me tales about the Chaos House he's been bedding down at in the Del Paso Heights neighborhood - the drifters, the haphazard facilities, the shady activities, the things he can't talk about that he nevertheless talked about at considerable length. I was (apprehensively) looking forward to meeting some of these low-lifes (not actors; the real deal), but it looks like that is not to be anytime soon. The time had come (as it usually does) when Joe had somehow alienated everyone living in the Chaos House and thus had to resume his nomadic, rootless, homeless existence alone, living in a van parked down by the river. One trouble though: his pickup truck (his second vehicle) was still parked in front of the house. So, he asked me to give him a ride to pick it up, so he could leave it instead in a neighborhood in South Sacramento.
"You have to understand, these people know everyone in Del Paso, and they know everything that happens there. We'll have to take precautions. I'll take you a back way, so we get maximum cover. We'll drive very fast. When we get there, we need to do a hairpin U-turn, like a donut turn. I'll jump out and get in my truck, quick. We get in; we get out. That's it. Then you follow me, and we leave."
A hairpin U-turn! Back in the 70's we used to call that a "Rockford 180", in honor of the "Rockford Files": Hollywood stunt-driving, basically. Peeling rubber! Hard on transmissions! Don't do this without professional training! So, off we went!
We left Business 80 at the Marconi exit, and then started driving through the back streets of Del Paso. Parts of the neighborhood are very pretty: there were even some horses out and about on a Sunday morning. Not very 'hoodlike at all. But we were getting closer to the troubled zones.
We passed another Chaos House. Half a dozen low-lifes stood gaping in the front yard as we drove past. "You aren't driving fast enough," Joe said. "They've seen you!"
Myself, I wasn't too worried. Even if there were trained killer-ninja assassins at these Houses, they still had no idea who I was, and I had the advantage of surprise. When you expect a roaring Chevy Camaro, you are unprepared for the sedate Saturn sedan.
We arrived at the Chaos House. Instead of a Rockford 180, to Joe's exasperation, I executed a tortoise-like 3-point turn. I didn't care about the eyeballs: I was mostly concerned about not taking out any mailboxes - ninjas love their mailboxes - and besides, I wanted to look at this house. Indeed, it looked like a pretty Chaosy place: the kind of place that makes Del Paso a serious policing headache.
A half-dozen people were standing in the chaotic front yard of the Chaos House. "They're holding a meeting about me," Joe gasped in a paranoid whisper. Then he jumped out of my vehicle, into his pickup, and we roared off in tandem, before any ninjas appeared from the house.
We headed back to Business 80 at the Marconi exit, stopping briefly to put fluid into the pickup's dry clutch-fluid reservoir. I expected we would travel down Business 80 to Highway 99, since there are plenty of exits from Highway 99 into South Sacramento. Instead, Joe chose an unusually high-speed (and unusually paranoid) evasive route, traveling down Highway 160 into downtown (I had to drive through a red light on 12th Street to keep up), 15th Street, through the back streets of Land Park, Sutterville Road, and 24th Street, before ending up in South Sacramento.
Nothing like the experience of paranoid driving through Land Park. Evading all those hostile eyeballs (even if most were full of cobwebs on a Sunday morning!)
I don't know what Joe did, or didn't do, to alienate the folks at the Chaos House, but like they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe at a future time I'll meet these low-lifes after all, and, who knows, play dominoes with them, or something.
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