In May 2008—shortly after being named by the Los Angeles Times as a “Person of the Year”—Mike Farrell drove himself across the country on a book tour like no other. Networking with political groups (and friends like Joseph C. Wilson and Valerie Plame), Farrell redefined the very concepts of book touring and “promotion” through a progressive lens.
“Not since Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: in Search of America has there been a more beautifully written and compelling journey into the heartland of America. Mike Farrell celebrates his beloved country with great honesty and sincerity, with humility and grace. A beautiful and courageous book, an American classic.” —Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July
“Farrell writes with an upbeat, optimistic attitude, infused with humor, insights and soul. As he drives across the landscape, he also drives home important social justice issues.” —Publishers Weekly
In May 2008—shortly after being named by the Los Angeles Times as a “Person of the Year”—Mike Farrell drove himself across the country on a book tour like no other. Networking with political groups (and friends like Joseph C. Wilson and Valerie Plame), Farrell redefined the very concepts of book touring and “promotion” through a progressive lens.
“Not since Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: in Search of America has there been a more beautifully written and compelling journey into the heartland of America. Mike Farrell celebrates his beloved country with great honesty and sincerity, with humility and grace. A beautiful and courageous book, an American classic.” —Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July
“Farrell writes with an upbeat, optimistic attitude, infused with humor, insights and soul. As he drives across the landscape, he also drives home important social justice issues.” —Publishers Weekly
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
In May 2008—shortly after being named by the Los Angeles Times as a “Person of the Year”—Mike Farrell drove himself across the country on a book tour like no other. Networking with political groups (and friends like Joseph C. Wilson and Valerie Plame), Farrell redefined the very concepts of book touring and “promotion” through a progressive lens.
“Not since Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: in Search of America has there been a more beautifully written and compelling journey into the heartland of America. Mike Farrell celebrates his beloved country with great honesty and sincerity, with humility and grace. A beautiful and courageous book, an American classic.” —Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July
“Farrell writes with an upbeat, optimistic attitude, infused with humor, insights and soul. As he drives across the landscape, he also drives home important social justice issues.” —Publishers Weekly
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781617750410 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Akashic Books |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 225 |
| File size: | 669 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Day One
Saturday, May 10, 2008
* * *
City of Origin: Los Angeles, CA City of Destination: Tempe, AZ
Miles Traveled: 382 Venue: Changing Hands Bookstore
* * *
Event Cosponsors
Veterans for Peace, Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty
[right arrow] Well, this isn't the way it was supposed to work.
This marathon tour, this 8,000-mile drive across the country and back to promote the paperback release of Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist, was supposed to be a great adventure that my wife, actress Shelley Fabares, and I would share, a month-long odyssey of laughing and looking, seeing new places and old ones, meeting new people and old friends and just loving being together.
But it wasn't to be.
The timing had been perfect: we'd take off just a week after my son Michael married his sweetheart, Peggy, in our backyard. It would be tight, yes, working out all the craziness of a large wedding and the logistics of this trip (not to mention Shelley's inevitable all-night pre-trip packing frenzy), but nothing could stop us.
Not so fast, Johnson!
A few days before the wedding, while outside hosing off the side of the house to make it more presentable for the soon-to-be-gathering multitude, Shelley was startled by an unexpected squirt of water in the face, lost her balance and fell.
Paramedics, the ER, the X-ray, the news of a badly broken hip, admission to the hospital and hip-replacement surgery soon had my head spinning, reconsidering everything. The wedding must go forward, of course, but could Shelley be there? Unfortunately, as it turned out, she could not. (Though a sweetly generous gesture by Peggy, who swept into the hospital room in her wedding gown, and a cell phone placed in front of a speaker during the ceremony, made Shelley very much a part of it.)
And what of this long, well-organized, meticulously planned book tour, with dozens of appearances scheduled, commitments to stores carefully arranged, and a raft of cosponsoring political and social justice organizations signed on? Could it be canceled, delayed, adjusted?
Yes, of course, said the good people at Akashic Books with a gulp; they'd figure something out. Not a chance! said Shelley. She'd be fine. She'd be up and doing her physical therapy, she'd be supported by our family and our friends, and I had to get the hell out of town.
Well, it was certainly more complicated than that, but this is the gist of it. And here I am.
After picking up a rented Prius at LAX airport — the insane price of gas demanding a hybrid — and quickly throwing everything I could think of into a couple of bags, I took off this morning for the first stop: Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix.
Driving east on Interstate 10 quickly takes you into the incredibly frightening air of the San Gabriel Valley. I keep thinking the smog in the San Fernando Valley is scary, but at least it gets blown away periodically. This stuff you can cut with a knife.
Past orchards of windmills and into the desert, the haze thins out and the landscape grabs you. I've never been one to appreciate the particular beauty of the desert, but today it impresses. It is so clearly harsh, so openly hostile to all but the most hardy adventurer, that it proclaims itself with an impressive hauteur that has, I must admit, a kind of arrogant beauty. Don't fuck with me, pal, it seems to be saying.
As I careen along, trying to figure out what means what on the odd dashboard in this strange car — this is my first experience with a hybrid — I keep watching the gas gauge, remembering that the last time I came this way I had to stop and fill up in Desert Center, a particularly hot and unforgiving place that one in need of fuel is strangely happy to discover (but doesn't want to use the facilities). Yet the gauge doesn't seem to have moved, making me wonder if I'm looking at the right thing. That does appear to be a little gas pump on it, I reassure myself, so what else could it be?
What else could it be, indeed? It could be any damned thing, I tell myself, recalling that when I first got in the car I couldn't figure out how to start it, much less make it go. Embarrassed, I had to go find an attendant to show me how to make the bloody thing work.
This Prius doesn't even have a key! Who knew you had to stick the square thing in the hole and push? And there's no gearshift! There's just a little kind of funky plastic knob on a stick — a short stick, at that — which kind of wiggles up and down. And a button you push for Park. I assume that means the gear, Park, which means you stand still, but I was already standing still. I wanted to go!
So, like I'm an idiot, the attendant shows me that you push in the square thing, then you have to push the button that says Power. (Now, of course, being able to read, I had already tried that, but nothing seemed to happen.) Ah, but you have to step on the brake when you do it! Uhhuh. Then, as he points out, the dashboard lights go on and with them a little red thing that says Ready!
Uh-huh. But when I step on the accelerator, nothing happens. That's because it's not in gear. Uhhuh. How do I get it in gear? You jiggle the funky plastic knob on the short stick. Up to go backward, down to go forward. Uh-huh. But nothing is happening. That's because you're not stepping on the brake. Huh? I have to step on the brake to shift? Right. Uh-huh.
So, despite the fact that I can't hear an engine running, I step on the brake, pull the funky little plastic knob on a short stick down, step on that gas and ...
Here I am.
Bing! One of the little squares on what looks like it must be a gas gauge goes away, telling me that some gas is being used. This I can understand because it's like the one on my motorcycle. But, like the one on my motorcycle, I'm not sure how much gas each little square represents. Oh well, on I go.
And you know what? Less than six hours after leaving home I'm through Phoenix, turning into the motel in Tempe, and there are still two little squares on that line. All the way from Los Angeles to Phoenix on one tank of gas! I'm impressed.
The event at Changing Hands is astonishing. Over a hundred people are there to say hello and hear me, including people from Code Pink, the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty (CAADP), and Veterans for Peace. As part of the introduction, I'm presented an award by Veterans for Peace: a beautiful statuette of a hand giving the peace sign. Though I'd been warned to expect something, this is a huge and very moving surprise.
The discussion, mostly Q&A, goes on for quite awhile and covers a broad range of subjects, from the war to the death penalty, prisons, M*A*S*H, Hollywood, politics, kids, values, my personal life and how we take back our country. The first question, though, was about Shelley, which gave me an opportunity to tell them why she wasn't here, as planned.
Nice people. A lovely evening.
CHAPTER 2Day Two
Sunday, May 11, 2008 (Mother's Day)
* * *
City of Origin: Tempe, AZ City of Destination: Tucson, AZ
Miles Traveled: 109 Venue: Barnes & Noble — Eastside
* * *
Event Cosponsor
Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty
[right arrow] Happy Mother's Day, sweetheart! The day begins with an old friend.
Rick and I grew up together, and when I joined the Marines in 1957 as a buck private he had the audacity to get an appointment to West Point. We stayed in touch for a while but lost contact over thirty years ago, only to reconnect because he heard mention of my coming to town and sent a message to the manager of Changing Hands, the bookstore last night.
A couple of hours over orange juice provides time for a quick race through three decades, but I've got to make tracks for Tucson. Now living in a house he built in the wonderfully named Carefree, Arizona, he seems to be doing well. Rick still has that same offbeat sense of humor I remember as a kid. And now that he knows of the yearly reunions of the club that protected and sustained us through our school years, he'll try to make it to the next one.
Back on 10E out of Phoenix, I'm reminded that the sheriff of Maricopa County is that cheap self-promotion machine, Joe Arpaio, the media hog who dubs himself "America's Toughest Sheriff." I spent a day at his prison a few years ago with the old Bill Maher show and found him to be every bit the "megalomaniac, liar and bully" Harper's Magazine labeled him. He's popular with the voters because he plays on their fears, and his bluster and bravado keep his name in the press and get him reelected. It's like Cheney and Bush playing the fear game with terrorism. Given to heaping abuse on those under his control, Arpaio plays into the idiotic notion that you can correct the behavior of inmates through humiliation and brutalization while diverting potential law-breakers with the threat of dehumanization. Scorned by human rights groups and those who champion decency, Arpaio is a blight on the very idea of "corrections" and an insult to intelligent law enforcement, just one step out of the cave and moving in the wrong direction.
Leaving the Superstition Mountains behind, I head down the long, flat highway through the Sonoran Desert toward the sharp, saw-toothed Santa Catalinas and, beyond them, Tucson. Along the way the occasional slopes to each side are dotted with a huge population of what to the casual observer might look like strange, tall beings waving hello. The saguaro cactus is said to appear nowhere else on earth but in this southwestern desert.
I figure the least one can do is wave back.
Suddenly this car, to which I'm only slowly becoming accustomed, begins a rhythmic beeping. Jarring enough, because a sudden outburst of beeping can't mean anything good as one is racing down the highway, it becomes even more frightening as the beeps speed up, getting closer and closer together. In the movies, this means a bomb is about to go off. Frantic, I look around and see no signs of distress or alarm on the dash or anywhere else; I check my cell phone, though I know that's not it; and I begin to slow and pull over as the beeps reach a crescendo and, just as suddenly as they began, stop.
Goddamnit! This car is messing with me! This is unnerving as hell. Then, panic subsiding, I move back into the lane and resume speed as I go over everything I can think of that might be responsible. Finally, on the far right side of the dash I see a red light indicating that the passenger seat belt isn't fastened. No one being in the seat, I hadn't thought to fasten it, even though I did set one of my bags there. It's a light bag, but could that be it? And why, if so, did it wait until now to yell at me? Did it let me know when I started out and I somehow missed it? Was it stewing about it all this time and then suddenly decided to give me hell? Man, this car is one temperamental sucker! I'm going to have to be careful.
Credit where due, I did discover something very interesting about the car — actually very cool. In the middle of the dash is a screen that, if you mess with the buttons around it, gives you all kinds of confusing information, complete with even more confusing diagrams. It'll tell you how much mileage you're getting at any given moment; it offers a very complex picture of the power train, apparently explaining the system by which the car is sometimes powered by battery and sometimes by the regular old-fashioned internal-combustion engine. These things are just obscure enough to drive a newcomer to the world of hybrids a bit mad, yet intriguing enough to pull your attention away from the road and get you killed. But that's not the cool part. The cool part is when you pull up the funky plastic knob on the short stick and put the car in reverse (after, of course, putting your foot on the brake), the screen in the center of the dash becomes a picture of what's behind you! So you can see where you're going as you back up. Though because the picture is a bit distorted, I still prefer to turn and look out the back window. But it is cool.
Coming into Tucson I make my way to the Barnes & Noble bookstore where I'm to do my thing — this one an afternoon gig. Since it's Mother's Day I doubt there will be a large crowd, but one never knows. Being a bit early, I check in and then go to a bar across the parking lot to watch most of the first half of the Lakers/Jazz fourth playoff game. Tied at the half by one of Kobe Bryant's impossible shots. (I later learn we lost in overtime.)
Back in the store, I am surprised to find a very nice crowd of over a hundred people, including some from the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty and a few others with whom I had worked in the Sanctuary movement in the 1980s. The movement, started by John Fife, minister of Tucson's Southside Presbyterian Church, a Quaker named Jim Corbett, and a few nuns, priests, other clergy and laypeople, believed that those coming across the border fleeing murder, torture, and mayhem in El Salvador and Guatemala deserved to be treated humanely and given shelter — as international law requires — rather than labeled as "Communists" and sent back to their deaths. The Sanctuary movement became a modern version of the Underground Railroad from the days of slavery, ultimately involving more than five hundred churches and synagogues nationwide. And for their trouble, these simple, decent people were arrested, tried, convicted and, probably because of embarrassment on the part of authorities forced to carry out the Reagan administration's paranoiac anticommunist zealotry, sentenced mostly to five years of probation.
Today, John Fife and many of these people are still at it, having formed the Samaritan Patrol, part of the No More Deaths movement. They go out and provide food, water, and sometimes directions to impoverished people attempting to make their way across the desert in search of work. The goal is to protect these poor folks from death by dehydration or starvation and occasionally to provide witness and help them avoid confrontation by Minutemen and others inspired by the racist raving of the Lou Dobbses, Bill O'Reillys, and Tom Tancredos intent on saving America from "mongrelization."
Again, we spend an hour and a half or so talking about my book, Hollywood, the death penalty, politics, this bloody awful war and a lot of M*A*S*H.
CHAPTER 3Day Three
Monday, May 12, 2008
* * *
City of Origin: Tucson, AZ City of Destination: El Paso, TX
Miles Traveled: 317 Venue: Barnes & Noble — Sunland Park
* * *
Event Cosponsor
El Pasoans Against the Death Penalty
[right arrow] Okay, a new day and we're to head for El Paso, Texas. But this hybrid and I are starting off with a new relationship. First, I have to say I'm very impressed that the little line of squares that tells me how much gas has been used hasn't moved at all. None of them have disappeared. None! I only filled up once, in Tempe, after arriving there Saturday night, and we've come over a hundred miles from Phoenix to get here (then more after the book gig yesterday afternoon when I got pretty well lost trying to find a much-touted restaurant up in the hills on Skyline Drive, but I finally figured it out). So, if I read this gas gauge thing correctly, it says we got here from Phoenix without using any fuel at all!
Whatever, I'm impressed with this rig; I admit it. So, I've been thinking over our relationship and I've decided I haven't been fair. I've been looking at the hybrid as a car ... like, you know, a car. But it's a hybrid. Like a mule. And like a mule it can do a lot of work, maybe as much work as a pack horse, but it's not a horse, it's a mule. And a mule can be contrary and confusing and a pain in the ass, but if you don't expect it to be a horse you won't be surprised when it gets weird and obstinate. Right?
Right. So, off we go, the hybrid and I, on down 10E toward El Paso with, according to the little squares on the dash, a still-full tank of gas.
The land south of Tucson is very flat but doesn't seem to be peopled with as many saguaros as before. In fact, I don't see any. Maybe they're all at the convention up north. Before long the flat land gives way to a sort of rolling, undulating topography (don't you just love to use a word like that in a sentence?), and as I'm watching the speed, keeping an eye on the little squares (still all there) and noting the slight changes in the landscape, suddenly I hear three distinct beeps. With the first one I start to panic, with the second I look to see that the passenger seat belt is still fastened from the other day, and with the third I begin to decelerate ... But ... there's no fourth. Just three damned beeps! And then nothing. Nothing at all. There appears to be no problem. So I take a deep breath and think about it. The beeps seemed to be slightly lower in tone than the A-bomb alert from Saturday. There's no damned reason for them. It's just trying to get to me. It's a mule.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Of Mule and Man"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Mike Farrell.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Introduction,
Of Mule and Man,
Resource Guide,