Farting Around

I tell you, we are here on earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)

After a late start to Santa Barbara to avoid commute traffic, I pulled off Highway 101 at Laurel Drive (Exit 330) in Salinas for lunch. Turning right and continuing straight ahead for half a mile on Calle del Adobe, I drove unexpectedly into a park containing the Boronda Adobe, an adobe building built between 1844 and 1848 and maintained by the Monterey County Historical Society. I had never heard of the Boronda Adobe. I had simply pulled off the highway and was taking a quick look around for any city park where I could eat my lunch and perhaps strike up a conversation with a local. I was delighted to discover quite by accident a piece of California history I hadn't known about. This is for me one of the great joys of being able to fart around, stopping as inclination, rather than plan, dictates. For most of my life I have had to fart around within the context of a job. This is much better. It's so much fun for me to drift from one thing to another while traveling in the Class B. This is not to suggest that I don't plan for my trips; I do, but that I can change direction within the plan on a whim.

Also located at the park were recently dedicated memorials to the 105 men of Company C 194th Tank Battalion from the Salinas and Pajaro Valleys. Of the 105 men, six were lost in combat and 52 died during the infamous Bataan Death March, in the holds of ships while being transported to Japan and China, and in prison and labor camps. Only 47 of the original 105 men returned to the United States. I liked reading about these events on the Internet as a result of my visit to Boronda Adobe History Center and thinking about the changes that have taken place in the Salinas and and Pajaro Valleys over the nearly 100 years between the building of the Boronda Adobe and the Bataan Death March. I also note that I was alive during World War II (having been born just six days after the men of Company C 194th Tank Battalion "On the morning of February 18, 1941...marched four abrest down Main Street...toward the train station" and that my sense of history changes as my life span seems to include more of it.