Brokenhearted in Bakersfield

  1 - BROKEN HEART PARK It’s hot in Bakersfield.   A lazy heat shimmers off asphalt streets laid out flat and wide across the urban sprawl.   Downtown’s filled with boarded quickie marts and storefront churches and dilapidated American Dream homes slammed up against vacant lots heaped with rusted machinery and a lingering sense of abandonment.   On the outskirts of the city, in a sheltering hollow of low brown camel back hills, set alongside an elevated concrete freeway, sits a collection of personal mobile homes called Broken Heart Park. Broken Heart Park is about as quiet as you’d expect.   Oh sure, there’s nights when some damn fool will drink a little too much and just for the hell of it start shootin' out someone else’s windows.   Then the law will ride on out and haul him off.   Things have a way of calming down again, and almost before you can get around to checking your own place for bullet holes your neighbor’s been sobered up and releas...

  2 - OPEN FOR BUSINESS I was sitting back all relaxed and swishing beer from cheek to jowl when I heard pebbles crunching under familiar footsteps. “Mornin’.” “Mornin’,” I nodded back to the massive shape casting a long shadow.   It was my neighbor, Chet Baker.   Even in the shadows you couldn’t help but recognize Chet Baker.   He slowly hunkered himself down on some steps below where I was sitting. “How ‘bout a little wake-and-bake?”   Chet passed a lit roach and slipped out a breakfast beer from his overalls. “That’s neighborly,” I appreciatively accepted his offering and quietly pushed the first can of beer behind me.   (I figured it was already warm, so it’d still be warm when I got back to it later.)   I cracked open the frosty cold one Chet handed me and listened to the excited hiss of foam kissing the oval opening, then I unhinged my lips and released the frothy liquid. “Ahhhhhhh,” I wiped dribbles of the tasty libation with the b...

  3 - STARDUST I was still blotting sweat when Owen Purty’s battered heap roared up behind me kicking up a choking cloud of dust. “Yeeeehawwwwww!”   Owen hollered from his car window.   “Hey amigo, feel like going to The Stardust?”   He shot me a wink and flashed a wad of greenbacks.   “Today’s payday,” he winked again.   “I’m feeling the urge to unwind a bit, know what I mean?” I knew what he meant. “Let’s go toss back a few cold ones in air-conditioned splendor and enjoy some of the finest dancers in Kern County if not the whole damn Central Valley?   I’m cravin’ the fleeting companionship of feminine artistes, know what I mean?”   He winked again, and I was beginning to wonder if Owen was developing a nervous tic.   However, the combination of air-conditioned splendor, icy longnecks and dancing feminine artistes was irresistible. Owen Purty is a neighbor who first showed up around Broken Heart Park only a few months back. ...