Day 31, Friday March 15: Santa Barbara, California to Santa Cruz, California

Carnegie libraries visited: Pacific Grove, Santa Cruz

The ‘Start Your Day Right’ morning AA meeting in Santa Barbara is held upstairs in the Veterans Memorial Building. The members are wearing the most diverse set of hats I’ve seen on this tour. As the oracles in Led Zeppelin sing it, ‘The Song Remains the Same’. Their stories tell of what they were, what they did, and how they are today, words spoken in every AA meeting everywhere.

California’s Highway hugs the coast north of Santa Barbara. It’s more magnificent than the postcards can possibly show. It’s all rugged cliffs and surging waves until one gets close to Big Sur, where the highway has been closed due to mudslides. The detour inland holds its own charms, and in driving up through the Salinas valley I passed through some of the richest agricultural land in the US. If you are eating a salad while reading this, the lettuce, spinach, and strawberries on it probably came from this region, and your artichokes, broccoli, and cauliflower likely did also (the region is nicknamed ‘America’s Salad Bowl’. 

I promised Amy Hubbell, whom I met in New Orleans, that I would visit the columbarium holding her parents’ ashes at the El Carmelo cemetery in Pacific Grove and leave them a gift. (You’ll recall that her mother, Cita, was instrumental in saving the Algiers library.) The cemetery’s setting is serene, with the Point Pinos Lighthouse in sight and the Pacific surrounding it on three sides. I was unable to find their memorial; still, I left a handful of speckled malted milk ball eggs there as my tribute to them. 

I double-dipped today and attended the Young People’s Underground Group’s AA meeting in Santa Cruz at 8 pm. The vibe was unlike any other meeting I have attended. The room was absolutely packed, and I was one of the few attendees over the age of 40. The charismatic speaker, long hair in a ponytail, held his audience spellbound. He was only twenty-nine (only, to me; to others, he was probably almost a father figure). He was celebrating seven continuous years, not without struggle, of sobriety. Many in the room had thirty days or less of sobriety; a few were coming for their first meeting.

It’s not uncommon for the youth to come to seek recovery from addiction – Drew Barrymore, whose actor/grandfather John died of cirrhosis and whose aunt Diana died of an overdose, was only thirteen when she checked into her first rehab. One of the hardest things for young alcoholics to overcome, and I can definitely sympathize, is the idea that they can never drink again. They can’t party with their friends. They won’t be able to drink at their graduations, their weddings, their promotions. Never is a demanding requirement.  

Too demanding for me. I could never have made that pledge and, if I did, I wouldn’t think I could do it. What I didn’t learn until much later is that AA demands no pledge of ‘I will never drink again.’ AA instead asks its members not to drink, just for today. Only today. And, then, it’s one day at a time. I need only stay sober today. Luckily, if I keep doing that then the consequence is that I will never drink again. Just take care of today, and the rest will follow. Brilliant.

The Santa Cruz library was just a couple of blocks from the Pacific. The street that the library was on dead-ended at a construction site less than a block from the waves. That’s where I parked for the night, the waves lulling me to sleep.