Postcard from Big Stupid Sur

Should we have taken the advice of Irish band, The Thrills, we might not have gone "back to Big Sur", and be faced, as we are today, with a court citation.

And though running from the cops was high on our list of things to do, this morning we were faced with a park ranger. And we hardly ran. Instead, we stated our case plainly: We had (honestly) dropped our $20 into the drop box for registration at the camp site. Somehow, perhaps through some administrative error, it had got lost.

"You see sometimes," the old man said. "People say they've paid their registration," then, looking at us from under his baseball cap, added, "when they haven't."
"With all due respect, sir," I began. "We have."
"Is it possible that you forgot to pay and dropped it in this morning?"
"No," Pete snapped. "We paid it. When we arrived."

And so the conversation continued until the man, with the power to tear up our notice and put this misunderstanding, like much of the Pacific Coastal Highway, behind us, simply smirked and walked away.

For a moment in time our destiny, our freedom, sat in the grubby hands of this rude and arrogant park ranger - a stupid white man with the power to decide our fate.

And as we left the park, I thought of other stupid white men in positions of power and wondered how Americans put up with it everyday.