Number of Deliveries: 12
Sales: $554.70
Tips: $75
Hours: 4.53
Total Wage: $24.56
It's Del Mar Fair Season, which means two things: traffic rises to delivery destroying levels; and carnies and the inland-dwelling peoples of San Diego County invade the lush coast, "where the turf meets the surf." My brother Joey, a well-traveled pilot, often says that people in the U.S. are the same twenty miles inland from the Pacific Coast to twenty miles inland on the Atlantic Coast; that is the Midwest. While county fairs provide a nice cross-section of Americans, I'm not sure the wealthy support or attend them anymore than they or their children do the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (I haven't noticed any yellow ribbon magnets or "U.S. Army Mom" bumper stickers on local BMWs or Mercedes). Horse racing season is more their style.
I end up with several coastal deliveries tonight, but manage to avoid the fair traffic by cutting north through Solana Beach. On what I think is my last delivery of the night, I notice the company car I just got needs gas. I call the manager to squeeze in an order for a toasted Italian roll, my inexpensive dinner these days, two minutes before closing time, 9:00 p.m. She tells me there's one more delivery up. "I'll be back in ten minutes," I say.
I pull into the Arco directly across from the fairgrounds, oblivious that the fair just closed. I'm hustling, trying to get in and out so I can make that last delivery. I park at a pump and run to the payment island that looks like an ATM. I need $20 worth of gas. I put a $5 bill in, and it makes a ja-junk noise. One five down, two more fives and five ones to go. I try the next $5 bill, and it makes that weird rejection noise that sounds like an electronic "un-uh." I try another five, and it makes the same noise. No, no, no, not right now. I pump the five dollars worth of gas, then run inside to add another $15, but there's a line at least five fair-goers deep. Shit. I run back outside and try the payment machine again. "Un-uh," it says. I'm back inside, standing at the rear of a line of people buying sodas and crap that won't help their current physiques. Come on, come on, I think. I get to the front, pay, then make the mistake of asking for a receipt. The cashier is experiencing a paper jam. "Oh, wait," I say, "that receipt won't show the gallons." He says it will, and keeps trying to get the paper unstuck. I want to say forget it, but he un-jams the printer and hands me a receipt, which is useless to me without showing the gallons.
I pump the gas, but it only takes $13.15. I come back inside, only to find the line reformed. I wait, while the cashier deals with paper jams for every customer. He sees me, and asks what I need. "I need another receipt and change," I say. His eyebrows scrunch together, but he hops to the other register and prints me a new receipt, saying, "It's going to be the same as the other one." But I need change, I tell him, as he hands me a duplicate pre-paid receipt. "You didn't say that," he says. I don't argue with him. He rings up two heavy-set ladies wearing purple polo shirts with some kind of Fair markings on them. When I get to the front, he hands me my change, and I tell him I need a new receipt, one showing the gallons. I think he wants to jump the counter and beat the crap out of me at this point. The printer jams again, and while he's un-jamming it, a carny man with short hair and an unruly rear neck beard, leans over the counter, as if he's looking for something, and asks, "You have any cereal or dark chocolate?" The cashier tells him he'll be with him right after he prints my receipt. I look over and see that the carny carries a large bag of chips and a 44 0z. soda. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. After almost slamming into a couple cars in the gas station parking lot, I get back to the Pizzeria twenty minutes later with my two gas receipts (one of which is for the wrong pump) and headache, and the manger says, "Ten minutes, huh?"
I gather up the pizzas and pasta and salad for the final order, which is now almost forty minutes old, and head for the deep corner of the delivery zone, Cielo. It feels good to be out here on the dark country roads, away from the Ouroboros-like self-consumption of the carnies and fairgoers (why do people who can least afford fairs love them?). I begin the climb up Camino de Arriba in Cielo, and I know exactly where I'm going. This Australian-sounding man has ordered before and doesn't tip well. And since it's night, I can't really enjoy the view from up here.
As I take a curve, two, massive owls perched on a small, roadside solar panel to my right, take off into the darkness. While I've seen plenty of barn owls in Clovis and Fresno, I've never seen owls this large. I didn't get a great look at them, but they had the ear tufts of Great Horned Owls, so I assume that's what they were (I'm an amateur bird nerd and get excited when I see new species). I remember learning in a Native American Religion class (of course I couldn't tell you which tribe, so I'll stick to the convenient European classification, lumping them all together) that owls are a good omen. Then I thought of the Athenians, and how they saw owls as good omens before battle, especially if they were on the right while the Athenians faced north (lucky omens came from the east). In Plutarch's The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives, he tells of how an owl omen convinced the Athenian soldiers that Themistocles' battle plan at Salamis was favored by the gods, and they defeated the superior Persian fleet shortly thereafter. Later, when I get home, I'll scour my History of the Peloponnesian War, thinking it was an owl omen coming from the wrong direction that portended the Athenian defeat in Sicily, but that was an eclipsed moon. And I'll read online how the Romans saw owls as a negative omen meaning someone was going to die.
So I clunk up the steep hill, either on my way to victorious battle or to my death. I arrive at the metal driveway gate and dial the house. After the man answers, speaking Aussie, he pushes some buttons, and the call box says in a robotic, female voice, "Access granted." This is the first talking gate I've encountered. When I get to his door, I tell him the total is $59.70, and as he hands me $80 and asks for $15 change, I feel like I'm reliving the last time I was here. He must have ordered the same thing, because the four twenty dollar bills and the 8% tip are exactly the same. Some things are just predictable.
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