Early summer in LA, the Byrds and Bakersfield

It feels as hot today as childhood memories of Bakersfield in August.  The husk-dry temperature becomes visible, a close companion, not your new best friend.

While riding through Bakersfield and much of the San Joaquin Valley, either because it was true or from sheer perversity, my father said he could only find country music on the radio.  My mother's case of the vapors intensified.  My siblings and I stared into the middle distance as we would have regardless of the tunes.  Still, a blistering day and a pedal steel guitar only need a milkshake from the Carnation coffee shop or an ice-filled Giant Lemonade from the mimetic stand on the edge of the fields to make time travel complete.  I'm pretty sure the Byrds are better than anything we heard on those occasions, though I hope there was some Merle Haggard.  He does not give me the vapors.