Goin’ to California
© 2012, C. D. Bonner

Brothers are quick to step in to protect each other when someone else is picking on their sibling, but they are just as quick to harass the same sibling. Often, far more mercilessly. I suppose the familiarity (in several senses of the word) breeds not contempt, but a comfort with few barriers. We don’t see this only in blood brotherhood. We find it in friendships that approach familial ties, or in the mischief of college fraternities.

I spent my time at the Phi Delta Theta house in Macon, arriving just weeks after the release of the movie, “Animal House.” I am thankful that I attended their parties long before the advent of camera phones. I can claim plausible deniability (even deniable plausibility) when the subject of togas comes up in conversation.

Jerry was a good kid, but he resembled a vinyl record that had been jostled by someone trying not to spill his beer. He had a scratch. It was a scratch he couldn’t itch. He had a scratch that caused others to itch. It was a scratch that caused him to repeat one bar of his song over and over, “I’m going to California one day.” Maybe he’d listened to a scratched recording of that Led Zeppelin song one too many times.

Jerry was fairly quiet, an average student who wouldn’t have stood out in any crowd. He was pleasant and personable, and when sober, he rarely brought up the subject of the Golden State, saving his stumping for California for after-beers conversation. The way he said it, it did sound like he was off to California to vie for the Presidential primary.

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We partied late one night, and I left with Jerry still talking about California with some of the brothers. When I returned the next day, the place was abuzz. Some laughed hysterically, some shouted, and some applied logic and practicality to Jerry’s plight.

Jerry awoke in the harsh light of the Los Angeles airport with a Hare Krishna follower hovering over him. He was confused and hung over, and rolled to his feet to seek relief for his cottonmouth. He had only the clothes he was wearing, and in those clothes, the only clues he found were a ten-dollar bill, a half-pack of smokes and the stub of a one-way ticket from Atlanta to LAX.

I hovered around the pay phone next to the “Goat Locker” of the lodge. I never found out what was really kept inside there, and was afraid to even ask. Jerry was on the phone, collect, and he was whining. I was standing with my mouth agape watching the wide mix of reactions to his plight. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed and someone drove off to the Western Union office to wire him the money for a return flight.

Jerry had no doubt that he was seen as a true brother.

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