My father, God rest his soul, told me once that when economies fail
you've nothing to lose; write a book about it. He, of course, was
harking back to his own poetic journey after getting out of the army
in the Second World War. He enrolled at Iowa--initially as a
veterinarian but could deal with scapels and disections. He found his
way over to literature and continued thusly. He was the editor of the
Hawkeyes literary mag and once boasted of having taken Dylan Thomas
out barhopping when the Welsh bard has come to the school on a reading
tour.

But the one of the more interesting things I had taken away from our
fireside chats--one of the things that's fascinated me the most--was
his having, with a handful of other postwar drinkers, hopped into
someone's Ford and driven down to Mexico. This was in 1947. He spoke
fondly of the trip (what he could remember, in any case). "What were
you doing down there for three months?" I once asked him. "Drinking,"
he told me. "And other things."

I've written about this several times. I've tried to recreate the
scenes; I even tuned into Vaqlley of the Gwangi and some other late-
night Mexican movie that invovled a traveling circus (it was actully a
really good film). But in my stories, they wind up staggering back
across the river into California. And always there's this flip side to
the beauty of this place.

My father's early days--what I know of them--kind of reminds me of Ask
the Dusk. If you haven't read Fante's masterful novel you should. It's
about as immediate as a book can get, and it's as immediate as Los
Angeles sometimes is.