How to Live in a $4-a-gallon World

The following was submitted in May to the L.A. Times as an op/ed piece. It was never published.

I just got back from walking to the local Starbuck's, and I'm not happy about it at all.

The store is only five or six blocks northwest of my home in central Riverside, but those blocks descend on a deceptively gentle slope, so the walk back is an uphill bitch. Worse, I suffer from a scoliosis-induced uneven gait, meaning that by the time I walk through my front door with grande drip in hand I have second-degree burns on the fleshy part of my hand between thumb and index finger. It's hard to settle in and enjoy a cup of coffee with your hand blistering, your tee-shirt drenched in sweat and your pants stained with the same acidic substance the Aztecs used as a fabric dye.

That I would walk those five or six blocks instead of drive them has less to do with health consciousness than the high cost of gasoline. I drive a 16-year-old Honda, one of those supposedly fuel-efficient models with a tank the size of a sewing thimble. I used to laugh at the people I saw cruising around in their gas-guzzling SUVs. Let the other poor saps take out a second mortgage just to drive around the block, I'd say. My car could make it to L.A. and back with the needle on "E."

Then the price of 89 octane hit $4 a gallon, and the only thing I laugh at now is the bitter irony of it all.

Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline inflates the cost and size of everything. Had I decided to drive instead of hoof it, the grande drip now sitting on my desk would have set me back the price of a venti. Had I chosen to drive to the Starbucks a mile away -- as I sometimes would because the closer Starbucks tends to run out of my favorite scones -- my grande would have cost the equivalent of a caramel macchiato. I don't normally drink ventis or macchiatos -- I prefer my nervous system to hum rather than buzz -- but if I'm going to pay for extravagance, I expect to get something for the expense. So these days I walk for my caffeine fix, muttering to myself that I'm committed to tightening up those flabby ass cheeks when, really, I'm just a tight-ass committed to saving a buck.

The cost of a cup of coffee is, of course, the least of my worries when it comes to gas inflation. My wife drives an average of 480 miles a week to and from her job, and, while I work from home as a freelance journalist, I've yet to find a source willing to pay for my mileage. Between the two of us, my wife and I easily drive about 2,400 miles a month. That's about $400 a month in $4-a-gallon gas fill-ups, assuming our cars are in tip-top shape, which they aren't, and that we both stay within posted speed limits, which we don't. And that's just for the driving we can't avoid.

To try to ease the pain at the pump, I've been cutting down a lot on the driving I can avoid, like visiting relatives on their deathbeds and maintaining friendships outside a 10-block radius. This has proven fairly easier to do. Get-well cards go a long way toward meeting family obligations, and are cost-effective even with the follow-up letters of condolence.

I also no longer feel the need to rush to my mentally ill sister's side when she calls me in a panic over those dead people trying to get into her head. "Call me when they've broken through the foyer," I'll say, and go back to bed.

Most of my friends live in L.A. I'd always liked my friends, but at 140 miles roundtrip for visits, I had to ask myself: Really, how much did I like them? Enough to spend $40 a pop just to see their friendly faces? No. If they were really my friends, they'd be less concerned about our weekend get-togethers than my ability to put food on the table. So screw them. These days, I'm cozying up with the drug dealers next door and the guy across the street who sits on his porch all day staring at his Harley.

My newly abbreviated circle of associates should also help the bottom line at Christmastime.

In other words, living in a $4-a-gallon world doesn't have to be a colossal inconvenience. You just have to make a few simple adjustments. Just this afternoon, after drinking my grande coffee, I made the adjustment of walking out to the driveway and pumping five bullets into my Honda's engine block.

See how easy that was?

American Free

The following column was written in November 2003. It was never submitted.

Once, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought an American flag at my neighborhood Von's.

It was the first flag I'd ever purchased, not counting a bumper sticker flag I coughed up a buck for at a Costa Mesa Fish Fry. But the Von's flag, a 5-inch-by-2-inch rectangle of polyester glued to a plastic stick, was handsomely displayed as a point-of-sale item directly in front of the cashier and I found myself picking it up and admiring it, then setting it on the conveyer belt, on top of the box of Ding Dongs I was about to buy.

It was late summer 2000, a simpler time when the biggest foreign-affairs story was whether the Queen Mother would ever get around to kicking the bucket. We had just one quiet year to go before buying an American flag meant support for blowing up Muslims.

The cashier looked up and stopped ringing my groceries. She huffed and told me that the flag must never touch the ground.

“It isn’t touching the ground,” I said. “It’s touching my Ding Dongs.”

Unsatisfied, the cashier, whose badge read “Jamie” in bold block letters, reached across the belt and propped the flag up by wedging its white plastic staff between the Ding Dongs and the carton of 2% milk next to it.

“No one respects the flag anymore,” she muttered, and resumed ringing up the merchandise.

“Hey, I’m buying it, aren’t I?” I protested. It was important that the cashier know that I was by nature a tightwad, and that getting me to part with currency was no small business.

But she was unimpressed. She knew perfectly well that it was July 3 and that the flag had been marked down 50%. And it didn’t help when the bag boy, a tall thin teenager with more acne than I’d ever seen on a Latino, promptly tossed the flag into a plastic grocery bag and piled my produce, flour tortillas and whole wheat bread on top of it.

The cashier huffed again, and ordered the kid, who wasn’t wearing a name badge, to take the flag out from the bottom of the bag and put it back in properly. She had turned her back to the register and now stood facing me with one hand on the counter and the other on her hip, as if to say, "This is it -- this is where I draw the line. I will continue this transaction no further until that flag is set where it belongs, right atop your sissy bags of penne pasta noodles and pre-washed spring greens, so I'll know to my satisfaction that this flag, for which my forefathers bled, laps proudly in the wind when you carry your groceries through the parking lot."

The bag boy took this all in, and began pulling items out of the bag.

“Hold on a minute,” I said to him, and turned to Jamie. “Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable? This kid has just bagged a perfectly respectable bag of groceries, and now you want him to un-bag everything because you don’t like where he put a toy flag? Can’t you just let it go? I’ve got things to do.”

But Jamie ignored me and ordered the kid to do as he was told. He looked at me, uncertain.

“You just leave those groceries where they are,” I said to him. “You shouldn’t have to work any harder just to satisfy this lady's fanaticism."

“OK, you stop right now with telling Javier what to do!” Jamie shouted. “You’re not his boss! Javier, unpack that bag and put the flag back in there properly.”

“You’re not his boss, either,” I said. “And you’re not mine. I'm buying that flag and I'll pack it any damned way I feel like!"

I actually have great respect for the flag, but this wasn't about patriotism anymore. It was about property rights and customer service.

"I'll ask you not to use that language with me, sir!" Jamie said. This wasn't about patriotism for her anymore, either.

"Fine! Then finish ringing up my groceries and I'll go!"

"I will! Just as soon as Javier shows proper respect for the nation's flag! That flag represents freedom! Javier, do what you’re told!”

“Don’t move, Javier!"

But Javier had vanished. The customers who had been waiting behind me in line had vanished, too.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," someone said.

I turned around and saw no one. Then I looked down and realized the person talking to me, whom I knew from previous visits was the store manager, was a dwarf. I know adding this detail might cost my story some credibility, but I have to keep it real. The man was a dwarf.

"Look, that's not necessary..." I began.

"No, sir, I'm afraid it is," the dwarf said. "I'm going to need you to leave now."

I couldn't tell you exactly why, but all the fight drained out of me at the prospect of being 86'd by a little person.

"OK," I said. "But could I just maybe buy these Ding Dongs?"

"No, sir," he said. "And please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm going to have to escort you of the store."

"OK."

The distance from the checkout counter to the sliding-glass entrance was about 30 feet, and the longest walk of my life.

"Look," I turned to him, as we stepped outside, "you've seen me in here before. I must have shopped her a thousand times. You know I'm not some crazy troublemaker."

"I do, sir," he said.

"You do? Because this wasn't about that."

"Yes, sir."

"It was about freedom. That's all I'm saying."

"I understand," he said. "We'll try it again next time."

"I'd like that."

"Good," he said, and left me there.

Telemundo Does the IE

One day before this article was scheduled to run in the Inland Empire Weekly, reporter Mirthala Salinas resigned from Telemundo. The article was never published.

As rare as it is for we at the IE Weekly to hand out kudos to other news outlets, we feel we owe a debt of gratitude to Telemundo for sending us their favorite comfort reporter -- the sultry and sexy Mirthala Salinas.

Salinas, you may recall, was a rising star at the Spanish-language network's KVEA-TV Channel 52 until news broke in July of her affair with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The shocking disclosure (well, to everyone but Telemundo -- Salinas' indiscretion was apparently an open secret at the network, as were her earlier tumbles with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and former L.A. City Councilman Alex Padilla) was all the more shocking because of a strange coincidence. Salinas had just a month earlier reported the news of Villaraigosa's breakup from his wife of 20 years without so much as hinting that she -- the sultry and sexy Salinas -- was the probable cause of that estrangement.

Following a painstaking internal investigation that magically wrapped up after the L.A. Times ran an article criticizing Telemundo's failure to act on the scandal, Telemundo acted. Salinas was suspended without pay for two months. And to show just how serious they were about conflict-of-interest violations, Telemundo executives on Sept. 25 announced they were further chastising the sultry and sexy Salinas by transferring her from KVEA's Los Angeles studio to -- ouch! -- its Inland Empire bureau in Riverside.

Thanks, Telemundo! Sure, it's a bit galling that in this day and age, you still see the IE as a great big penalty box instead of the thriving region of 4 million people that it is, but that's OK. Send us your wayward but oh-so sultry and sexy on-air personalities! We'll find her something to do!

Ms. Salinas, we at the Weekly want to be the first Inland journalists to welcome you to our beautiful community. Come on down to our office in Corona and you'll find every guy here -- from the suave and impeccably dressed publisher (Jeremy Zachery -- 951-284-0120) to the energetic new managing editor (Chuck Mindenhall -- careful, Mirthala, he's married -- wink) to the lowliest unpaid intern -- are positively aching to make you feel right at home.

The ladies here -- maybe not so much.

But who are we kidding? It's pretty obvious given your recent dating history that you prefer strong and influential men of the Latino variety. Not to worry, Ms. Salinas! We've got powerful Latinos in the IE, too. Sure, the lot of them don't wield half as much political influence as Villaraigosa or Nunez on a bad day, but that's a good thing. Think about it, Mirthala: No more diving under the dashboard when those pesky paparazzi come around. This is the IE! We don't have paparazzi!

So, without further ado, let's introduce the sultry and sexy Mirthala Salinas to her new dating pool:

Our first candidate is a broad-shouldered, bushy eyebrowed hunk who served his country honorably both as a U.S. Marine and meat department manager for Alpha Beta. His turn-ons are storm drainage improvements, mixed-use development and long walks on moonlit beaches. And best of all, he's married! Mirthala, give it up for Colton City Councilman for District 1 David J. Toro!

Asked whether the news that Salinas was coming to town had him feeling all a'twitter, Toro replied: "I'm married and that's not anything I'd be interested in."

Hmm. Unavailable, or just playing coy?

Our next candidate is an up-and-comer who recently made waves when he cast the deciding vote to bring a medical marijuana dispensary to his city. He enjoys smart economic development through innovative planning, better programs for youths and seniors, and having his feet rubbed after a long, hard day serving his constituents. His turn-offs are rude people and war. Mirthala, put on your sultriest and sexiest smile for Claremont City Councilman Sam Pedroza!

"After seeing me, if Ms. Salinas looked twice I'd be surprised," lilts the boyishly handsome-esque Pedroza. "This isn't something I can really get involved in, but she's very beautiful."

Don't be fooled by Sam's demurring style, Mirthala. The guy's got class, vision, and a set of testacles bigger than all the Democrats in Congress put together, if his marijuana vote is any indication.

Next on the runway in our Hispanic pageant is an old hand at Inland politics -- and when we say old, we don't just mean his hand. At 68, he's definitely a bit long in the tooth (but on the plus side, he's been around the block enough times to know how to get a real woman to the Promised Land). A retired Navy captain, his hobbies are eliminating traffic gridlock and providing a real voice for seniors in local government. Mirthala, let's hear it for Calimesa City Councilman Ray Quinto!

When asked whether Salinas' imminent arrival had him ironing those chinos and shopping for new cologne, Quinto was a bit nonplussed.

"I don't see very well, and I really don't understand why anyone would suggest that you call me," says Quinto in that lush Latino accent that makes the ladies swoon. "I know very little of this lady, so I just don't know. I'm not going to modify my behavior, like shopping for new clothes or getting or haircut in order to be in a better position to meet her or do anything to make our relationship a more personal one. I will do what I always do, which is serve the citizens who elected me."

If that doesn't make you want to move to Calimesa, Mirthala, nothing will.

As you can see, the Inland Empire has a wealth of Latino politicians to conflict your journalistic interests. We also approached City Councilman Pete Aguilar of Redlands ("I can't take the bait on this -- I'm on the ballot in November") and Richard Delarosa, councilman for District 2 in Colton ("This is an L.A. issue"). We even talked to City Councilman Neil Derry, who isn't Latino, but lives in San Bernardino -- and that's enough for us. We'd hoped to get Rep. Joe Baca of Rialto to participate, but his press secretary heard us say "Mirthala Salinas" and screamed.

Unfortunately, none of the elected officials we called expressed interest in dating a sultry and sexy general assignment reporter any time soon, citing such piddling concerns as "marriage" and "voter approval." They'll miss out on the grand prize, but at least they'll be able to console themselves with our lovely parting gifts of personal integrity and self-respect.

But don't worry, Ms. Salinas. Given your history of, not one, but three instances of cozying up with your sources, you're bound to find that perfect elected someone to help while away those long nights piecing back together the shard ends of your career. If there's one thing we're sure of, you'll do it again. Why? Because any other journalist in your shoes would have resigned in disgrace months ago. You? You're hanging in there, toughing it out, raising in your own unique way those bars for the rest of us.

Thanks, Telemundo!

Letter to Santa

San Diego CityBeat, an alternative weekly, sent out an email Nov. 19 asking its regular editorial contributors for submissions to the paper's annual "Letters to Santa" section. "For you newcomers," CityBeat's editor wrote, "these are letters written by us pretending to be celebrities or local public figures -- and sometimes animals or inanimate objects -- asking Santa for something in particular." I submitted the following letter, which never saw print.

Hello, Santa!

You're probably wondering where you are, how you got here, and why your arm is handcuffed to Rudolph's antlers. Forget about all that now and pay attention! I want something from you, fat man: I want a new toy for my, uh, special holiday guests. I really don't care what it is, so long as it's big, metal and uncomfortable looking, with lots of springs and sliding compartments and cool rotating blades that pop out of nowhere.

I'd build it myself, but the guys at Home Depot are starting to look at me funny. Assholes. People think it's so easy, like I just wiggle my nose and industrial-sized deathtraps fall out of my butt. Well, they don't, do they? And another thing: Make sure whatever you leave under my tree comes with easy-to-follow instructions written in English. English, Kringle! Not Japanese, German or Indonesian -- English, and in letters large enough to read in a moldy basement with a light bulb swinging overhead.

Do this for me, Santa. Do this, or spend Christmas Eve wondering whether it's quicker to saw through your arm or Rudy's fuzzy antlers. The choice is yours. Choose wisely!

Love and kisses,

Jigsaw

Moving to the Inland Empire

The following article was written in 2005 for the Inland Empire Weekly. It was rejected for being, in the words of my editor, "too down on the IE."

While searching the Internet in my ongoing fruitless quest for a ramen house in the Inland Empire, I came upon a link to a website titled “Moving from India to Southern California.” As my last experience with clicking on an unfamiliar link with “India” in its title resulted in having to wake my computer-geek wife at 3 a.m. to rescue my hard drive from the five New Delhi sex workers who’d hijacked it (“I swear to God, honey, I was just looking for ramen!”), I was understandably suspicious. But this new link appeared to emanate from UC Riverside’s main server, so I crossed my fingers and clicked.

Up popped a black-and-white page titled “Frequently Asked Questions about moving from India to Southern California as a student.” Written by an Indian UCR graduate student for fellow Indians considering enrollment at the school, the page was filled to the point of incoherence with typos, grammatical errors and tortured syntax – as if auto-translated from the original Sanskrit. Nonetheless, it also contained some fascinating observations about quality of life in the I.E.

Most of the questions dealt with the bureaucracy of studying abroad: “What is a 50% Teaching Fellowship?” “Who helps me with all the paperwork?” “Is there a special tax treaty with India?”

But a full third focused on the climate and culture of Riverside and the ramen-less lifestyle of the average Inland resident. While the author thoughtfully dispelled some of his more upper-caste brethrens’ illusions about life in the States (“Q: Who does my laundry, cooks my food, cleans my room, irons my clothes, etc.?” “A: Good one. YOU.”), he goes on to spin a whole slew of illusions of his own.

Q: “Where is Riverside?”
A: “One hour from everywhere, in the middle of nowhere.”

Q: “What is the weather like at (sic) in Riverside?”
A: “Southern California weather is the closest it gets to the weather like in Bombay! Summers are hot – about 110 to 120 Fahrenheit, which works out roughly to about 40-45 degrees centigrade!”

Q: “How much is the rent?”
A: “A single bedroom apartment costs any where between $425-$600. Renting a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment costs any where between $575-$750.”

Q: “Approximately how much is my weekly grocery expense?”
A: “Anywhere between $25-$50 a week. Eating out is optional.”

After reading the document, I opened a Word file and typed out a few questions of my own: Where the fuck I’d been living these past few years? How soon can I divorce Sharon and move to this cheaper, quieter, sultrier version of the I.E.? Did this guy ever once step outside of his air-conditioned dorm room during his stay here?

None of the grad student’s answers about life in Riverside were entirely correct. A city of 305,000 people has to be in the middle of somewhere. In Riverside’s case, that somewhere is the Inland Empire, otherwise known as the fastest-growing region in the country. Yeah, summer temperatures in the I.E. will occasionally reach 110 degrees, but only in the most extreme heat waves does it get anywhere near 120 – and then only in the waiting room of the San Bernardino DMV.

And if anyone knows of a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment for $750 in Riverside, I’d like to know about it. In 2003, when the L.A. Times transferred me from Glendale to a rabbit-infested field office in Ontario, $750 got me a 10-by-10 unfurnished room across the hall from an alcoholic wife-beater who screamed in his sleep, upstairs from a pill-popping landlady who couldn’t stop talking about her problem with anal leakage.

But in all honesty, I can’t blame the grad student writer for being so wildly off base. Almost no one really knows the Inland Empire any more. The region has grown so fast in recent years that even those who live in it have had a hard time keeping up. I’ve lived in Southern California all my life, but until moving here the only thing I knew about the I.E. was you passed it on the way out to Vegas. I wasn’t alone.

When the disastrous wildfires of October 2003 broke out, San Bernardino mountain residents waited around their TVs for evacuation news and kept waiting until flames finally drove them from their homes. The L.A.-based news stations wouldn’t notice the fires until they crossed the county line.

But a lot has changed in the Empire since Joan Didion famously described it in 1966 -- the last year anything famous was written about the I.E. -- as a place where it was “easy to Dial-A-Devotion but hard to buy a book.” The cow pastures and lemon groves are all but gone, paved over by Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and the 40-year mortgage. Bed, Bath & Beyond has moved into the Back O’ Beyond. You can still Dial-A-Devotion, but at least now you can sip a Frappuccino while waiting on hold.

Not that anyone west of the 57 Freeway has noticed. For most Angelinos, that vast region of 9-something area codes is a mirage: You see it, far off in the desert, but for all practical purposes it just isn’t there. The occasional lack of disaster response aside, this disconnect between the reputed and real Inland Empires wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for the fact that Angelinos are moving here as if homes were free. Homes here aren’t free, but they do average about $175,000 less than comparable properties in L.A., and that’s enough to draw 23 of every 1,000 L.A. residents to Riverside annually, according to the U.S. Census.

As someone who made the migration three years ago, I can always spot recent L.A. newcomers to the neighborhood. They’re the ones standing on their front lawns shaking their fists at the sky, as if some cruel cosmic joke has been played on them.

It’s with that image in mind that I present my own brief set of FAQs for Angelinos considering moving to the Inland Empire:

Question: OK, really, where is Riverside?
Answer: Five minutes to five hours from anywhere, depending on the time of day. If you’ve just moved here, the first thing you should do is make www.traffic411.com your home page.

Q: What’s the weather really like in the Inland Empire?
A: A bit hotter than Burbank in the summer, a bit colder than Santa Monica in winter. Spring and autumn exist only on the Oxygen Channel. But it’s not the heat you need to worry about out here. It’s the total absence of shade. Inland residents live in denial of weather. Indoor parking is nonexistent. Chairs and tables in open-air food courts are almost uniformly made of dark, heat-absorbent metal. Bus benches, also of dark metal, provide no shelter from the elements whatsoever. Misters are rare. The only public escape from the heat is in the few indoor malls, and even there the temperature is set just high enough to keep patrons constantly on the verge of ordering a Frappuccino.

Q: Five minutes to five hours from anywhere – Does that mean that traffic is bad in the I.E.?
A: If you’re presently living near the 405/10 interchange, you’ll feel right at home. For the rest of you, a good rule of thumb is to never drive anywhere that wouldn’t put you up for the night.

Q: But with Inland homes averaging about $175,000 less than L.A. homes, isn’t life in the I.E. still a bargain?
A: Yes, but you get what you pay for. Along with midnight traffic jams and sunburns in November, a major drawback to life in the Empire is that we have different standards of neighborliness than, say, on the Westside. In West L.A., with homes stacked one on top of the other, residents are mindful of noise and animal ordinances; pets, if any, tend to be of the little yappy variety. In Riverside, new homeowners take one look at their big backyards and immediately buy two massive war hounds, which promptly mate. In my neighborhood, every home contains at least four big yard dogs -- all of who begin barking at first light and keep on barking until canine references creep into every doggone thing you do.

Also, DIY home improvement is big out here. What’s the point in buying a $450,000 home if you can’t use the money you’ve saved to make it a $600,000 home? With every home in some state of remodel and most heavy equipment rented by the day, imagine trying to watch “Lost” with three backhoes going next door.

Q: So what you’re saying is, “Think twice before moving to the Inland Empire”?
A: Yes, but maybe only twice. The truth is, after a year or so of feeling homesick for my native L.A., I’ve grown to love it out here – and if I can, so can you. Once you’ve secured the two prerequisites for I.E. living – central air and a good home entertainment system – you may find that you’ll never look back at Los Angeles. Think of it this way: How great can a city be when the nicest thing you can say about it is you wish you could still afford to live there?

All she needed was a street address

The following op/ed submisison was rejected by the Los Angeles Times in September.

Back in 1986, when I was 21, I drove up from Santa Ana to visit my mother in Huntington Park. I'd been living on my own for a year, and, having managed to scrape together a year's worth of rent and bill payments without the family's help, I wanted to take Mom out to dinner and a movie so she could see how wrong she'd been about my ability to survive without her.

As she got into the car, she asked if we could stop at "the bank" on the way to the restaurant; she said she needed to sign some papers and that it would take just a few minutes. Mom had an account with BofA, but the "bank" she directed me to was just a storefront office with a name on the window that I'd never heard of -- Something-Something Financial Services, the full name escapes me. It resembled less a bank than an Off Track Betting site.

Instead of the rich, sterile decor of an actual bank, it was filthy and drab, furnished with what looked like plastic patio chairs and cheap pasteboard desks. Mom led me straight to a desk at the back of the office -- it occurred to me she'd been here several times before. We sat down on the plastic chairs in front of the desk, and soon a man -- a baby-faced kid, actually, probably younger than I was -- walked up and warmly greeted my mother by her first name and introduced himself to me as Javier before taking his seat on the plastic chair behind the desk.

"Did you bring the documents we discussed?" he asked, and Mom pulled some folded papers from her purse and handed it to him.

Javier unfolded the papers and examined them. "Perfect," he said, and like a magician produced from under the desk a stack of papers about a half-inch thick and placed it on the desk front of us. "Go ahead and look these over while I make some photocopies, and then we'll get you all squared away." He got up and left.

"What's going on, Mom?" I asked.

"Nothing, mijo," she said. "It'll just be a few minutes, don't worry."

She glanced at the stack of papers, and looked away.

"Don't worry about what? What's going on here, Mom?"

When she didn't answer, I picked up the stack and looked at it. "What is this?" I flipped through the pages. "These are loan papers, aren't they? Are you borrowing money, Ma?"

"Just a couple of thousand," she said. "It's just a small loan, don't worry about it."

"A couple thousand -- two thousand dollars? Why?"

"Because I need it, that's why."

"How much interest are they charging you?"

She looked away. "Mom?"

She said nothing. I looked back at the document in my hands, and for the first time in my life began scanning the details of a contract fearful of what I might find. Finally, on the last page before the page with all the signature lines, I found it. Thirty-six percent.

"Thirty-six percent?" I said this so loud that heads turned to look at me.

"Keep your voice down," Mom said. "What are you getting so upset about? It's just $2,000. I'll pay it off in no time."

"Not at 36 percent, you won't," I said. "You'll be paying on it for years. Mom, you can't sign this!"

"Give that to me."

"Ma, you can't sign this."

"Give that to me!" Now heads turned and looked at her. I saw in her expression that there was no point in arguing, so I handed the papers to her.

My mother was always terrible with money. She paid her bills -- most of her bills -- and she got by -- barely got by -- but words like "interest" and "principle" and "percentage" meant nothing to her. Those were bankers' words, of concern to bankers and not to regular people like my mom -- people without money. If a banker was willing to lend my mother money, then the loans had to be right and fair and repayable, because bankers clearly were smarter than regular people or they wouldn't have money to lend.

What my mother didn't understand, couldn't understand, was that in 1986, as in the years just before this latest financial calamity, bankers would lend money to anyone who asked. Smart had nothing to do with it.

This is why my mother still works at 77. She has no retirement fund other than Social Security, no property or investments or savings of any kind. Every dollar of every paycheck she ever received was consumed entirely by rent, food, taxes and debt.

"What did you give him, anyway?" I said in that OTB of a lending institution 22 years ago in Huntington Park.

"Give who?" Mom asked.

"Javier," I said. "What were those 'documents' he asked for?"

"Electric bills," she said. "He wanted to see a couple of electric bills to prove where I lived."

All she had needed was a street address.

'We all got it coming, kid'

The following column submission was accepted in April by the Inland Empire Weekly, but was never published.

My brother recently sold his home in Corona and moved back to L.A., a victim of the housing crash.

It was, to my knowledge, his fourth big move in four years. My brother is a salesman by trade, but his real living for the better part of this decade was in flipping homes. He'd buy a house, wait for it to go up in value, then sell it and buy another house -- all the while spending the excess equity like a drunken sailor in the Saudi Arabian Navy. He'd call me each time he closed escrow, shouting that he was a regular financial genius who discovered a new way to make money.

'Twenty-five grand without lifting a finger!" he'd shout. "Tell me I'm not a genius!"

My brother flipped homes right up until the real-estate market began to slide, and then, because he's not a genius, decided he'd do it one more time. Unable to find anyone stupid enough to sell to him in L.A., he zeroed in on a distressed property in south Corona, where stupidity could still be purchased with creative financing. He worked out some crazy deal with the property owner, a man my brother knew at the time to be "a real weirdo" but hoped he could work this to his advantage.

He couldn't. My brother and his wife hung on to the south Corona home long enough to throw one backyard barbecue before quietly slipping back into L.A. under cover of darkness. It was the most expensive barbecue in my family's history.

Watching all this unfold from my vantage point in Riverside was like watching Napoleon trying to break into the Russian real-estate market. The triumphal entry ("You should see this place, Davey! It's my dream home!"). The clash of dreams against grim reality ("This place is killing me, Davey! It's killing me!"). The hasty retreat under hostile fire ("Can you believe that weirdo says he's gonna sue me now?"). It was a black and rainy day, the day my brother and his wife threw all their stuff into an open U-Haul trailer and fled Corona. They say you can still see some of that stuff, broken and abandoned on the side of the freeway between here and L.A.

From his newly rented home in Downey, my brother pretends that his Inland misadventure never happened. I bring it up, and he changes the subject to something else, usually his bills. His credit ruined, his fantasy of being a real-estate tycoon crushed, my brother is a shadow of his former, spendthrift self. I suppose in the long run, that's a good thing -- he'd been living well above his means for years, and at least now I no long have to hear him brag about a fortune I knew existed only on paper. But in the short run, it's hard to see him so humbled. My brother is a naturally fun-loving man, and never so happy as when he's throwing money around and acting the big shot. Those days are over now, for as long as it takes until south Corona falls off his credit report.

It may sound like my brother is a complete idiot who got what was coming to him, but here's the thing: As I'm reminded every time he kicks my ass in chess, my brother isn't stupid. Until the madness of the past four or five years, he was never reckless when it came to taking care of his family. He was a good provider whose wife and son never wanted for anything. But when the housing market went crazy, he went crazy right along with it.

His problem was -- had always been -- that he hated to feel that he was missing out on a good thing. When thousands -- millions - of Americans started spending money like fools because their home equity had skyrocketed, my brother thought to himself, "Everyone else is getting theirs -- why not me?" That the banks were only too happy to indulge this line of reasoning made my brother's financial ruin all the easier to embrace.

So, yeah, it's certainly true that my brother got what was coming to him. But I find myself thinking a lot these days about that moment in the film, "Unforgiven," when Clint Eastwood -- that flinty-eyed icon of American justice -- stares wistfully into the distance and drawls, "We all got it coming, kid."