LEMONADE FROM A LEMON

ILLUSTRATION by BOB AUL

Fuel pump, you suck. It’s bad enough you broke on my boyfriend’s trip to San Francisco, but did it have to be in Kettleman City—located nearly exactly between Los Angeles and San Francisco (thanks, Wikipedia)? The mechanic couldn’t find a replacement for you in all of Southern California and had to have one shipped in from Arizona. You know what that means? Because of you, my boyfriend was stuck in the middle of nowhere, overnight in record heat and I had to drive up to frigging Kettleman City—population 1,499 and one In-N-Out Burger—to get him. Do you know how much gas costs these days, fuel pump? You did teach me something, though: LA traffic is still going strong at 2 p.m. on Fridays. Thanks so much for that thoughtful lesson. But you know, it really would have worked much better for me if you had also thought to break down when two of the family cars were not already in the shop. If you had found a better time to die, my boyfriend wouldn’t have had to take a train and bus for seven hours back up to Kettleman City—named for pioneering sheep and cattleman Dave Kettelman—just to retrieve his car and drive it back home, thereby destroying any semblance of a vacation for him. Why fuel pump, why? Oh, but I guess I haven’t too much to complain about, what with the per capita income of Kettleman City residents—$7,389—being about a third of the California average and 44 percent of the city’s population living below the poverty line. What’s the deal with that, fuel pump?

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