Modesto smells like dog food. It’s as if the entire city decided as one to open Costco sized bags of dry dog food and then turned on all their box fans pointed toward the center of town. Maybe that’s what happened. As is true of most things, after a period of time it just… is. And thus I grew acclimated and didn’t notice the smell thereafter. I don’t know if all dogs got fed or if I had just decided this was the new normal. I suspect if I walked out of town and came back in I could feel it in the air tonight, oh, no.
The Modesto Marathon Expo was bigger than I anticipated al so not much tempted my fancy. I was intrigued by the graphic design of the shirts. Why was the O in the town’s name a different color? Forget it, George Lucas; it’s Modesto.
I say this because this town is the birthplace of Mr. Lucas. In fact, they’ve christened a traffic sliver island “George Lucas Plaza” and erected an “American Graffiti” statue there. It has seen better days and in that way may be the perfect emblem for the city. More often than not the monument to California Cruisin’ in the 1960s served as a drying rack for the homeless camped out near it. The town itself has this nostalgic vibe of a suburban dream overrun by the weeds of time and if not missed opportunity than false prophets of opportunity. It is as if opportunity blew through town on its way somewhere else but promised as it left that one day it would come back. And so the town still wants, pining for the day when opportunity will come a courtin’.
Which isn’t to say the place doesn’t have its charms. One doesn’t dismiss a place that constructs a memorial to the “plucky” paperboy of yore… even if the plaque that used to be there has been stolen. According to Roadside America.com, the signage for the commissioned piece used to say:
“For much of our community’s history, the young person who delivered The Modesto Bee to our homes has been an enduring symbol of initiative and pluck. The Paper Boy celebrates the timeless treasure of hope bestowed upon each generation by its youth. May our community always nurture the priceless gift of our children.”
I don’t normally take requests but when I told some people I was headed to Modesto to “see a statue of a paperboy” I was asked to get one with a paper flying at my head. I couldn’t shoot it with practical effects, so here’s one CGI’d in post:
And whilst a catchy tune from a videogame of long ago plays in my head, I also couldn’t resist a riff on “Better Off Dead…”
The final item of interest according to RA.com was 13 miles away in Turlock, CA. Here at Latif’s Restaurant I could’ve sat where George HW Bush sat whilst campaigning for the presidency in 1988 (and as a bonus, could’ve sat where Barbara Bush set a spell herself). But I just wasn’t in the mood for the drive after the trek up from LA and instead opted to see Get Out at the local cineplex… wherein I met the local movie palace’s Princess promoting the live-action Beauty and the Beast. So a Belle at the movies is worth two seats of Bushes.
That sounded so much better in my head.
The Modesto Arch, constructed in 1912 and restored in 2012, announces to the world that Modesto has “Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health.”
The fact that today it bridges the road from a Taco Bell to a McDonald’s may not have been as it was originally intended but somehow befits the current state of affairs quite nicely.