Magical Mystery Tour

I JUST WANTED to get to Cinderella's Castle. Not even to go inside, just to get there.

The Castle was out of sight now, but I had seen it before and even now it was a big, if invisible, presence on an early summer afternoon. If only I could reach out...

In the Los Angeles suburb of Anaheim, the sun was shining but a dense low cloud cover kept plunging the southern California landscape--and even the Castle, wherever it was--into a dark half-light.

I was walking over a low bridge spanning the freeway running below me. The bridge was stark and concrete, bracketed by deserted gas stations and a cylindrical fuel storage tank.

Behind me was the stadium, where along with 35,000 others I had just watched an afternoon ballgame. The rest of the crowd, good Californians all, had cars. I was left to my feet.

The strange light was affecting my trek across Anaheim to my hotel room, leading me down blind alleys as I made my desperate bid across the industrial wasteland. After an hour, I had lost sight of the stadium and the Castle.

THE CASTLE is the fairyland-like zenith of Disneyland. Since my Anaheim Hilton was in the Castle's shadow, I was using it as a cue to sanctuary.

Finally, I burst out of the hodge-podge of bricked up warehouses and auto-body shops onto a street that promised homes. Eager to escape death in the shadow of a "Lube Job $29.99" sign, I dived down the road. A quick left and I was deep in a sea of California ranch houses.

The housing tract was uniform--the houses were all slight variations on the same design and the plots and lawns similar. Ten minutes and I was lost.

I wasn't lost in the regular sense. Normally, a lost person confuses some landmarks or exchanges a right for a left. I had completely lost my orientation. With the sun diving in and out of the clouds, I even lost my geographic bearing as I pounded the pavement of the identical streets of Suburb, USA.

At least twice I tried to ask the men tranquilly mowing their lawns for directions. Each time I was left with a string of useless directions, rights, lefts, ups, downs and a string of identical floral names masquerading as streets.

The overwhelming expanse of the Suburb cut off any further horizons. I was trapped.

THIS RAT-IN-A-MAZE ordeal went on and on. Finally, pulling my wits back together, I made a beeline in one direction. I twisted and turned with the inane little streets but eventually reached the edge.

There was a tall dirt mound bordering the backyard of the final row of houses. Ducking into a finely manicured lawn, I scrambled up the heap.

I expected to see more burnt-out gas stations.

I peered over. Thank God, it's the Castle in the distance. Then my eye fell down from the majestic styrofoam parapets across the enormous parking lots and back toward the mound.

I found a field, a strawberry field, which picked up at the bottom of the mound and led almost all the way to the parking lots.

All I needed was to make a mad dash.

I tossed myself over the barrier and started across the field when I saw that there was someone at work over to my left. A group of people picking, a smaller group of people watching, a truck, baskets of strawberries, German shepards--big ol' dogs. Inching closer, the pickers were darker than those watching.

I somehow found myself watching a group of Chicanos, apparently being supervised by white men and their pack of killer attack creatures. Rather than ruminate on the unpleasant moral implications, I started thinking how these undoubtedly underfed dogs would react to a stray trespasser.

With that I lowered myself to the ground and crawled chest to earth between the rows of strawberries, trying not to emit the sound that would send the fanged canines to do me in. I was too scared to visualize the surreal implications of my plight. Each foot was emotionally exhausting, each moment a frame from a real-life thriller. And all I wanted was fantasy: the mundane reality waiting at Cinderella's Castle.