Most oil change stations close around 5 pm, so we drove out to El Cajon for a place open later. We had never ventured to El Cajon before. Wikipedia told us that El Cajon means “box” in Spanish; the city is a suburb of San Diego boxed in by mountains. A valley town.
At the highway on-ramp to Fletcher Parkway, we saw a homeless/transient man carrying a harnessed cat on his shoulder. (Note to self: get cat harnesses.) There was a bit of a wait, and we considered going to the dollar store. But behind the oil change station we spotted a human-less kitty-cat rolling around in the runoff. So we decided to stay with our car. There was no lobby to wait anyhow, and we weren’t sure how payment went. This oil change was a new experience for me: the oil was changed while everyone was sitting in their vehicle. One man worked underneath, one above. I had never seen this before, but Dan had. “Must be a California thing.”
Dan brought a boxed-set of zines for us to read: 32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics. About halfway through the oil change we saw another homeless/transient man carrying another harnessed cat on his shoulder. I didn’t believe it was a completely different Cat-Man; I just thought that he had caught up to us from the highway. Dan insisted they were the two separate Cat-Men of El Cajon: “I’m totally right; their harnesses were different colors.”
El Cajon, California: 25 July 2012
