By Michael Latta
It’s 1957. I’m in my next to last year at the LA Art Center College. Broke. Then an uncle died, leaving me $10,000. What would you have done?
Probably not what I did.
I bought a new Austin Healy to pick up in England, flew to New York, and took a cruise ship
to Britain, only to find my car wouldn’t be ready for two more weeks. So, I booked a seat on the boat train to Paris and began the best summer of my young life.
During my first Parisian week, I met another young American who thankfully knew a street
hustler who gave the best deal when cashing a traveler’s check. It became a sudden necessity when I found that carousing in bistros wasn’t cheap. Hopping onto the back of my friend’s Vespa once again, we took off in search of this off-the-books ex-pat who habitually roamed the streets along the Left Bank.
Scooting across one of the many bridges that span the Seine on our way to this entrepreneur’s
unofficial office arena, my friend slammed on the brakes. We skidded to a curb stop mid-bridge
next to a hand-waving character looking much like the two of us.
My friend introduced me to this obvious ex-pat, not too much older than my twenty-one. They
immediately launched into a spirited discourse on their recent doings which faded into oblivion
when his name finally sunk in. I was looking at my favorite artist/writer/cartoonist and the
second-best reason for reading the hottest magazine in America at the time, Playboy.
I was awestruck.
Standing in front of me was Shel Silverstein. The Shel Silverstein. The same Shel Silverstein I
revered for his monthly full-page illustrated stories that treated life the same way I dreamed of
mine becoming.
I woke up when Shel nodded my way and said, “Why don’t you guys come with us
tomorrow?”
“To Spain?” my friend asked.
“Spain?” I stuttered.
“Pamplona, man,” Shel said. “Train leaves tomorrow. We’re gonna run with the bulls.”
“Bulls?” I grinned.
As a kid raised on cattle ranches, I knew something about bulls. Moreover, I grew up
fantasizing about the life and works of Hemingway. Pamplona? The Sun Also Rises? The sudden idea of being chased down a Spanish street by a crowd-maddened member of that horned species with a drunken horde of locals alongside Shel Silverstein soared through my head like a clarion call from my childhood.
Hell yes!
I stared into Shel’s animated face and began to imagine the possibilities. A train ride to Spain?
Me and Shel in white shirts and red do-rags? The crowd’s roar as Shel and I race up a cobble-stoned Pamplona street trying not to be gored into the gutter. Senoritas tossing us flowers as we
break clear into the bull ring, seconds ahead of a crazed bull. “Ole!”
Then I blinked and tried to focus.
Hello? Mike?
As Shel and my friend discussed tomorrow’s travel plans, I remembered my promise to be
back at the Austin Healy factory three days from now.
In England.
Not Spain.
There was no way I could do both. It was one or the other, and the promised reality of having
my beautiful paid-for sports car in my life quickly whipped through my frustrated mind. I’d
bought the car due to my obsession with the newly burgeoning sports car racing scene in Los
Angeles. My new Healy would be a perfect rookie addition. My dream of someday being on the
same track as Phil Hill and Dan Gurney zipped once again across my mind like a checkered flag
dropping over a cloud of exhaust smoke, and screeching rubber.
I could even smell it.
But it was only the exhaust from the Vespa, combined with the reeking Gauloise hanging
from the corner of Shel Silverstein’s mouth. The vision of hanging with him in a Pamplona bull
ring began to fade into a dream-like shot of me racing down Le Mans’ Mulsanne straight trying
to keep up with my ultimate hero, Juan Manuel Fangio.
Shithouse mouse, Mike. Wake up! You can’t have it both ways…and one way is already paid
for. My new dream faded as I peered back into Shel Silverstein’s raised eyebrows.
“So, whattaya think, Mike?” my creative icon asked. “You up for it?”
My Vespa friend chipped in, “Cheaper ‘n drinking here.”
I didn’t realize how true that comment would prove to be, until years later after having gone
broke once again from racing my beloved Healy and one ill-fated Italian formula racing
machine.
Yes, the vision of my racing dream won over the wonderful thought of going to Spain with
this ground-breaking creative. I have never forgotten that meeting and what changes my life
would have taken if I’d chosen to run with Shel Silverstein and the Pamplona bulls. Maybe I
could have become a great cartoonist? Or even a novelist?
Oh, wait. I am a novelist.
Never mind.
Michael Latta is an ex-New York, Paris, San Francisco ad agency art director, writer, creative director and published magazine and newspaper writer. His past also includes ex-Navy brat, ex-Marine Corps, ex-race car driver, ex-husband, ex-Peace Corps and life-long sailor. During his previous Madison Avenue life, Michael managed to decompress between marriages or getting fired, by sailing off shore to tropical isles for as long as he had beer money. Each time it became harder to return to a life of fiscal responsibility. Finally, he happily moved aboard to single-hand his traditional sailing cutter, Narwhal, to wherever and whenever he feels like going. Over the years he has cruised up and down both coasts, Bahamas, Caribbean, the South Pacific, including the Marquesas and Tahiti and recently a dozen years exploring the Sea of Cortez and south along the Mexican Riviera. His present ‘home port’ is Monterey, California where he continues to write his Deep Salt novels and screenplays.
