“I was tired but happy.”
This short sentence sums up Gary’s early childhood, when he spent his days running around his neighborhood until he was completely exhausted. At this age, he lived in the present and did not worry about the future.
“The Beatles seemed like they would wash their hands before eating, while The Rolling Stones would laugh and urinate on a wall. My best friend Scott and I liked The Stones.“
While Gary liked the Beatles in his childhood years, he prefers the Stones as a teenager. This change of taste reflects his change of attitude, which went from mostly compliant and religious to rebellious and defiant.
“The water in the canal was quick as a wind-blown cloud. The 1960s were coming to an end, and the first of the great rock stars were beginning to die. We were dying to leave home, by car, thumb or on water racing west to where the sun went down.“
At the end of his senior year at high school, Gary and his friends feel like their time is running out because the first of his idols are dead, which makes him realize how short life is. With the water of the canal symbolizing the opportunities flowing away, they want to leave Fresno quickly and go to a city like Los Angeles to find a better life.
“The evening, bad as it was, was not worth dying for.”
Gary says this about the end of the day he and his friend set out to find a computer-matched girlfriend. However, they both chose not complete the last step of actually finding out who they were matched with, and therefore end up alone and melancholic driving recklessly around town. He realizes that he could just crash the car and escape his life of misfortune, but the quote illustrates that he always has a spark of optimism inside of him.
“We talked about our eyes and family until we came to a canal that nearly stopped our breathing. It was wide but dry, nothing like the canal back home. While ours was made of sand, reeds, and feeble fish stunted by the chemicals from agricultural runoff, this canal was made of mangled bicycles, tires, chairs, pissy little puddles, and winos washed downstream to settle on rafts of cardboard.“
After leaving Fresno and going to Los Angeles, Gary and his friend Scott hope to find a better life with better opportunities, which are symbolized by the river going out of Fresno. However, when they finally arrive in L.A. they realize that the “promised land” actually looks worse than their hometown--in fact, the L.A. river is dried out, which indicates that there are no opportunities for the arrivals.
