THE EAT & RUN

 
I think many of us who follow Baba but did not know of Him when we were young, have stories of His touching our lives in childhood. Here's one of mine:

I was born in San Francisco and spent my early childhood in Menlo Park. One weekend, my grandmother, who lived in San Francisco, took my sister and me to her apartment for a visit. I was five and my sister was three. After a day there, I think our rambunctiousness got to her, because the next day, Grandmother announced that we were going for a drive in the country. She was a real nature fanatic and as we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County, she kept pointing out things like the bay, the cliffs, the gulls. "Oh look, girls, there's a redwood!"

My sister and I would look for a minute and then go back to playing in the back seat. The gorgeous woods and meadows of Marin were lost on us. I don't remember a bit of it. But as we drove down the main street of a small Marin town, suddenly I spotted something fantastic. It was a huge neon sign in the shape of a hamburger with 15 cents written on the burger. Very realistic. Tremendously exciting. Extremely BIG! I shrieked and pulled my sister over to the window. "Look at that! It's a big hamburger!" We got so excited. We just couldn't get over it — a huge, garish neon hamburger hanging in the sky. We stared until it was out of sight and then talked about it all the rest of the weekend. Poor Grandmother.

Some time later, our family moved to Kentfield. We kids were nervous and anxious about the change. You can imagine our delight when, driving down the main street of our new town for the first time, we saw — you guessed it — the BIG HAMBURGER. Wow, what a cool place! We were suddenly thrilled about the whole thing.

However, things were not as rosy as they seemed. Our parents immediately caught on to our obsession with the Big Hamburger and the drive-in it advertised, and we were told that we were never, never to set foot there. Hamburger or no hamburger, the Eat & Run drive-in was a BAD place. Forbidden. It was the only place in town we couldn't go. It was rumored that they even served horse meat! If you ever so much as looked at it, horrible things would happen to you. BAD people go there. GOOD people only eat at Woodlands Restaurant, across the street near the grocery store (boring, believe me!).

The school board obviously felt the same way about the Eat & Run as our parents did. The drive-in was right next to the school, separated only by a chain-link fence, but was strictly off-limits to all the children. But how could they expect a chain-link fence to shield us from the fascination of the Eat & Run? At lunchtime we kids would hang on the fence trying to get our fill of "badness." Bikers with beards and Harleys would roar in and we would stare at them and the blondes with their beehive hairdos and tight red pants. If the bikers left, we could always gawk at the teenagers in their souped-up hot rods. They would race around the parking lot and then get out and lounge against their cars smoking cigarettes. It was heaven — I mean, you just couldn't find anything anywhere that was badder! I knew my brother was truly out of my parents' control the day I saw him having a milkshake with his gang at the Eat & Run.

Oh how I envied him, daring to enter the Underworld, while I resisted, terrified of being metamorphosed into BAD. To my parents, it was Babylon. For me, it was the most interesting place in our little town. People actually wore black in there (I was dying to wear black, just once!). And they rode around on fast, sleek shiny machines (I could only ride my blue Schwinn). And they drank milkshakes out of generous, oversized paper cups (Woodland Restaurant served their milkshakes in puny little glasses). It had such a grip on my psyche that even years later when I came back to Kentfield from college, I felt the pull of the Eat & Run. I couldn't resist — I went for a milkshake. But I was so nervous I could hardly drink it. The "Forbidden Zone" was still off-limits to me.

Years went by. I moved to India, and one day I was in the trust office compound hanging around with Adi (Adi K Irani) in his room. Adi was telling jokes and stories, and we were having fun, when suddenly I remembered that he was with Baba in 1958 when Baba went to Lud Dimpfl's home in Kentfield. Baba was on His way from Myrtle Beach to Australia with the mandali. They had a one-day stopover in San Francisco, and Baba decided to spend the night at Lud's house. Joanie Dimpfl-Harland can tell you all about it. Anyway, Adi and I started talking about that visit, and I told Adi that I grew up in Kentfield, in fact, right down the street from Lud.

"Oh", said Adi. "I'll never forget that place. You see, poor Lud wasn't prepared for Baba's visit, as all the family had gone to be with Him in Myrtle Beach. And now Baba was coming to his house and nothing was ready for Him. But Baba wanted to go there, so we went. Of course, there wasn't any food in the house, so Lud and I got in the car and went out to buy some food for Baba. But it was some holiday and all the stores were closed. Nothing was open in town, so finally we ended up at this fast-service food place. I think we got a milkshake for Baba and some finger chips (french fries) for the mandali. That place had the funniest name. Let me see, what was it? Run & Pay? ... Eat & Go? ... Go and Take?"

"Adi," I said gasping, I couldn't believe what was happening. I could hardly speak. "Adi, do you mean the Eat & Run?"

"That's it!" Adi beamed, "It was the Eat & Run!"

It was so fantastic I could hardly grasp it. Then I started laughing. There was my psyche's Den of Darkness, and in the middle of it sat Beloved Baba smiling at me, lightening it all, redeeming it all, enjoying His milkshake from the Eat & Run. Jai Baba!