The Hunt for T-Rex had led us, eventually, to the small Southern Californian town of Taft, where we’d systematically searched the streets and found the white 1959 Cadillac that we’d learnt about through popular Bakersfield and Los Angeles hot rodding mythology. Mark II and I had tried in vain to charm and befriend the ‘crazy old lady’ who owned the Cadillac, as we stood beside the rickety lean-to under which the car had sat for more than a decade. And then, in the space of 60 seconds, as Virginia’s estranged husband and now redomiciled companion Kevin suddenly arrived to see what was going on, we’d gone from being all out of legitimate conversation and ready to give up and go back to Bakersfield, to sitting in Virginia’s lounge drinking gin and lemonade with them like old friends…
Mark II and I both had similar upbringings growing up in Whanganui; we came from good families, we each lived in a decent home, and our environments were clean and tidy. Like most people. So, walking into Virginia’s house was something that neither of us had ever experienced first-hand before. We’d seen places like this on TV, but not in real life. A strong, stale smell was the first thing to hit us as we walked inside the house, followed by a bewildering darkness considering it was early afternoon on a blue-sky day. There were no lights on in the house, and for reasons not immediately apparent to us there was unusually little light coming in through the windows. All throughout the house there were piles of newspapers and garments and general junk stacked waist and chest high everywhere, and through every room we had to navigate a path between and around these precariously stacked piles of… basically… rubbish. Clearly, nothing was ever thrown out. There was a
