Do you know the way, to San Jose?

No, no, no. This has nothing to do with Dionne Warwick, or Frankie...

Or does it?

My mother left me at Cheri's doorstep as she and my brother went on to our new house to unpack. It was time for me to bid farewell to my only real "pal" from our old neighborhood. We were moving. I had an hour to do so. I was only 6. What did "moving" mean? Where was I moving? What was moving?

Cheri wasn't home. My only friend, for the last two years, wasn't home when I came to say goodbye.

Instead, I sat on her living room couch waiting. With her mother. While she cleaned the house. I was devastated, my mother told me to say goodbye, and I couldn't. She wasn't there.

I waited an hour. Sitting, waiting, thumbing around my friends living room, downstairs from the room I played in so many times. Where I played with plastic horses, plastic familes in big plastic houses, with plastic furniture.

Finally, my mother returned, and I had to leave. No goodbye. Just a "my mom's here, I gotta go."

I shoulda known, sure we "penpal-ed" for a few years, but that all eventually came to an end.

We did see each other one time after my move, she came to my home while her parents were in town.

When it came time for her to leave, it was my mothers job to drive her to the hotel near the airport. My mother had no idea how to get to the airport. We drove out of the way, all over town, for hours, trying to get to the airport.

Now, everytime I drive down Sunset Blvd - that oughtta tell ya how far out of the way we went - in Hollywood, I always think of that day we spent in the back of the 76 Monte Carlo, saying goodbye.