From L.A. to Cerritos by Way of the Gobi Desert

The only excuse I can offer is that I had never been to Cerritos before. Like Kuala Lumpur and Alpha Centauri, Cerritos was just someplace out there that I never had an occasion to visit. Then came Sunday and Arlo Guthrie.

I am a folk-singer junkie and have been ever since Pete Seeger gave Joe McCarthy the finger sometime in the 1950s. So when I heard that Guthrie was going to appear at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, I began saving up.

Arlo, his daddy, Woody, and Seeger used to hang out in Topanga, not far from where I live, drinking beer and smoking them funny cigarettes and plunkin’ away on their $12 guitars. They sang about peace and justice and existed on ham sandwiches.

Times have changed a little. Just to get in to hear Arlo do his thing cost $50 a ticket, but it was worth it to be inside a building that makes the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion look like a warehouse and to hear Guthrie sing. It was like being at a hootenanny in Carnegie Hall.

But first you had to get there.

I mentioned that I had never been to Cerritos before, but since my memory can get pretty fuzzy sometimes, maybe I had. Since Cerritos isn’t exactly Paris or Rome, a person can be there and not even realize it.

Anyhow, just before we were to set out, my wife, Cinelli, said, “Make sure you know where we’re going.”

That was a mistake.

To rely on me to get us anywhere is like asking Mike Tyson to explain Euclidean geometry. Cinelli should have recalled how I figured out how to drive from Ojai to L.A. by going north. I had somehow decided that east was the opposite of north and 150 miles later, we were still 50 miles from home, wandering through the Santa Ynez Mountains.

Anyhow, I got out the old map book and spotted Cerritos. So far, so good. I figured out that by taking the 91 Freeway off the 405, we’d get right to where we wanted to go. Simple. But then I somehow came up with the idea that the 91 was just below Costa Mesa. Wrong.

Don’t ask me how this happened. I don’t know. The performance was at 8 o’clock, but we left the house at 4 because Cinelli knows I like to get to places early. I have no problem with the need to arrive at an airport three hours early to deal with increased security because I’m usually there five hours early anyhow.

So we get on the 405, and we’re muddling through traffic wondering why it’s so painfully slow and listening to KFWB on the radio telling us only that it’s painfully slow. I already knew that.

“If you would just relax,” Cinelli said, “you’d live longer.”

“I’m never relaxed,” I said, “and I’ve lived this long, so stress and tension must be good for me.”

“You really are a nut,” she said.

Because I figured the 91 was by Costa Mesa, somewhere near the Orange County line, we didn’t look at signs until we got down to the cutoff for Newport Beach.

When we passed the John Wayne Airport without seeing 91, Cinelli began getting a funny look on her face.

“I thought you said 91 was near Costa Mesa.”

“I said somewhere near Costa Mesa.” Pause. “But then, maybe not.”

“Oh, my God, you’ve done it again. We’re lost! Stop the car!”

She got out the map book herself, which is what she should have done in the first place after the Ojai adventure.

I had told her years ago how--for reasons I can’t recall--the Marine Corps decided I’d make a good map reader. It was during the Korean War, and I got a whole platoon lost by directing it to go east when I meant north. All those grids confused me.

“Thank Christ you weren’t calling in artillery,” a lieutenant said, grabbing the map book from me. “We’d all be dead!”

“Ninety-one is way back there!” Cinelli said, not quite believing it. “We’re a hundred miles off course! Why do I listen to you?”

She tends to exaggerate things like that. We were maybe 50 miles off course.

“What do we do now?” I said helplessly. I’m good at being helpless.

I had meant Torrance, not Costa Mesa. I’ve been to both those places and should have known the difference, but somehow they sounded alike, I guess.

Rather than go all the way back to 91, which is the Artesia Freeway (I’ve never been to Artesia, I don’t think, but I understand they have an excellent Burger King there), she had us go off at Highway 39. I’d tell you where that is, but I honest to God don’t know.

What I do know is that we went through sections of Cypress and Anaheim and areas so dark I thought we’d ended up in the Gobi Desert.

I began to offer advice, but Cinelli, who was not in a terrific mood by then, said, “You open your mouth again, I’m going to have you gagged and whipped.”

To make a long story short, we got to Cerritos about 7 and just had time enough to eat fast at Mimi’s, a nice restaurant near the Performing Arts Center. Guthrie was worth all the trouble and so was just being in that fantastic building.

We took the 605 home, via the 91. We had to go north to go west and then south to go west--if you believed the signs--but I’m a guy who thinks you go north to get east, or maybe south, so who am I to question Caltrans? It’s just a good thing they weren’t calling in artillery.

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Al Martinez is at al.martinez@la.times.com.