Swept Away By Imagination

 Growing up in La Crescenta, one of my most vivid memories is of a huge, smoke-belching monster that would crawl along the gutter of the sleepy street where I lived. The glow from its sickly yellow, predatory eyes would slice through the pre-dawn mist and darkness on my street. If I remember correctly, this chilling encounter happened at least once every couple of weeks. When the monster came those mornings, I would lie in bed at our family’s home on Harmony Place, just a few driveways away from Two-Strike Park, with the covers pulled up over my head. My bedroom faced the street, so I could all-too-clearly hear the thing approaching, prowling up the street towards my house – a low, muffled growl, rattling my bedroom windows as it came closer and closer.

Beneath the menacing rumble, there was also a continuous sound of hissing that conjured images of a huge cauldron roiling with snakes and vipers and other angry, nasty things.

If it was particularly foggy morning, and if I could build up the courage to leave the safety of my blankets and draw back the curtains – our street would take on an eerie yellow glow that announced the coming of the creature before it actually rounded the corner and roared up our street. The jaundiced light would cast frightening shadows that moved across the walls and ceiling of my room as the beast passed by.

Somehow, all of the parents on Harmony Place would know which mornings the creature was expected to appear, and would move their cars from off the street the night before so the snarling thing could pass by unimpeded in the early morning hours. If a car inadvertently got left on the street overnight, you could see a wet, slobbery trail left behind where the monster had to swerve around the obstacle. Creepy.

Okay, by now you’ve probably figured out that my monster was actually the county’s lumbering, diesel-drinking street sweeper. But even long after I “matured” beyond imagining that the street sweeper was a living, malevolent creature – I continued to tell myself that it was a mechanical contraption hell-bent on my destruction, its all-consuming purpose being to lure me outside and drag me under the massive, whirling brushes of death mounted behind its front wheels.

I haven’t seen a street sweeper on the avenues and boulevards of the Crescenta Valley in a long time. I’m told they still occasionally make their rounds through the Foothills and every once in a long while, if I have to go somewhere very early in the morning, I will drive past the wide, wet, telltale trail of one of the illusive creatures. But as for actually seeing one? Not much chance of that happening. We live at the end of a private driveway that’s so far off the street, even trick-or-treaters rarely find our doorstep, not to mention those clean cut young men in crisp white shirts and ties who roam the neighborhood in pious pairs. I do miss the trick-or-treaters.

But even if I wouldn’t ever see a street sweeper pass our house, I would hear it. And the kid who still lives inside my head would instantly recognize that low gear rumble and snake-like hiss of whirling brushes. I have no doubt the sound would wake me from even the deepest sleep and send me to the window searching for a yellow glow in the darkness, coming closer and closer.

Unfortunately, these days it isn’t imaginary monsters growling past my house that make me want to pull the covers over my head. It’s the frightening reality of things like mandatory, government-run health care and a punitive, petulant President who would gladly spend gobs more money to keep Americans away from national treasures than it ever cost to let us in. Scary stuff, indeed. But nothing a good street-sweeping of Washington, D.C. can’t fix.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Bye-Bye to the Beast, Part 2

Last week I wrote about selling our family’s beloved 1999 Chevy Suburban, aka: “The Beast.” To recap, the supersized SUV was simply too old, too big and too costly to keep on the road. Too bad.

It’s not like we didn’t get more than our money’s worth from the old girl. And I doubt you’ll ever see a fully restored ’99 Suburban at a classic car show (it wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of Detroit design, after all) so why hang on to it?

The likelihood that our not-so-trusty, vintage kid-hauler would likely wind up being bought for parts is something I suspected, but didn’t want to think too much about. I mean, our kids had practically grown up in it and many a family vacation had begun and ended with a turn of the key in its ignition.

But if I making the decision to sell The Beast was difficult, actually selling it turned out to be even harder. 

Now, I’ve always sold any car we’ve owned to a private party. Trading it in to a dealer was something you just didn’t do in our family. My dear departed Dad ingrained in his kids that trading in a car is tantamount to strolling blindfolded through a carnival with a wad of cash in each hand and a sign around your neck that says “I’m stupid, rob me!”

But this time, for whatever reason, I just didn’t have the energy or desire to sell our Suburban on my own. Maybe the thought of once again having to tell complete strangers where we live and then handing them the keys to our car and sweating out the anxious moments while they take it and drive it who knows where and do who knows what was too much.

And so, we decided to first try and sell The Beast for cash – as several people had suggested – to one of the huge, national chains of used car dealerships. We made an appointment online to have our car appraised, then drove it out to their location in Duarte, where we sat and waited while a “trained appraiser” went over our car and a sales associate repeatedly told us how we were choosing the superior way to sell a car and that whatever the appraisal came in at, it would be our easiest, most secure, fastest way to sell a car – particularly one of such “advanced age” as ours was.

The more our fast-talking associate prattled on about how pleased we would be with the entire process, the more I began to worry that I was about to get hosed in a most disappointing way.

Sure enough, he suddenly walked out of his office and came back with an appraisal/offer to purchase our Suburban. When I saw the laughably low offer printed in big, bold numbers at the top of the form, my eyebrows went up and my jaw went down. The sales associate asked, “How much higher were you expecting?”

“Seriously?!? The gas in the tank is worth more than that!” I sputtered, trying not to sound like a scorned high school coed.

“Actually, our offer takes that into account, sir” he said without a trace of sarcasm.

That I was able to drive away without mowing down the smug little motor-mouthed dipstick is testament to my self-control. And maybe I was more than a little worried that I might damage The Beast and lower its value even more.

Anyway, a week or two later, for the first time ever, I traded her in to the dealer from whom we bought another car. On the plus side, we got almost twice the amount that the used car dealership had offered. Nevertheless, I’m sure my Dad, bless his soul, rolled his eyes and elbowed the nearest angel, saying, “Can you believe what that kid of mine just did? He needs a sign around his neck.”

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Bye Bye to the Beast

The last time we bought a new car was back in the Bronze Age. Or maybe it was 2002. Anyway, it was a long time ago when we bought the pickup truck I drive every day. It was even farther back in the annals of history when we bought my wife’s 1999 Chevrolet 4X4 Suburban, the vehicle our family always affectionately called the “Big Blue Bus,” or my favorite, “The Beast.” 
 
The Beast was actually our second Suburban, having bought our first one nearly ten years earlier, soon after our third child was born and not long after the earth cooled. Since this first ‘burban was a bright fire engine red, we quickly christened her the “Red Sled.” We realized we needed to supersize our family car because we needed something to fit not only our growing family, but also our two dogs, bicycles, toys and other paraphernalia – something big enough to shuttle everybody and everything to school activities and all over town. We also needed a rig large enough to transport our burgeoning brood and a cargo hold’s worth of luggage north to Mammoth Lakes and back for our often-as-possible getaways. The cavernous, gas-gulping Suburban was ideal. And so we drove the wheels off first one, then a second of Chevy’s oversized people movers.

And then, all too suddenly, our family grew up and away. Now when my wife and I drive to the Sierras, we’re able to fit our “stuff” including our latest duo of dogs into my smaller truck, which gets ridiculously better mileage and is easier to drive than the Beast ever was. Not being glared at by angry Prius owners when I pick them out from between our Suburban’s tire treads is a plus, too.

Alas, with its advanced age that had seen more than 140,000 miles roll past under its oil-dripping chassis, our Blue Behemoth was getting increasingly expensive to keep on the road. (It cost a whopping $850 recently just to replace a dead fuel pump!)

And did I mention the gas factor? Our Suburban could hold nearly 40-gallons of fuel. Of course, when we bought it in September of 1999, unleaded was a measly $1.47 per gallon. Today, even the cheapest gas is prairie-doggin’ the $4-a-gallon mark. You do the math; it ain’t pretty.

In short, it was time to sell the poor thing and put it out of our misery.

Now, over the years I’ve bought and sold dozens of vehicles; beginning with an ancient Ford Econoline panel van that had been rode hard and put away wet by the phone company and barely got me to La Crescenta and back and from Cal State San Diego. I bought that olive drab deathtrap out of a desperate need for transportation and because it was within my college-afflicted budget of $200. I sold it less than six months later for nearly the same amount; which proved to me that I wasn’t the only sucker in San Diego County.

During the ensuing decades, I have bought and sold countless other vehicles –from abused Accords to cop-baiting Z-cars. No matter what make or model, domestic or foreign, sports car or four-wheel-drive – I’ve always sold every vehicle myself. Mind you, it’s not that I enjoy the process of selling cars. In fact, I loathe it; with all those awkward moments involving test drives and price negotiations and trying to figure out if the person you just handed your keys to is an escaped serial killer or merely seriously creepy.

Heck, just trying to explain to classified ad callers how to get to La Crescenta (much less how to spell it!) is a part of the car-selling process that has always been a big pain in the Pontiac.

But when it came time to sell our Suburban, my selling streak came to a screeching halt. Why? We’ll look under that hood next week.

Until then, I’ll see you ‘round town.

Full Hearts & Calendars

On our family calendar during any given year, June is typically the month with the most entries. It’s a month with once-blank squares for each day crammed full of important date reminders notated in various colors of markers, ball point pens, pencils and highlighters and featuring cartoon-like stars, hearts, underlines, arrows, exclamation points and big, chunky, 3D lettering to mark the importance of a looming milestone birthday, for example, like someone turning 50. Or 55. Or … never mind. Let’s just say that the local Hallmark shop rolls out the red carpet for us in June.

One recent week in particular this month was crammed full with more milestone birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and miscellaneous events and celebrations than you can shake a Sharpie at. This one stretch alone, from June 10 through the 17, marked my father-in-law’s birthday, a niece’s birthday, our youngest son’s birthday and even my own birthday. If you’re playing along at home, Father’s Day also squeezed its celebratory little self into the end of this party-palooza of a week.

Following close by on the heels of this multi-celebration week was the milestone tenth anniversary of our oldest son and his beautiful bride. It’s humbling how the years seem to speed up the longer one has been married (my wife and I celebrated our own 27 year anniversary a mere two months ago), but in “only” ten years, these two exemplary young people have worked hard to build a healthy, happy and loving family and in the process, have given my wife and me our first three grandchildren; quite the accomplishment in a culture increasingly accepting of non-committed couples and babies raised without fathers in their lives.

Speaking of fathers, as this edition of the paper hits the street, yet another anniversary of sorts will have passed; although this one is not so worthy of celebration. You see, this week marks ten years since my own Dad passed away after a long, all-too-private battle with cancer.

That he lost his hard-fought fight only days after our oldest son was married has traditionally made this week a bittersweet one filled with mixed emotions for the past ten years.

I’ll always remember walking into the family room of my childhood home where Dad lay in a rented hospital bed, positioned in front of his beloved TV. Either his pain was too great or the morphine dose too heavy – or maybe a combination of both – but Dad didn’t respond in any way as I described our son’s wedding to him. Truth be told (and knowing him as well as I did), Dad most likely considered not having to attend a family wedding to be a welcome side effect of his condition.

To say that this tough, taciturn man was not one for sentimentality or emotional vulnerability would be a grand understatement. (It’s no wonder he never could understand me.) A few months before he died, in fact, I drove with him on a marathon, non-stop trip from La Crescenta up to my brother’s house in northern Oregon to help deliver a truck and trailer crammed full of tools and machinery Dad wanted my brother to inherit. On the mind-numbing drive up the coast and back, I tried several times to ask Dad about his childhood, early career, any particular cherished memories he might have at this stage of life – you know, the kind of thing you might expect a parent would want to pass along. No such luck. After my third or fourth attempt at such conversation he barked, “Why would I want to talk about such things? You’ve been watching too much Oprah.” And that was that. Man, it was a long, long drive home.

On a happier note, however, our family calendar pages next year will be even more jam-packed as we add not one, but two college graduations to our early summer celebrations. Yep, we’re definitely gonna need a bigger calendar. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Of Mountain Lions and Whirlybirds

Look, up in the sky, it’s a ... slow news day! You know there aren’t a whole heckuva lot of newsworthy things happening when the skies above my Crescenta Valley home fill with helicopters. Typically, it’s due to yet another traffic nightmare on the section of the 210 Freeway that bisects our sleepy suburb. Sometimes, however, the hordes of hovering helos flock to our verdant valley because we are again being visited by wildlife from the mountains on either side of our valley. The past few years the critters have been of the ursine persuasion and have visited so often they were given names like “Rosie” or “Meatball.” Last week, however, our guest from the nearby wilds was a rather large feline who, for now at least, remains nameless in spite of his brief celebrity.

As a growing number of choppers from both Southland broadcasters and local law enforcement swarmed overhead, social media also began to buzz with people posting on Facebook and Twitter asking if anyone knew what was happening in the Foothills. About an hour after I first noticed the gathering squadron of helicopters, I channel surfed until I found a live broadcast showing video shot from the KCAL 9 copter hovering over a neighborhood off New York Avenue just above Foothill. The anchor was explaining that a mountain lion had been reported prowling around a neighborhood dangerously near Clark Magnet High School.

Well, no wonder. Such excitement couldn’t have been due solely to the nature of the beast visiting our fair foothills. I mean, we’ve often had mountain lions roaming our neighborhoods. (Which begs the question; if there are mountain lions and sea lions, why aren’t there desert lions or beach lions? But I digress, as I often do.) I’m thinking that because this big kitty was so close to a school, well, that explains the hullabaloo. I mean, wildlife and educators both being volatile, unpredictable creatures, and all.

But seriously, it’s no wonder every authority figure within driving or flying distance was summoned to the scene. We wouldn’t want a cat that size to wander its way into a school full of tender vittles, after all.

And so, for several hours the skies above our normally nap-happy valley were abuzz with helicopters chopping at the air – the news copters taking their allotted position high above all the official aircraft who are allowed to fly lower and much closer to where the action is.

From what I could see on TV and hear from radio reports, almost every state, county and city agency was represented, including L.A. County Sheriffs, Glendale Police, the California Department of Fish & Game and even the Pasadena Humane Society. I’m not sure if PETA perps made an appearance, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were there on behalf of the mountain lion. I don’t think the Navy Seals or Army Rangers were deployed, but I could be wrong.

So how do you catch a Mountain Lion? With a ginormous can of Friskies? A big ol’ bag of cat nip and a scratching post the size of a telephone pole? Not hardly. It turns out you shoot not one, but three tranq darts into the colossal kitty and wait until the drugs take effect to haul the critter back up into the forest.

Speaking of tranquilizing things, they may just have to dart me if I hear one more broadcaster refer to any location here in our Crescenta Valley as “Glendale.” Yes, I realize that – technically – there is a narrow strip of Glendale that pokes up into La Crescenta right where the big cat was prowling around last week, but give me a break. I don’t know one person who lives here who says their home is in Glendale. So, get the sedatives ready, broadcasters. You’ve been warned. Then again, if it’s a slow news day I might be doing you a favor.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

My Not-So-Small Town

My son has lived in Montana for the past two years and came home to Southern California for a long-awaited visit this past week. This is a guy who was born and raised right here in the sleepy Crescenta Valley, although he has always felt like a misplaced soul – having a personality and passion for pursuits much better suited for wilderness and woodlands, lakes and rivers, wide open spaces and wild, wooly creatures.

God bless him, the boy has found his personal paradise in Western Montana.

That said, like most local teens, however, he learned to drive years ago on the uniquely congested surface streets and nearly-impossible-to-navigate freeways of Los Angeles County. (I still say Driver’s Ed classes should be reinstated as a vital part of the high school experience, but that’s a topic for another column.) I would bet there are some Indy car drivers who would stress out trying to get from point A to B on our stupidly complex and confusing streets and highways.

As a native driver, let’s just say my son was well practiced in the fine art of vehicular survival. He was so comfortable driving here, he would often park his small pickup truck and ride a motorcycle through the local labyrinth of near-misses, uninsured motorists, distracted drivers and motorized morons. For two years, in fact, his primary transportation to Pasadena City College about 20 tricky miles away was by motorcycle. (And yes, somehow his mother survived this phase.)

Beyond that, the boy was very much at home and comfortable living in “the big city,” even if that city is our so-called “small town” of the Crescenta Valley. So, imagine our surprise when – after being home for only a few days last week – he told us that he couldn’t believe how hectic and hurried it seemed coming back home this time. With a surprised and somewhat shaken demeanor, he said that this place he knew for twenty-some-odd-years as home, suddenly seemed depressingly crowded and stressful.

I’ve seen this same thing happen to other transplanted CV residents. A good friend and former neighbor of mine (a born and raised Southern Californian who was also on the coaching staff at CV High School) moved his family many years ago to the foothills of Southwest Colorado. After a couple of years away, he returned for a visit and was blown away at how seemingly congested our streets were, how aggressive are drivers had become, how crowded with storefronts and signage along Foothill Blvd. seemed and how utterly confusing our freeway system now was to navigate. It seemed hard to imagine that he had ever lived here.

When my oldest son moved his family from the Northern Los Angeles bedroom community of Santa Clarita to the island of Oahu more than six years ago, his first trip home to the mainland was a real eye opener. In spite of having thrived in the daily nightmare of traffic that is a hallmark of Saugus/Valencia area, after being away from it for only a year or so, even the once-routine 30 mile drive from LAX to La Crescenta left him in shock and awe at the pace of traffic and the high-caliber angst of the drivers around us.

So, what changed? Did our streets suddenly get busier since my son moved to Montana? Did local drivers turn into NASCAR knuckleheads as soon as my former neighbor left for the Rockies?

I think it’s primarily a matter of perspective. When you’re immersed in our environment every day, you become used to (or numb to?) to streets and parking lots overflowing with cars, trucks and motorcycles, crowded restaurants and the overall busy-ness of living here. But get away from the size and scope of our surroundings for even a little while and it all looks different somehow.  

As I took my son back to LAX for a ridiculously early flight back to Montana last Friday, we drove along an eerily empty Foothill Blvd. in the predawn darkness. My son said, “Dad, even the main highway through Missoula isn’t this huge!”

While we may be a “sleepy” by Los Angeles suburb standards, in comparison to true small towns a great majority of other places in the U.S., there’s simply no denying that we’re a big city.

I’ll see you ‘round (the big) town.

Racking Up Needless Spending

I’m probably going to ruffle some home town feathers with my comments this week, because the subject of this column took considerable effort by some of my fellow Crescenta Valley residents to make happen.

As an avid cyclist, I’m thrilled that my home town now has bike lanes on our main drag, the appropriately named Foothill Blvd. I thank the CV Town Council from the bottom of my goofy and dangerously tight bike shorts for their hard work in making it happen. It probably won’t solve the motorist vs. cyclist wars that have gone on since Mr. Ford invented the Model A. But it does give us pedal-pushers at least a narrow ribbon of pavement that we can rightfully claim as our own. Again, beaucoup kudos on behalf of current and future cyclists in our community.

I just have one question. What’s with those new bike racks? It seems to me the majority of the new racks are as close as it comes to being useless due to their odd locations. Who’s actually going to use the things? I mean – a large, metal, bike-shaped rack cemented into the sidewalk outside a dry cleaners next door to a florist? Really? I guess that’s good news for all those cyclists who take their tailored suits and designer dresses to the cleaners on their Huffys. But I can hear the romantic conversation now. “Honey, I bought you this beautiful dozen red roses. I know they’re mostly stems and thorns after bringing them home stuffed into my bike jersey. But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Another odd placement is the shiny new peg and hitch installation imbedded in the sidewalk in front of an old rock church at Rosemont Avenue – a sidewalk far away and way below grade of the church entrance. In other words, completely out-of-site from anyone on the church grounds, but ideally situated for someone to drive up next to it in a pickup, cut any cable lock with bolt cutters and toss a bike into the bed of the truck and drive away without anyone ever seeing the heist.

Seriously. If you rode your bike to St. Lukes, would you park it on the street, completely out of sight from the church? I know God is always watching over us, but I’m not so sure He cares all that much about our bikes.

When I first saw the new racks being installed I thought, okay, they’ll probably get around to putting the things outside the library, or in front of Vons or Ralphs, Walgreen’s, Office Depot – the sort of destination where you can reasonably expect at least some bikers to go, especially local students. That might be a worthy expenditure of municipal funds. Maybe.

But drive along Foothill and look where the new racks are. The locations look either ridiculously random or as if it’s been done to strict ‘governmental guidelines.’ As in: “a galvanized device for securing manually powered modes of transportation shall be installed at intervals of precisely 150 yards between the business establishments present for public egress and ingress and blah-di-blah, blah, blah.”

Actually, according to the recent article in the newspaper that prints my column each week ("Bicyclists No Longer "Rack" Their Brains for Place to Park" , CVWeekly.com, July 14, 2011), business owners we’re asked if they wanted a bike rack installed in front of their establishment. Merchants who were “hesitant” were bypassed.

I can only think there must be quite a few Foothill business owners who think cyclists are a sketchy bunch of hooligans who shouldn’t be encouraged to visit their establishments. That’s too bad.

It’s been several months since the new racks have been installed along Foothill. I drive this route several times every day and have yet to see a single bike parked at any of the new magic metal municipal money erasers.

So, here’s an idea. If there are any racks still laying around in a warehouse somewhere, maybe we can install a few of them at the wonderful new dog park that will soon be built at nearby Crescenta Valley park for use by all those dog owners sure to be arriving on their Schwinns. Makes as much sense as putting one outside a florist or dry cleaners, doesn’t it?

And now that the entire CV Town Council will be driving around looking to run me over on my bike, I’ll see you ‘round town.

This is an edited version of my column first-published yesterday, 8.25.11 in the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

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