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.

Weather Weenies

With the unexpectedly heavy rains of last week, we’ve had our first official taste of,  well, something other than summer. Granted, our true winter season, for what it’s worth, is likely to still be at least two or three months off and may not bring with it another rainstorm even as impressive as the one last week. And true to So Cal form, we went from a chilly but welcome mid-60s couple of days to a triple digit heat wave in the span of less than a week. Don’t get me started.

Be that as it may, you didn’t need to be out in our recent, short-lived inclement weather incident to know that a storm was predicted, was on its way, was almost here, had “drenched” the San Francisco Bay area, was now “hammering” Santa Barbara County, then was “raging” through Ventura County and soon to “burst upon the scene” in Northern Los Angeles County. You couldn’t possibly missed have missed it. Our local TV stations cover a rain storm like nowhere else on the planet. Seriously. To watch the televised “StormWatch!!” or “StormTracker!!” or “Wild Weather!!” coverage of any given rain incident, you’d think Southern California was regularly in the path of record-breaking monsoons.

Let’s face it. Southern Californians are certifiable weather weenies.

Just last week, TV news crews were deployed to locations across the city to set up their live shots of raindrops hitting a sidewalk, pedestrians stampeding for cover to escape the moisture, or a car tire splashing dramatically through a pothole filled with …. gasp … water!!! Breathless reporters decked out head-to-toe in network-issued arctic survival gear did man-on-the-street interviews to get spontaneous reactions to the horrific onslaught of wild winter weather.

Out-of-town visitors to Southern California are often highly amused by our hyperactive media coverage of even the slightest cold snap or rainfall. In other parts of the country, rain is rain. Clouds are clouds. They gather, drop some rain on the ground, it runs off or soaks into the dirt and the sun comes back out. Things dry out. Flowers grow. Life goes on. Not here, where even the slightest amount of rain (even if it’s only predicted!) qualifies as a big news story.

However, as expected as the saturated (pun intended) news coverage of a Southern California rainstorm might be, there’s another, more dangerous certainty that arrives with each and every storm. It’s the certainty of rain-caused traffic accidents on our local highways and byways (whatever a ‘byway’ is). That’s because as rainy day drivers, we’re a slippery bunch.

Last Wednesday, I drove to a mid-morning client meeting in Pasadena just as the storm was hitting its stride. On the short drive from La Crescenta to Old Town, I counted a solo car spinout on La Crescenta Avenue, another solo accident into the freeway divider at the always-flooded section of the 210 freeway near the Ocean View overpass, another one-car wreck near the Gould Avenue off ramp, a multiple car smash up on the westbound side of the freeway just before the Arroyo Seco bridge, another solo car wipe out near Lincoln Ave. and then, the mother of all freeway follies, a jackknifed big rig blocking all lanes of the heavily traveled westbound 134/210 transition.

In other words, just another rainy day demolition derby on Southern California streets. It made me wonder once again why local drivers can’t handle even a little rain? Maybe it’s those mysterious, back-and-forth wiper thingies that mesmerize drivers when they suddenly come to life before their eyes. Or it could be that the cloudy skies make it too dark to read and send text messages while we’re driving.

Whatever it is, the Auto Club even has a dedicated web page to try and educate So Cal drivers about how to drive in the rain. Good luck. The site recommends taking specific precautions, including; 1. slow down; 2. leave more distance between cars; 3. drive in the center lane, and; 4. avoid distractions (like big rigs and concrete bridge pillars!)

I have a better idea; just stay home and watch the Eyewitless Doppler 10,000 team coverage of the storm. I promise it will be more entertaining and – except for the occasional tragic umbrella malfunction – hardly anyone ever gets hurt.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a revised version of my column first published yesterday, 10.13.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

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