Los Angeles Journal: 2007 part 1

On May 10^th, 2007, I left for Los Angeles and Hawaii. I hadn’t bought the tickets or made the reservations. It was the first time in my life (since childhood) that I had not been responsible for the travel arrangements, and paid at least for my part of the trip. I know that sounds unlikely, as I have been married twice, etc. etc., but it is true.

I was no longer perilously in charge, but was lower to the ground, safer. Someone else was worrying. It’s not fair that one of the two had to worry, but Terry had offered this, and I was deeply grateful.

I sympathized with his edginess as we checked in – patting his pocket to be sure he had the boarding passes, getting the slightest bit snappy with the Los Angeles hotel clerk who said that the only room he could find for us didn’t have what we had requested. Terry huffed a bit. “We made our reservation several weeks ago.”

The clerk backed off and gave us what we had asked for.

I felt his discomfort as he realized that getting a PT Cruiser wasn’t the best idea. It had looked spiffy and modern on the Web, but it had no power, was weak going up hills, maneuvered poorly and had hard, uncomfortable seats. I knew how he felt responsible for every little thing. The car was fine, just not perfect.

This was my second visit to Los Angeles, the previous one was in 1962. Terry had lived in this part of California for several years, so I could relax and allow myself to be led around. There wasn't anything in particular that I wanted to see, other than where my daughter was living during her six months out there.

The traffic was intensely annoying and driving was as unsatisfying as it has ever been in my life. Washington DC is also annoying, sludgy and overcrowded, but Los Angeles is much worse.

I don’t like it that the trip into New York along Route 3 is unpredictable, with traffic sometimes ruining one’s giddiness at going to a show or out to dinner, but L.A. has been crafted as Road Rage’s perfect storm. The heavy brown cloud of smog hangs in your future as you crawl along. Identifying license plates from different states as a diversion would be impossible, as the number of cars flying past is unparseable. Everywhere. All the time. Up on a mountain road. At 11:00 at night. Here. There. Everywhere. The estates are among the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, but getting in and out of them must drive the owners crazy.

We drove along Rodeo Drive, watching for movie stars but seeing only illegal aliens. At the end of Rodeo, as the millions spent on each house rose and rose and rose, we turned left on Sunset Boulevard, ready for our close-ups, past the elegant gates of Bel-Air, past the spacious, beautiful UCLA campus which Terry said he had seen only AFTER choosing another college, down the hill to the Pacific Highway and Malibu.

Gladstone’s, the fish restaurant near the intersection of the Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Boulevard, has it too easy. Their location is so good, and their purpose so well known that they no longer have to try. The food was mediocre. The waiters were very cute. Hannah asked one of them “Do you have a ladies room?” “No, you have to hold it,” was his answer. Cute. The view of the ocean was matchless. After lunch, we moved on to the Getty Villa down the block.

On the way, we passed the first of many Malibu beachfront properties, dens of luxury and sybaritic pleasure. There is a strip about ten feet wide in front of the closed garage doors facing on the highway which owners would have to negotiate when getting in and out. How could you give a decent dinner party with parking like that? If the guests parked across the highway, they’d have to wait five or ten minutes to get across. The owners are rich enough to phone up limousines to take their guests to and fro, I suppose.

Waiting to get onto the Pacific Highway can take five minutes. If I lived here, I’d get used to it, but I think I’ll refrain from living here.

We missed the entrance to the Getty Villa and had to go around the corner. They waved us off our effort to enter at the Exit, so we went the 20 yards or so back to the intersection at Pacific Coast Highway. The entry to the villa was too close to the intersection to turn the corner and then immediately turn left, especially given the steady stream of vehicles going 60 miles an hour. We waited five minutes or so for the light to change, and then Terry turned left against the oncoming traffic (which was stopped at a red light, but you never know) along the shoulder to get into the Entrance.

The guard at the entrance, who, we found out, came from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, noted the eccentric entry with a smile, then said we needed to have tickets, which were available printed from the Web or mailed several weeks in advance. Parking was the problem. We screwed up our faces and looked at each other .

“You from out of town?”

“Hoboken, New Jersey,” Terry said jovially.

“Okay, maybe we can make an exception to today.”

He pulled three passes from his guardhouse. “Just remember, “ he said, pointing at the passes, then at Hannah, “You’re Terry, you’re Jill, and you’re Hong.”

“Hung?” I asked. Terry might enjoy saying his name was “Hung?”

“But I’m Terry,” he corrected the guard.

“Not today you aren’t. She’s Terry today.”

Beggars can’t be choosers.

‘I think it was the cool turn into the entrance that got us in,” Hannah remarked as we drove up the hill to the museum.

We parked in the spaces reserved for the people working on the estate, took a tour which pointed out the sort of intriguing architectural details and materials which Getty money can buy, took us through the villa and the amphitheatre, pointed out the buildings housing academics who restore, study, and educate regarding ancient art and culture, mentally scarfed up the sculptures, jewels, paintings, heads, torsos, and, my favorites, signature rings from thousands of years ago. Wouldn’t you love to have a little stone in your pocket, just a little stone, which had an exquisite carving in it or a face or a bridge or a pattern, which you used to sign with? What would I have on my signature ring (though, as a woman, I guess I wouldn’t have had one)? A horse I think.

After two hours I was museumed out, ready for something else. We took the long way back.

Looking down from the top of Malibu Canyon the horizon was layered with the brown effect of the Catalina fire, the second major fire in a week. (The first was the burning of Griffith Park in L.A.) With only two inches of rain since January, it’s no wonder that the bushes and trees are sere. It is more a wonder that Topanga Canyon is still green.

We stopped the car at the entrance to the Dead Horse Trail, leading to the Tripett Ranch, partway up Topanga Canyon, and Terry and I took a walk. Hannah stayed behind seated tranquilly at a picnic table attracting warmth and light, as she does so effortlessly in all parts of her life. Her face turned like a sunflower to follow the westward moving sun.

On the sweet-smelling, easy trail we saw animal footprints that looked like the mountain lion footprints portrayed on a warning sign at the entrance to the trail. The presence of a series of houses no more than 100 yards from the trail made me feel more comfortable about the prospect of stumbling upon a mountain lion. The houses had laundry hanging out the back, and must have had children around. To confront a mountain lion would be a rare occurrence.

There were birds skittering out of the underbrush as hawks threatened from their smooth flight path above the trees. The ruckus in the undergrowth to our left was fortunately not a rattlesnake, but a small brown bunny whose transparent ears shone Hollywood pink as the sun flooded through them. There was scat of different sorts; a dog-like sort, pellets, a cat-like (lion-like?) sort, plus a scat that looked like someone had let a mixture of coffee grounds, nut shells, and cranberry skins fall from their torn garbage bag. A lot went on in these woods.

Having gotten the kinks out of our legs and brains, we set out for Dodger Stadium. As we came down into The Valley where the Valley Girls come from, it was slightly frightening to realize we were driving straight into that brown bank of smog ahead. Terry said that sometimes the buildings to our right in the near distance were barely visible due to the smog. We got off the Freeway, which was clogged, traveled along Ventura Boulevard, then got back onto the Freeway, which was by that point flowing fairly freely. The constant flow of vehicles, even high in the mountains, even in the middle of the night, is like a madman’s hallucinations – whish whish whish whish whish whish whish whish.

The signage to Dodger Stadium was almost as bad as the signage in New York and New Jersey. In both cases, you have to know how to get there and then they tell you. The signs are more in the way of confirmation than direction.

We drove up the back of Chavez Ravine, circling to the top parking lot, bought our Loge tickets, took the escalator and elevator down to the correct level, and watched the game. It was quite cold. If Hannah had not brought layers, including a cashmere sweater, we would have all been shivering. Terry was the lightest clad but also the least affected. He got up after the third inning to wander around in search of warmer seats.

We pretended to be rooting for the Dodgers. After the long day, this kind of silliness and fun was what we needed. We had our hot dogs after the fourth inning, sang Take Me Out to The Ball Game, arms around each others’ waists as we promenaded toward the elevator, wended our way up, then down, to our car, and were out of there by the time the Dodgers pitcher was taken out of the game because he had thrown too many pitches. He struck out 11, the Dodger center fielder made a great catch, a Dodger bruised the third baseman while sliding into base, and the Dodgers won 2-0.

The length of my shower was somewhere between a drought shower and a very-long-day shower. By the time we all hit our pillows, we were wrung out.