[sic]

My cousin Laura turns the big Five-Oh this month and as such her sister Margaret put out a request to all friends and family to submit something for a keepsake book she’s putting together for her younger sibling. “Give it your best shot,” Margaret wrote, owing to the fact that I’ve only seen Laura on a total number of occasions in my entire life that I can count on one hand and not use all the fingers.

So I resorted to combing the archives that are the parrot green photo albums my mom organized in the mid-1970s (garish now, parrot green was a huge color back in those bygone days). I hadn’t perused albums in yeeeeeears, but I knew somewhere inside the multiple volumes there had to be a photo of me and Laura from my visit to her family in the early 1970s when I accompanied them in a station wagon with one of those rear-facing seats in the back on a vacation from their home in Chattanooga, Tenn., to Canada and back.

I didn’t get to photos from that experience because I first found an even better photo from the summer of 1965 when I was 13 months old and had been sent to be cared for by Laura and Margaret and my cousin Allan and my Aunt Frieda and Uncle Jack because of financial difficulties my mom was facing as a single parent — difficulties that were tremendously exacerbated because she was almost entirely unassisted by the sadsack pathetic excuse for a human that was the person of the male persuasion whose genetics I may share but into whose gut I would punch or upon whose grave I would spit should I ever be introduced to him living or dead.

Abandonment issues? Ya think?! Let’s move on.

The photo I found was of Laura and me sitting at a table. From the info written to my mom on the back of the snapshot by my aunt I learned my hands are covering my face after having successfully stuffed my mouth with as much of a luscious fresh peach as it could hold. Behind me Laura supports me at the shoulder and the elbow and has a marvelous expression that’s bottled up laughter held back by amazement perhaps at how I can be both so cute and so voracious:

That’s Margaret behind her who’s understandably contemplating how a 1-year-old child could have such an impossibly large head. What can I say, from the get-go I was a big-ass baby.

Anyway, this photo totally captured what I was looking for better than anything from our roadtrip so I scanned it and sent it off to Margaret this week with a note to Laura telling her how much it means to me at such a tumultuous time in my life to have been cared for and supported and loved by her.

Of course with the albums out and accessible I had to flip through to reacquaint myself with images from days gone by and happy was I to find without much searching the image which is one of my favorites from my childhood.

Taken from somewhere in the early 1970s, it’s an accidental double-exposure made by my mom featuring Mickey Mouse-shirt-wearing me and my childhood friend Randy during a visit to the sun-dappled oasis that is the botanical garden at UCLA, a place I first discovered only because any dentistry done on my teeth back then was via the UCLA School of Dentistry nearby:

It’s not a happy picture so much as what I consider a serendipitous one… a rare moment captured that is candid and real and evocative as opposed to most that are posed with fake smiles. Just thought I’d share.

So the great Silver Lake Reservoir draining is finally complete and the big water bowl is empty… until they get around to refilling it. All of its potentially toxic water has been flushed away through a series of subterranean tubes connecting to the Ballona Creek which pours onward into the Santa Monica Bay where the carcinogenic parts per million of all that bromate-tainted water will be diluted into inert nothingness, or an unexpected complex chemical reaction with the saltwater and the bacteria and the styrofoam and the plastic bags and the shopping carts and the gull shit and the hypodermics will ultimately create the monster for the three-quel to the coming sequel of “Cloverfield” who will then go on a rampage across the city. Could happen.

As the reservoir’s level has slowly lowered over the last 60 days, people have been either hopeful or apprehensive as to what might be revealed rusting and rotting away down there on the bottom, but there hasn’t been anything noted as of yet. Personally I know of one 27-year-old relic that’s down there somewheres, if it didn’t get swept down a pipe at some point in such a long interim. It’s a set of keys on a ring, one which I heaved over the fence into its southeastern waters one very early morning back in 1981.

The keys were to the Swensen’s Ice Cream Shoppe that used to be on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, across the street from and in between what used to be Fiorucci’s and RJ’s restaurant. I had worked at Swensen’s for a while during my first and second year at Beverly Hills High School, promoted to night manager before I was fired by the owner’s daughter — Desiree or Dell-something; who badly managed the place for her dad — for not being willing to hold some marijuana for her.

I turned in my keys, cleaned out my locker and collected my final paycheck. I stayed pissed off for awhile not just because I was out of a job, but also because Swensen’s had been the center of my social universe. To have both yanked away so unfairly was a good lesson to learn early but nonetheless a hard one.

A few months later I ended up getting a stockclerk job at the long-gone Hunters Books on Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica (they’re calling it Santa Monica South nowadays), but in that unemployed interim I helped my mom, by then a distributor for the Herald Examiner whose territory included Echo Park, Silver Lake and Los Feliz and Franklin Hills. On weekends I’d get up with her at 2 a.m., and together we’d go pick up all the papers at the Herald Examiner plant downtown, then deliver whatever routes were open or down and we’d get home around sunrise. During the week I’d often have to go across town after school on my little Yamaha Champ scooter and help with collections or customer complaints. Sometimes I’d drive the old 1965 Ford Mustang and cover paper routes solo, especially those in the steeper areas of Silver Lake and Echo Park, where paperboys never lasted.

I don’t remember how long it was after I was fired from Swensen’s that I found the spare “just in case” set of Swensen’s keys I’d had made on my own at some point after I’d been promoted to night manager. Maybe it was a couple days later or a couple weeks. However long it was, when I discovered them I immediately saw dollar signs and started plotting a little payback heist. Ultimately I decided to hit the place in the morning on my way to school. Come up Wilshire to the alley between Beverly and Rodeo at something like 7 a.m., enter through the back — it would be easy pickings. There was no alarm and no surveillance system. And knowing exactly where the money was kept after closing, I could be in and out without turning on a light in a minute, tops, and a couple hundred bucks richer. Maybe a little more if sales had been exceptionally good.

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Sad and unfortunate news from down in Orange County. Scott Beuhler, a 27-year-old man attempting to rescue a treed cat, fell to his death Wednesday, and reading about it reminded me of the night in 2004 when Susan and I were first dating and  I came to her aid when she worriedly called to tell me that her Pumpkin had gotten stuck in a tree across the street.

I arrived and sure enough Pumpkin was out on a branch about 20 feet off the sidewalk, and though he didn’t seem very thrilled with the situation, he was also in no hurry to descend on his own. And while common sense told me that what goes up on its own must surely be able to come down on its own, I think my genuine empathy for the unhappy cat and my eagerness to help (as well as perhaps impress Susan a little bit with what a great guy I am) resulted in me propping up her extending ladder at something of an awkward and unsteady angle against the trunk of the tree and tentatively climbing up the wobbly thing about a step or two beyond what would have been considered safe by any impartial third party.

Pumpkin, who barely knew me at that point in our relationship, spared me from going any further out on the proverbial limb by moving further out along the branch away from me with a look that was either “Yeah right!” or “Who the hell are you!?” or a bit of both.

After a few more minutes of attempted coaxing I returned to earth knowing any further attempt on my part would be fruitless. The cat certainly wasn’t going to come to me and though part of me was thinking about getting further up in the tree, I knew it was risky and all it would do is drive the cat higher up or farther out among the smaller branches. Bottom line was I wasn’t going to be able to get close to the cat. And even if I could, what then? Did I seriously think Pumpkin would just snuggle in and be patient while I tried to get us both down safely? Hell no.

No, it was time to step away from my ego and call in the professionals. So I whipped out the cell and after a series of transfers from the information operator to the fire department to animal services I had the after-hours dispatcher on the line. I don’t remember the exact course of our conversation but it basically went something like:

“Hello, we have a cat stuck up in a tree.”

“Yes sir. And you want us to come help you get it down?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, may I ask you: do you know how many calls we get from people whose cats have climbed up into trees?”
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Isn’t it funny how we forget about stuff. I was cruising through the back end of the ridiculous amount of photos I have online at Flickr, and these two Santa Cruz island foxes showed up, bringing back a flood of good memories of the days I spent in November 2004 with a crew of docents from the Los Angeles Zoo. We were there as guests of the Nature Conservancy and as part of their island fox recovery program our purpose was to assemble captive breeding pens for the island’s decimated island fox population.

In looking further around my Flickr stream I was disturbed that this was pretty much the only photo from the excursion. What had happened to the others? Had they been deleted? OMGWTF? Then, from the cobwebby recesses of my memory I pulled out the recollection that I never uploaded any to Flickr. I put them up on shutterfly.com because back then I was all into making keepsake books for my photos. Here’s the link if you want to check it out. Or you can view a slideshow of all the photos here.

It was a remarkable experience and I’m glad not only that I was reminded of it, but relieved that I was able to remember where I’d stored the memories.

L.A. Blogfather and L.A. Times Blogmaster Tony Pierce has a picture I presume he took posted to his Busblog of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who in the frame I presume is in the midst of getting an assist with his new L.A. Times blog that Tony helped land — and all of which is awesome.

Tony’s proximity to the NBA’s All Time Leading Scorer and one of my All Time Leading Heroes reminded me of the night back in 1991 that I ended up over at the tennis courts off of Whitsett by the L.A. River playing tennis with Wilt Chamberlain.

The backstory is this. Before it was seen fit to destroy the fabled Racquet Centre that stood at the corner of Ventura and Vineland, I met a fellow by the name of Allan, via the regular men’s doubles drop-in tennis nights hosted there. Basically for $10 or so you got to play 2-3 hours of tennis with a variety of partners and opponents, and on one night I ended up across the net from Allan who was a very capable player. At the end of our set he apparently thought the same of me and asked if I’d like to play singles with him one of these nights. I said sure. We exchanged numbers and soon enough we were getting together once or twice a week either at the Racquet Centre or the courts on Whitsett and playing.

Starting off Allan consistently defeated me. But as we kept on eventually I raised the level of my play and the matches got much closer, with me winning more games and even the occasional set. Now the thing about Allan was that for as good a player as he was he wasn’t as good a sport. I’d bet he went through three maybe four racquets in the course of our matches. And by “went through” I mean destroyed, as in purposefully broken. He’d miss an easy lob and next thing he’d be cursing heartily and flinging his stick either into the ground or against the fence. Repeatedly. Sometimes he’d spare its life and continue. Other times he’d just whack the thing until it cracked. And whenever that happened he’d calmly walk over to his bag, extract the next victim and continue as if nothing had happened.

The behavior was always ridiculous but whereas it would genuinely unnerve me in the beginning, I eventually grew to accept that this was just an inevitable part of a game with him — especially when I started winning. The one thing I could never get around were the bad calls he’d make. If things weren’t going well for him, inevitably he’d call a fair first serve long or a deep volley out that was in. I’d put up with the first couple but eventually I’d call bullshit and he’d tell me to fuck off and we’d argue until he’d show how big he was by allowing us to replay the point. What a guy.

Why he had these flagrant (and expensive!) tantrums was a mystery. But even more of a curiosity was who he was or what he did. Always sporting the best fake-bake tan that money could by coupled to a long, wet-look tightly curled perm that seemed straight outta the ’70s, he finished the fashion statement with a slew of gold chains around his neck perhaps to match the gold-trimmed gold Mercedes convertible coupe he drove. He never talked about what he did, nor did I really ask. The only info I got of him was that he had a kid or kids, knew plenty of rich folk and did a lot of partying with them at a lot of swank westside bars and clubs.

So one night I’d just biked back to Sherman Oaks from the Racquet Centre after the end of drop-in session. Allan hadn’t been there that evening. A few minutes after I got home the phone rings and its him and all he tells me is that their fourth has dropped out at the last minute and would I be interested in joining them for some late-night doubles at the Whitsett courts. I look at the clock and it’s after 9 p.m. but I say what the hell and bike over there.

When I arrive I make my way past empty courts toward the sound of Allan cussing and upon my arrival at the courtside gate, I see him off in the corner beating himself and his racquet up for some botched play. A few feet from him is some guy who later I find out owns a $12-million mansion up on Mulholland. And when I look to the other side of the court I see none other than 400-foot-tall Wilt Fucking Chamberlain standing at the net and smiling at Allan’s antics.

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With news of the 38,000-acre fire out in Santa Clarita having been started by a 10-year-old boy playing with matches my first impulse was a desire to see the kid and his parents and even the family dog prosecuted to the full extent of the law — and if the law wasn’t severe enough then enact one that is and make it retroactive and put ‘em all away and/or make restitution a monkey on their collective back for a loooooooong time.

Then I remembered back when I almost became that kid, albeit the only thing I almost burned down was a garage. And I was older by a year or two, but just as stupid. See back in that day living on Holly Drive near the base of the Hollywood Hills I was almost as much into building model planes as I was into eventually destroying them. I’d buy those Revell kits from the Hollywood Toy Store bring ‘em back home and attempt to construct them as meticulously as they appeared on the boxtops. And when I’d inevitably fail to replicate such perfection I might display them for a while or hang them in a mock dogfight from the ceiling in my room, but ultimately they were destined to crash and burn in one big beautiful ball of flame.

When I’d done it in the past it had been out in the open — maybe an alleyway or a vacant lot. I’d trundle the planes outside with me and one of my mom’s lighters, set a wing or tail on fire and toss them across the sky in a wonderous smoking/flaming arc to their point of impact with the planet where they’d melt and smolder (and one time I learned the painful lesson not to stamp out burning plastic with bare feet).

But on this occasion and for a failure of logic and common sense I can only ascribe to being a dumbass kid, the location for my conflagration was going to be behind the apartment building I lived in and inside the multi-car garage — stucco on the outside but all aged open wood framing and beams on the inside.

I did have some glimmer of understanding that the resulting pire of whatever miniature legendary WWII aircraft being destroyed would be small enough not to negatively impact the structure, and sure enough after it caught a flame and made its final voyage to its crashing place on the concrete floor of the garage, it produced more fizzling smoke than fire. And that’s where the real stupidity set in. Because all of a sudden I wanted there to be a lot of fire, and dang if the nearby stack of old newspapers wouldn’t do that trick.

Now at this point if this were a “Davey & Goliath” episode, Goliath would either show up and say “WTF Davey!” or Davey himself would contemplate what Jesus might do or generally there’d be some sort of “hand of god” device that would give Davey a clue and avert disaster. But this wasn’t TV, this was just some bored afterschool latchkey idiot pre-teen with what he needed at his disposal to unwittingly burn a muzzafuzzin’ garage down.

Luckily and thankfully the fantastically mesmerizing six-foot leaping flames I fueled by feeding the fire copious crumpled pages of the L.A. Times, came up a foot or so short of being able to lick the roofbeams, and no lingering embers alighted long enough along the exposed studs or leaked-oil patches to ignite, and thus I did not burn down anything and potentially rechart the rest of my childhood by having to do a stretch in juvenile hall as a blooming firebug. Incorrigible punk? Yes. Arsonist? Please.

In my weakass defense, with the flames dancing a couple feet above my four-foot-something head and the resulting smoke getting pretty dense, there was something inside that broke through all that rampant stupidity and said “OK, that’s enough now. Stop. No, really. STOP building a fire inside a building.” And so I did and the flames died down until I tamped them out as the smoke cleared until there was nothing left but a solidifying puddle of plastic on the concrete that had once been a hastily crafted and poorly detailed P-51 Mustang or a German Folke Wulf or a Japanese Zero.

Back into the apartment I went with no one the wiser and instead of my young life taking a horrible and regrettable detour, instead I probably watched reruns of “Wild Wild West” and “The Mickey Mouse Club” until my mom got home from work later that afternoon and made dinner and then later I went to bed and the next day I went to school and life went on. To my credit, that was the last model airplane I ever destroyed.

My belabored point: I’m not at all trying to excuse the kid responsible for causing such a vast swath of destruction across Santa Clarita, I’m just trying to keep it in perspective. Us young ones don’t mean harm most of the time. What we do are senseless things with radar that isn’t yet developed enough to identify care or concern for the consequences. For every major brushfire that burns out of control there are thousands of garages that don’t. I’m trying to remember that instead of wanting this boy’s head on a platter.

Maybe I’ve written of it before, but my favorite time of my childhood was when I lived on Holly Drive in Hollywood in the mid-1970s, primarily because there were a bunch of neighborhood kids around my age and there was a vacant lot on the corner where we’d have occasional baseball games and dirtclod fights. We traded baseball cards and skateboarded and rode bikes up to the Hollywood reservoir and played a fair amount of war and saw films together like “Earthquake” and “The Bad News Bears” and “Carwash.”

I was reminded of the following incident by Tim who blogs at L.A. Daddy and who was one of the participants in last Thursday’s L.A. Bloggers Live event. He read a wonderful post that recalled him painfully learning to ride a bike and the lesson included a pretty disasterous trip down a steep hill.

My incident also involved attempting to negotiate a grade on wheels, but in my case it was a skateboard, not a bike. It was spring of 1976 that I got my first polyurethane-wheeled skateboard (that my mom bought me from the old The Akron store on Melrose near Western for my 12th birthday). Around that same time the big event me and my buddies were all looking forward to was the debut of a 7-11 down on the corner of Yucca and Cahuenga. Each day was spent on the lookout the better to keep ourselves informed as the store drew closer to opening for business and we got ever more eager to waste our allowances on Slurpees and such.

When that big day finally came it also coincided with plans we had that morning to “bomb” Primose, a nearby avenue that featured the steepest and straightest drop of all the streets in the immediate vicinity. It wasn’t anything crazily graded, but there was no denying the opportunity to go downhill fast. So thrillseekers all we all rode our skateboards north through the tunnel under the 101 Freeway and then continued up until we arrived at the bottom of Primrose.  Any thrill I was seeking at that point pretty much disappeared as I looked up at the summit of the street. Sure, it was one thing to come down it on my 10-speed as I’d done dozens of times, but looking up at the top and imagining coming down on four wheels and a plank was something else entirely. But as is the case with these things, there was no backing out now. To do so would be to suffer being called a chicken by your peers and I would have none of that.

In all honesty, I don’t know how many of my pals went before I did, but I know no one came down after me and my spectacular wipeout — which started out well enough. With heart pounding and a couple pushes I was over the crest and well balanced with knees bent as I immediately picked up speed coming down the face of the frozen swell. It wasn’t long after that — perhaps a hundred yards down — when things started to go wrong thanks to my ignorance in neglecting to tighten up my board’s trucks from the loosened and flexible state I kept them in to better execute sharper turns as part of the substantial freestyling I enjoyed down on level terrain.

When that first relatively minor wobble hit and reverberated through my legs, I tensed up pretty much instinctively knew that once the wobbles started there was really no stopping them from getting progressively worse. But despite my mind screaming “BAIL OUT NOW!” I lamely tried to counter defeat the wobble, which of course only succeeded in making it worse and almost immediately the  board was sidewinding wider and wider back and forth beneath my feet. It was someplace right around here and again in some pretty serious ignorance that I attempted to step off the board. My fatally flawed thinking seemed entirely logical at that moment. I figured I’d get one foot on the ground and hustle to bring the other in front of it and then de-accelerate until I was at a fully stopped and upright position. That had a good chance of working if I’d been rolling at 10 mph, but I was moving up near or beyond  the 2o-mph mark and when my right foot landed before my left foot could follow in that footstep I was entirely surprised to find myself suddenly airborne and traveling headfirst for whatever time and distance it took for my left shoulder and the left side of my face to land on the asphalt where I continued sliding for what seemed like forever until finally coming up against the curb and to a stop in the gutter.

I was immediately surrounded by my pals some of whom I heard say aloud that they thought I was dead.  I slowly got up to prove that I wasn’t, but my face from temple to check was spectacularly abrasioned and bleeding profusely, which may have grossed them out more than my corpse would have.

Someone retrieved my skateboard where it had come to rest somewhere further down the road and while I didn’t remount it from there on the incline, like a true gamer once we got back down closer to sea level I did climb back aboard for the roll home with everyone else behind me and silent as if following a hearse.

Upon arrival at home and after my mom got over her inital shock at seeing her son so severely shredded, she cleaned and dressed my wounds while everyone else went and enjoyed the new 7-11 without me… none even willing to bring me back a Slurpee, dammit.

I never attempted to bomb Primose ever again.

I try to be a firm believer in things happening for a reason — good or bad. Sometimes I’ll get into arguments with myself about that adage over the little things… like what could possibly be the purpose of that ding I got from some sunzabeech in my truck’s door in the parking lot where I work yesterday (answer: all the more reason to ride my bike!), but with the bigger-picture events I pretty much accept it without debate.

For example, take me reconnecting with my old friend Russell last week. After finding me via the internest a week earlier and exchanging emails, last Thursday I biked up from work to Mar Vista where I met his wife Jessica and then he took me out to dinner at this wonderful Japanese grill place called Sakura House on Washington Boulevard where we had a great time climbing over the 17-year wall that had built up between us. Afterward back at his house I did my best not to drool over the two tricked out Harleys he showed me in his garage.

In the course of the evening we talked about a bunch of stuff, including our mutual friend Mark Burton who Russell is still very much in-touch with and who I haven’t seen in about as long as it had been since I’d last seen Russell. Since only a few weeks before that I was participating in that downtown storytellers project at the Music Center in which the downtown story I attempted to share was the one involving Mark’s father, I asked about Mr. Burton and was surprised to learn from Russell that he was still alive considering he’s now well into his 70s and spent the last 21-years of his life in prison.

When I said goodnight to Russell later that night I asked him to pass my regards along to Mark in the hopes that the three of us could get together one day soon and throw back a nostaligic sixer of Mickey’s or Killian’s Red (our beers of choice back then) maybe in our old haunt that I called Crossroads Park (Now Will Rogers Park) in between the Beverly Hills Hotel and the intersections of several of that city’s residential streets.

Russell certainly made good on my request and the next morning I found an enthusiastic email from Mark which I answered. In a follow-up I asked about his mom and sister and (even though I figured it was a sensitive subject) his dad because I wanted him to know how much I appreciated the two of them coming to my rescue back when I was arrested in 1982 for being a stupid 18-year-old with a .22 rifle.

Several days went by and no response came from Mark. I chalked it up to what certainly was his busy work schedule, but by yesterday I finally broached the subject in a quick note to him in hopes that was indeed the case and that I hadn’t offended him.

I was relieved to get his email back saying yes he’d been busy and no there’d been no offense taken, and then I was heartbroken by his news that a large part of the reason he hadn’t been able to respond was that his father, who had been ill for quite some time, had taken a grave turn over the weekend and died early that Tuesday morning up in Vacaville. He told me he’d keep me informed of the funeral plans and when he let me know this morning that his father is to be buried this Sunday at noon I told him I’d be honored to attend.

And while it may not be beers in the park as I’d wished, I want to make that clear that I will be honored to stand with my old friends at the ceremony for Mark’s father, a man who when I stood bitter and brooding at the threshold of a very dark path stepped up to my aid when no one else would or could and turned me from it with quiet kindness and understanding and a helping hand.

I usually don’t do much in the way of identical cross-posting, but I just filed this prehistoric recollection over at Blogging.la and decided to paper the walls with it here as well: 

Seeing as it’s — ahem — that day, I figured why not regale anyone interested with what has to be the most spontaneously romantic thing I’ve ever ever seen happen in this city — or anywhere for that matter — and it all unfolded at the corner of Crescent Heights and Melrose back in either 1985 or ‘86.

At the time I was the courier for a firm that obtained travel visas for its clientele. I had just had lunch at the old Sundance Cafe on Robertson just above Beverly and I was coming back to the company’s Cahuenga Pass offices having completed my afternoon westside run to the consulates of France, Kenya, and South Africa all on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills at that time. Grandmaster Flash blasted proudly from the speakers of my adored little Mazda GLC hatchback (not because I remember but because that’s pretty much all I listened to):

It’s like a jungle sometimes,
It makes me wondah,
How I keep from goin’ undah,
Huh huh-huh-huh huh huh.

Those lyrics may not do much to set the mood for love, but it totally captures the period. Anyway, I can’t be sure exactly where it began, but after leaving Sundance and turning onto Melrose from Robertson I found myself bringing up the rear of a little romantic intrigue that then continued to play out for several blocks to La Cienega Boulevard and beyond. Cruising along in front of me was a spotless convertible Jag driven by a bombshell blonde and beside her in the right lane doing his best to get her attention was a rather undistinguished looking but obviously lovestruck man in a less than showroom-ready Ford Mustang and way out of his league.

Obviously well-versed in how to ignore stalkers, gawkers and loud talkers Ms. Bombshell coolly kept her eyes and attention straight ahead, having little if any of Mr. Smitten despite his shameless and unabashedly nutty attempts to catch her eye and heart by honking at her in conjunction with gesticulating and yelling variations of “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen!” Eventually the three of us approached Crescent Heights, slowing for the yellow light, and at the last moment, Smitten accelerated and yanked in front of her, slamming on his brakes so Bombshell had to stop short as his tires screeched against the asphalt, whereupon he threw open the door and jumped out almost before his car had come to a halt.

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Thankfully now we have SB-1578, which went into effect on January 1 making it illegal to tie up a dog for more than three hours at a time, but we didn’t back in 1990. The dog’s long gone by now, I’d think. I’m pretty sure it’s only the rare abused and neglected pitbull that lives so deep into its teens.

I was working for Sparkletts and my route that day covered Atwater Village between Fletcher and Los Feliz Boulevard, encompassing the good, the bad and the ugly of this little community carved out between the city of Glendale and the east bank of the L.A. River.

I’d had lunch at Giamela’s earlier at the corner of Los Feliz and Glenfeliz, a pepper steak sub with cheese and peppers. I never let the squadron of flies buzzing around the tables bother me, their sandwiches were the best. Later that afternoon after the last bottle of water was delivered and all the service calls were done, I was planning to treat myself to a large vanilla dip at the Foster’s Freeze on Fletcher before rolling back in to the plant in Eagle Rock and log my sales for the day.

Somewhere in between, with the good and the bad parts of Atwater behind me I was in the ugly section, which was south of Glendale and close to the railroad tracks that mark its eastern border. If you want to argue and say it ain’t so ugly now, you go right ahead, but keep in mind that this was long before the Costco and long before there was a weekend farmers market in the Well Fargo parking lot and long before the Glendale Boulevard revitalization grew from the arrival of Osteria Nonni (which was still about a year away). And it was certainly way long before those pimped out 700-square-foot bungalows were selling for $770K-plus. This was back when there was a neighborhood grocery store where now there’s a Starfuck’s and the dear departed Woody’s Bike Shop was in full flower down the street from the Los Feliz pitch ‘n putt, run by a guy I presumed to be named Woody who always seemed more wasted than not. And the southeast section of the neighborhood was as far removed from any village aspects as possible. Seemed like they were almost proud of that disconnect.

Even the names of the streets are different. The ones north of Glendale like Seneca, Revere and Brunswick hit Glendale Boulevard and died while those south of Glendale like Perlita, Madera and Laclede stop as well.

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