Dear Los Angeles
Page 23
The evening was fun until it suddenly wasn’t fun. Watching my daughter being questioned and fingerprinted by the police was not a peak parenting experience, and I must tell you, I questioned my own judgement. But this is where the rubber of progressive parenting meets the road of authoritarianism. Our family believes in free speech and political activism. Afterward we talked about how it would have been different if she had been out randomly tagging with malicious intent. It’s a fine line between vandalism and street art, and I wanted her to be clear about where it lay. I also made it clear that I would have felt very differently if she had gone and done this without my permission or protection. Call me a hypocrite, but I encourage my children to question all authority except my own.
ERIKA SCHICKEL
AUGUST 6
1769
This day we both said Mass, which was attended by everybody, and then we rested, receiving innumerable visits from heathen who came to see us from different parts. They had heard of the sailing of the packets to the coast and channel of Santa Barbara; they drew on the ground the shape of the channel with its islands, marking the route of the ships. They told us also that in other times bearded people, clothed and armed as they saw the soldiers, had come into their country, motioning that they had come from the east. One of them said he had been to their countries and had seen their towns formed of large houses, and that each family occupied its own. He added, besides, that in a few days’ march, about seven or eight leagues to the north, we would come to a great river which ran between rough mountains and could not be forded, and that farther on we would see the ocean, which would prevent us from going on in this direction. The information gave us anxiety, but we put it off to be settled by our own eyes.
FRAY JUAN CRESPI
1837
Perfecto Hugo Reid, native of Great Britain, Roman Catholic, resident of the City of Our Lady of the Angels, appears before your Lordship in the best legal manner to state: that during the term of three years he has lived in the above-mentioned city, engaged in business, et cetera, has benefited society in every way possible, and finding himself ready to enter into the state of matrimony with a native daughter of this country, respectfully requests and entreats your permission to contract this marriage.
HUGO REID
1847
I relieved Captn Smith 1st Drag and went on as officier of the day—I have a guard of about twenty—volunteers and ten dragoons on the heights with two pieces of artillery and ready for a fight at any time the Calafornians want it—
LIEUTENANT JOHN MCHENRY HOLLINGSWORTH
1952
The town is a horror of ugliness, flat as your hand and crawling with cars. Nobody dreams of walking anywhere and shops and houses are miles apart.
The sudden change is a bit bewildering, and I shall be glad to get over the first few days. One feels a little like the new boy at school but it is all amusingly new, though exactly like one had expected really. I think I have already persuaded them that a beard for Cassius is not a good plan.
JOHN GIELGUD, to his mother
AUGUST 7
1769
A little before three in the afternoon we set out to the north and crossed the plain, which is about three leagues wide, and went to camp at the foot of the mountains in a very green valley grown with large live oaks and alders. The water was sufficient for the animals though not over abundant.
FRAY JUAN CRESPI
1932
Got a good rub down in morning and had steak. Went to stadium, warmed up, another hot rub. Ran second in the relay. We got 1st place and broke Olympic and World Record.
EVELYN OJEDA, née Furtsch
AUGUST 8
1769
We ascended by a sharp ridge to a high pass, the ascent and descent of which was painful, the descent being made on foot because of the steepness. Once down we entered a small valley in which there was a village of heathen, who had already sent messengers to us at the valley of Santa Catalina de Bononia to guide us and show us the best road and pass through the mountains. These poor Indians had many provisions ready to receive us. Seeing that it was our intention to go on in order not to lose the march, they urgently insisted that we should go to their village, which was some distance off the road; and we were obliged to consent in order not to displease them. We enjoyed their good will and their presents….
It is a very suitable site for a mission, with much good land, many palisades, two very large arroyos of water, and five large villages close together.
FRAY JUAN CRESPI
1932
You folks all over the United States that thought these Olympic Games was just some real estate racket of Los Angeles and didn’t come, you have been badly fooled. You have missed the greatest show from every angle that was ever held in America….Regardless of hard times, there has been from 70,000 to 105,000 people every day. Regardless of this old town’s boosting blowing, they certainly come through beautiful….And say don’t worry about the Japanese flying over here in case of war, those birds will swim over.
WILL ROGERS
1949
I’ve got a funny story to tell you about Ayn Rand….It seems that a character by the name of Lenny Spigelgass, whom you may know, was working once at Warners in a writer’s office across from hers. He didn’t know who she was until one day, being the kind of blank-a-week who doesn’t rate a telephone, he crossed the hall to use hers. She of course knows that all Jews are communists, and with the instinct of such people can pick a Jew at 50 yards in any kind of crowd you want to name. Poor Lennie knocked on her door, walked in, said may I use your telephone, and begin to reach for it. Whereupon Miss Rand reared back and spit at him. So help me.
NORMAN MAILER, to Lillian Hellman
AUGUST 9
1877
We reached the city of “Our Lady” at high noon of an August day….
You read Spanish, French, German and English newspapers, all printed in Los Angeles. It is many-tongued as a Mediterranean sea-port, and hospitable as a grandee.
Yesterday and to-day are strangely blended….
We went through a side door into the poor, neglected city of the silent. It has survived grief and friends. It is too old. Gray, wooden crosses lean this way and that, over graves that are nameless. Sealed tombs are crumbling. It lies there under the church wall in the glare of the sun, the autograph of death and desolation scrawled upon the dusty, thirsty and insatiate earth. It is consecrated ground, but dishonored by neglect. What would we have?
…The Mission Garden is not as old as the Garden of Eden, but it was a cultivated spot, for all that, when there was not a State between Pennsylvania and the Pacific Ocean but the state of Nature, and when saddles, bateaux, dug-outs and moccasins were the only means of conveyance. We came to a high wall and a low adobe, and halted in the shade of a great palm seventy feet high planted by a Franciscan two generations ago. It was my first acquaintance with the tree where it seemed to be at home. Its trunk was curiously fluted, and it spread its great palms as if it felt and enjoyed the sunshine. Our knocks at the gate brought the reply of a couple of dogs, and if I can judge of the canine gamut, I should say those dogs were hungry, and barked in the key of C sharp. They leaped, and looked through the cracks of the wall, and snuffed like a camel that smells water, barking their way up and down those cracks as boy runs his mouth along the holes of a harmonica and blows….
…It is not a bit more like Irving’s Alhambra than a Scotch kale patch is like the Queen’s gardens at Kew.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TAYLOR
1939
Your very kind and flattering letter of July 27th, in which you asked me to leave my footprints in cement at the World’s Fair, reached me the morning I left New York for Hollywood. I am terribly sorry that I missed my big opportunity and only hope that you will ask me again the next time I come to New York.
&nb
sp; I think the Sands of Time is a brilliant idea, and should have enjoyed seeing it myself.
ANITA LOOS
1952
Brando is a funny, intense, egocentric boy of 27, with a flat nose and bullet head, huge arms and shoulders, and yet giving the effect of a lean Greenwich Village college boy. He is very nervous indeed and mutters his lines and rehearses by himself all day long. Very deferential to me, and dragged me off to record two speeches of Antony on his machine….He tells me he owns a cattle ranch, and after two more years filming, will be financially secure altogether!!
The parties are grand, but clumsy—awful food, too much drink, rather noisy and the weirdest mixture of clothes, women in beach clothes or full evening dress and the men in every crazy variety of sports clothes. But it is not difficult to pick out the people one wants to talk to, and the rest of the guests don’t seem to trouble one or expect one to trouble about them.
JOHN GIELGUD, to his mother
AUGUST 10
1904
This morning at about 10 Petra came from Josefa’s house to tell me that Alejandro was sick. Patricio went while I got ready to go and he told me that Alejandro was dead. I went at once and found him in his bed. He had shot himself in the mouth and had been dead for some time. Spent the rest of the day with the undertaker—arranging everything. Put Valenzuela to clean the room where the misfortune occurred. The undertaker took the body to his office on 3rd st. Sent Patricio to the rancho to lock all the doors and to see how everything was. Chata and Carolina Winston came and left at 8. Clear day.
DON JUAN BAUTISTA BANDINI
1907
I waited by Echo Lake this morning for my car. The water was green as the trees; the dandified blackbirds strutted on the grass, so beautifully shaded by the big willows. Then three white swans sailed processionally around the little island….A pretty summer picture.
OLIVE PERCIVAL
1910
I was very sad today, dearest, things seemed so very intricate, so hopelessly complicated—oh—sweetheart, if we work and hope and be good children! Is it possible—can happiness wait us?…
Goodnight,—all my heart is yours to keep—
UNA KUSTER, to her future husband, Robinson Jeffers
1939
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EARL STENDAHL
1949
Lunch at the Farmers’ Market with the [Stravinskys], Christopher Isherwood, and the Huxleys, the latter cooing to each other today like newlyweds, or oldlyweds making up after a spat. Owing to its extensive variety of salads, seeds (Aldous eats quantities of sunflower seeds, for his eyes), nuts, health foods, exotic fruit (Milton: “The savory pulp they chew, and in the rind”), the restaurant is a Huxleyan haunt. Most of the other tables are held down by drugstore cowboys, movie stars, Central European refugees, and—to judge by the awed glances in our direction—Aldine and Igorian disciples. All are vegetarians, for the nonce, and all nibble at their greens like pasturing cows….
ROBERT CRAFT
1966
Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.
GENE RODDENBERRY
AUGUST 11
1926
And Los Angeles is America. A jungle. Los Angeles grew up suddenly, planlessly, under the stimuli of the adventurous spirit of millions of people and the profit motive. It is still growing. Here everything has a chance to thrive—for a while—as a rule only a brief while. Inferior as well as superior plants and trees flourish for a time, then both succumb to chaos and decay. They must give way to new plants pushing up from below, and so on. This is freedom under democracy. Jungle democracy!
LOUIS ADAMIC
1962
Don and Aldous and I went down by helicopter from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration office in Santa Monica to the North American plant in Downey, to be told about the moon rocket which they are building there. Don and I chiefly accepted the invitation for the sake of the helicopter ride, and it was even more exciting than I had expected. The ease and abruptness of the ascent is like flying in dreams. It is as if you merely make an extra effort of the will—symbolized by the roar of the engine—and suddenly the ground tilts away from you and you are soaring. I was also reminded of Rembrandt’s drawing of the angel leaving Manoah. Several people who happened to be passing watched our ascent into heaven with expressions of pleased amazement.
The city was shocking in its uniformity; all those roofs and little yards and bug-autos and occasional glittering green pools, so much of it, stretching away and away, you never saw the end of it. Only, in the background, the big mountains appearing behind smears of yellow smog.
The eager-beaver executives at North American were intimidated by Huxley’s ghost-pale introspective intensity. He was like a ghost they had raised to speak to them of the future. And they didn’t much like what they heard. Aldous held forth with his usual relish on the probability that the astronauts would bring back some disease which would wipe out the human race. And then he described the coming overpopulation of the earth. You felt that these people had bad consciences. They were making a fortune for their firm because the government will aid and abet them in playing gadgetry. So they keep reminding all who will listen that if they can go faster than the speed of light, and if they can reach an inhabited planet, and if the inhabitants of that planet are ahead of us in technics, and if they are willing and able to communicate to us what they know—why, then we shall be able to make great strides ahead.
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
AUGUST 12
1877
PICO HOUSE
Everything about here pleases me and I felt sorely tempted to take Dr. Congar’s advice and invest in an orange patch myself. I feel sure you will be happy here with the Doctor and Allie among so rich a luxuriance of sunny vegetation. How you will dig and dibble in that mellow loam! I cannot think of you standing erect for a single moment, unless it be in looking away out into the dreamy West.
I made a fine shaggy little five days’ excursion back in the heart of the San Gabriel Mountains, and then a week of real pleasure with Congar….He has a fine little farm, fine little family, and fine cozy home. I felt at home with Congar and at once took possession of his premises and all that is in them. We drove down through the settlements eastward and saw the best orange groves and vineyards, but the mountains I, as usual, met alone. Although so gray and silent and unpromising they are full of wild gardens and ferneries. Lilyries!—some specimens ten feet high with twenty lilies, big enough for bonnets!
JOHN MUIR
1913
Los Angeles is no paradise. The color line is there and simply drawn. Women have had difficulty in having gloves and shoes fitted at stores, the hotels do not welcome colored people, the restaurants are not for all that hunger.
W.E.B. DU BOIS
AUGUST 13
1993
[M.] is the tennis coach who was hired to coach Erik exclusively after his parents’ deaths. He said he helped Erik get settled in an apartment in the Marina del Rey Towers and managed all his waking moments.
HAZEL THORNTON
2014
This landscape is volatile, the gods are throwing lightning bolts at swimmers in the sea, opening up the ground to swallow our chariots, rattling the earth with their stomach growls. That sense of Los Angeles should be in the book. Though I don’t remember any earthquakes as a child, just the biting smog, the smog that bit my face and eyes and made me plead not to go downtown.