W
hen I was a teenager in Los Angeles, L.A. was the coolest place on the planet. Everything seemed to start
there. The Beach Boys made surfing so popular that even kids in Phoenix, Arizona, drove around with
surfboards on top of their cars.
The nearby burg where my grandmother lived, however, was like an urban sleeping pill. A stuffy
town for the elderly, it was gently lampooned in the 1964 hit, “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.”
I used to drive out there on the winding Arroyo Seco Parkway, the first freeway in California, to see my high school
girlfriend. I’d spill out of that concrete chute into a realm of handsome houses with seriously manicured lawns, a genteel
haven for well-mannered men and women. A funny song of the day went like this, sung by a smooth crooner: “Paaas-a-
dena, where people wear nice clothes...”
A SOJOURN IN THE CITY OF THE CIVILIZED
summer
|
fall
45
