Across L.A.
Century City to La Canada
June 14, 2013
Forty minutes into my three-hour journey across LA, from work in Century City to Alex's graduation party in La Canada, I stopped at Cookie Casa on Beverly Blvd to pick up a box of party snacks -- and a macaroon for the road. I had an impulse to share with the chatty girl boxing the cookies, tell her that I was happy to be cruising through an old familiar neighborhood, one that I used to frequent some ... 30 years earlier. Then I thought about how that might have sounded to me when I lived there: someone reminiscing about driving through Beverly Hills in the early 1950s. Too many years, I figured. It might frighten her. I paid and thanked her, and continued east.
On Sycamore, I checked in on old 846-3/5. Occupied and the TV on. "Can I help you," a woman stepping out of a pickup truck demanded. Probably not, I replied -- honestly, but a little sassy. I told her that I was just journeying down memory lane, and it turned out she had moved in not long after we had moved out. I asked her to give my best to our old landlord, Bill, who surprisingly, lives. One of the studios was for rent. I sent a pic of the sign to Jen: "Want to start all over?"
