Goodby, and Come Again . . . Next Year

The Rose Parade is over, the bleachers are coming down, the amazing garbage collection corps has already cleaned up all but a few scraps here and there and the people, the outside people, have all gone home. Thank goodness.

Oh, we welcome them all--look, there’s one from Michigan! (For almost everyone originally came, even to Pasadena, from somewhere in the Midwest.) Connecticut--egads, they drove all the way here from Connecticut.

And we are patient, we proud Pasadena residents, waiting at the stop lights for the camper to decide whether he’s turning the corner or not, waiting at the gas station for the station wagon to find out how to get to Orange Grove and waiting in line at the supermarkets for people in duckbill caps and wool jackets checking out armfuls of potato chips, corn chips, hot dog buns.

We smile; we welcome them to our city. We are not inconvenienced by having to point out to them how to get to the 210 Freeway or Los Angeles, but, underneath it all, we are tapping our toes, waiting for them to go away again. For what, after all, could possibly be more incongruous than campers in Pasadena?

We wish them well in their temporary happiness in Pasadena but it is, well, almost painful to see those Winnebagos, those silver Zephyrs, those road rovers, those whatever those other names are, parked on lots on Orange Grove. After all, Orange Grove was millionaire’s row and somehow I cannot associate campers and millionaires. Just look at that: paper sacks, chip bags, to say nothing of beer cans tossed in the street-- on camper tree-lined streets, for heaven’s sakes.

Egads, there on the corner of California Boulevard and Orange Grove is the green tent with Coleman gas lamps--tenting tonight on millionaires row.

We are private in Pasadena, all but reticent, and--while we are pleased to have visitors--well, visitors should leave after a decent visiting interval.

Happy New Year, all you from Indiana, Orange County, Illinois, Texas, Minnesota--come back again to visit, but, uh, not too soon. Maybe another year.