Lot May Be Vacant, but It’s Not Empty
Do not wait another week. Get in your car and get on the freeway and go to Claremont at once. There you will see the last of the vacant lots. They are blooming now: Wild rains have caused an early spring. One of the best is at D Street, which is not far from where the Foothill Freeway turns into Foothill Boulevard.
Approached from the west, it lies long and narrow, stretching itself leisurely along, with a ridge, a low-lying mound that seems almost the ghost of a railroad bed running through the middle of it. Approached from the east, it is squarer, fatter, fuller, its trees reduced in size, much more an ordinary vacant lot.
In front of the lot, bordering Foothill, is a self-grown faux hedge of vetch and wild geranium. There are just enough tall, dead weed stalks here and there to point out more decidedly the whole, green lush thickness of the land.
Here are those tall, yellow spattery-flowered weeds, and the taller, purplish-white ones (but closer up you see they are pink and white; why do they look purple from afar?) Here’s a paler version of the same with narrower leaves. Wild barley, waving its bent cluster of tan grain and green needles. A taller barley--no, it’s not; it’s grain but it doesn’t taste the same, only green. Minuscule yellow bells, such self-effacing flowers. (But how egotistic for us to feel that flowers grow for us to see.) It has those wide-leaved, some an inch-and-a-half wide, grass blades kids blow whistling noises through. I never learned how; after all, I was the kid who could whistle through my teeth. Here’s another wild grass or grain with shorter, thicker spears like crewel needles.
Dead center of the lot, a tall group of slim gray sticks, symmetrically arranged, point to the sky. Handsome things. Are they dead or in a month or two will they become an astounding centerpiece? On the west side of the lot is a tree with the same dead (or silvery dormant?) look and, close neighbors, two bush green trees muscle themselves like weightlifters. Here on the east edge, three wild balls of dead tumbleweed wait--oh for a wind to rampage over the meadow clear to the northern hills.
Vetch--beautiful, triumphant vetch--long may it wave its purpleness. Another wild grassling, smaller. Gad, you could spend a week studying the grasses alone here. Oh, for a year, a clear year to study a vacant lot.
I have parked next to the vacant lot at a doughnut place, Winchell’s. Every three years or so I have a doughnut, plain, powdered. Not bad, but not nearly as heavy as my grandmother’s were.
“Where am I?” I ask the doughnut girl. “Is this still Claremont?”
This is La Verne. Her aunt lives in La Verne on Baseline Road (which I had somehow allocated exclusively to Claremont), she herself grew up in La Verne, but now lives in Pomona. She is not sure where Pomona ends and Claremont begins--maybe at Towne. La Verne and Pomona are not as small as you think, she said. They are only short on their east-west axises; they run very long north and south, like strips. This was never made clear to me before.
Wouldn’t it be nice to revive those grand enameled signs that said, “Welcome to Town Name.” Some added on population numbers and days of Rotary Club meetings. The more polite of them said, “Leaving Town Name. Come Again.” If they put them back up I would slow down to read them all and know where I was. Ridiculous not to know if you are in Claremont, Pomona or La Verne, and there are one or two other towns I’m missing.
Already dusky, post-doughnut. A bird flies north, dipping almost like a skylark, giving a clear, wild cry.
The clumps of wild geraniums plump out like sudden sofas on the field; maybe there’ll be Japanese lanterns lit next to them later.
Other cries, other birds, wing to the far north end of the darkening meadow. I hope they hurry and raise their families before development tractors plow up their homeland.
Is there a preservation group for vacant lots? Our children will not know what a vacant lot is. Where would I send my membership check?
