‘This is a nice place to be in California.’ : Generic Solution to Musical Search for the Soul of Van Nuys

Peter Hume started composing the new official song of Van Nuys in traffic school.

“I was driving on an Orange County freeway in the car-pool lane all by myself,” Hume confesses of the misdeed that became his creative opportunity. “But it wasn’t anywhere near Van Nuys, I swear.”

Hume knew that, as part of Van Nuys’ 75th anniversary celebration this year, the Chamber of Commerce was offering $500 for a three-minute theme song for the Valley community, founded by W. P. Whitsett and J. B. Van Nuys in 1911.

And so, while the traffic-school teacher delivered the Ten Commandments of Parallel Parking, the 31-year-old musician searched surreptitiously for the words that would best convey the elusive soul of Van Nuys.

You can imagine Hume’s quandary.

Loyal as only residents of despised places can be, Hume has nothing but good things to say about Van Nuys, where he lives when not on the road playing guitar with Melissa Manchester or some other out-of-town gig. (Hume aspires to be a multiple-threat musician in the tradition of Quincy Jones. Meanwhile, he says, “I do a lot of different things, all of which add up to the rent.”)

But even the community’s virtues don’t translate readily into lyrics you’ll never forget. Can you imagine, for instance, humming a few bars of Hume’s observation that “At Its Best, the Valley is a Nice Place to Live--Except for the Summer Smog”?

Initially, Hume hoped to discover some landmark that would shout “Van Nuys!” to the rest of the world and to fashion his song around that. He came up with zip. Philadelphia has its Liberty Bell, not to mention its cheese steaks, Hollywood has its sign, St. Louis its arch, but what does Van Nuys have that’s uniquely its, except a collective memory of the halcyon days when every teen-ager in the Valley cruised Van Nuys Boulevard?

Hume was unbowed, however. After all, he had previously penned jingles extolling the virtues of such non-charismatic institutions as Pioneer Cooperative Bank and Grossman’s Hardware. If Hume couldn’t find any specific upbeat things to say about the Valley’s first planned community, he would say vague upbeat things.

The generic approach had worked for him two years ago when he wrote a contest-winning song for Redondo Beach without once mentioning the pier.

“I don’t want to say they’re interchangeable, but they’re similar,” Hume says of his South Bay and Valley ditties. The nucleus of both, he explains, is, “This is a nice place to be in California.”

Hume’s winner in a field of 48 entries was not “Van Nuys! Van Nuys!” or “I Left my Heart on Van Nuys Boulevard,” but “We Love the Life in Van Nuys.”

It begins:

“Wake up, it’s a Valley morning--there’s so much that we can do. Wake up, it’s a new day dawning and I want to be with you. You love the life you’re living, I can see it in your eyes. You love the life--in Van Nuys.”

“It starts out as just a love song and then, oops, there are words about Van Nuys,” its creator notes proudly.

Jonathon Bernstein, a Hollywood public relations man who is helping Van Nuys burnish its image, loves the new anthem. “It’s outstanding,” he says. “It’s like a Carpenters song.”

According to Bernstein, another tune vied with Hume’s in the final round of judging. The also-ran was ultimately rejected because it contained “negative messages” about other Valley communities. Hume didn’t slam Sylmar or batter Burbank in the course of beatifying Van Nuys.

Hume will get his $500 tomorrow and Van Nuys will officially get its song at a ceremony during the Jubilee / Recycler Street Festival (which continues Sunday).

Van Nuys’ only official identity may be as a working-class component of the City of Los Angeles, but it now has a complement of songs and symbols worthy of a banana republic. Its spanking new flag will also be unfurled tomorrow--a banner almost as generic as Hume’s song, bearing your basic California palm tree against your basic California sun.

John Bowers, a 26-year-old graphic artist from Azusa, designed the winning banner, chosen from 50 entries. It’s a very contemporary design, he says, done in “white, gray, baby blue and pink, a la ‘Miami Vice.’ ”

Bowers will receive $500, as will Jeremy Paige, who won the Van Nuys Trivia Contest. (Oddly, twice as many people wrote songs or designed flags as entered the demanding trivia quiz, distributed in Valley magazine.)

Paige, a 24-year-old film maker from Encino, figured he was able to get 62 out of 75 questions right because he has been studying the Valley for more than a year while making a video documentary on its history called “The View from Pierce Hill.”

No sports buff, Paige didn’t know that Don Drysdale was from Van Nuys, but he recalled that both Robert Redford and Marilyn Monroe attended high school there.

“The question that stumped me the most was whether Amelia Earhart had ever crash-landed her airplane in the streets of Van Nuys,” Paige remembers. “I guessed no.”

Right. Lots of people have, but not Amelia.