His Secret No Longer

Well, you really blew it (“Tehachapi Booster,” Letters, Feb. 18). When I make that major, final move, Tehachapi is no longer a contender. And I had been gleefully hoarding this secret knowledge for so many years.

Even though you children of the “me” generation are incapable of understanding my concern, your parents may. Particularly, if they are native-born Angelenos over 60.

They will recall L.A. before it had 1 million residents, when mom made a home while dad went to work, when you could push your stalled car from the center lane of Wilshire to the nearest gas station without creating a traffic jam or getting cussed at, when you could cross Wilshire (jaywalk) in the middle of the block without even walking fast, and at 11 p.m., there might be two or three cars a mile.

South of Olympic, west of Fairfax were vast acres of undeveloped land. La Brea, La Cienega, Sepulveda and Lincoln going south of Olympic, Pico, Venice, etc. became dirt roads.

The Rex and other gaming ships were anchored 3 miles off Venice and Ocean Park, both of which had piers and fun zones. Knotts really was a farm, surrounded by miles of open fields, and a realtor’s major sales aid was the Red Car line.

Anyway, to spend my retirement years in low-density housing and traffic equivalent to the L.A. of my youth and have it remain tolerable past 2010 requires a community with a fraction of a million people today.

In my prime, two-car families were rare, many had no car at all, streetcars (and later, buses) were everywhere, and life was a mite slower-paced.

Nowadays, with everyone over 16 having his/her own car, population densities 1,000 times greater, and crime at its zenith, I yearn for what Tehachapi might have been until that letter writer blew her mouth off. Nothing is exempt from early destruction by explosive growth.

Now I have to start searching all over again.

ARTHUR K. WEHL

La Canada Flintridge