No Flight From Vandals, Burglars

Neither thievery nor vandalism is a new pestilence. The Vandals destroyed the public buildings of Rome for senseless kicks before the 5th Century.

When I was a little girl, my mother made my father three silk shirts. It showed her deep love for my father because this was a lady whose sewing was limited to Halloween costumes that only had to hang together for a couple of hours.

When she had the shirts finished, Daddy proudly hung them in his closet. That night while we were out to dinner, burglars stole the shirts. Mother was so mad, she immediately set about making more shirts. After six months of agonizing stitchery, they were finished and a burglar came and took them. That was the last time Mother picked up a needle and who could blame her?

When I lived in Pasadena, my house was burglarized. Gone were silver baby cups, my wedding ring, Doug’s fraternity pin and every piece of sterling silver and real jewelry in the house.

It isn’t just the value of the stuff that is taken. It’s the loss of sanctity that sits over the house like a miasma.

But I have always missed my great-grandmother’s spoon holder. This was about nine inches tall, made of silver, and it stood on three splayed feet. It had an elaborate handle and halfway down were four little notched platforms standing out from the center post to hold the spoons. The wonder of it was that on the base was a pheasant of silver with its wings fully spread. It was opulently Victorian and I loved it.

In La Habra, Doug and I were burglarized and lost a television set, a sound system and a record-player.

Doug was in San Diego. I called him and asked him if he had turned on the television, found it didn’t work and had a repairer pick it up. It was a foolish question because I knew he would have driven little pointed sticks under his fingernails before he turned on daytime television.

The police found those burglars. It was a sophisticated ring. The thieves drove new vans with the name of a fake television repair company. The operation was run by a man who traded narcotics to his stable of burglars. He even accepted orders for specific brands and models of electronic equipment and gave his customers warranties. I went to court for the trial and when one of the burglars was on the stand, the prosecuting attorney asked me if I’d ever seen him. I said, “No, but he looks like our gardener.”

It turned out to be our gardener’s brother. The gardener was a respectable citizen who also drove a school bus. He had hired his brother to help him clear out the avocado grove, and the brother had noted that Doug and I were both gone all day and the house stood at the end of a private road high in the La Habra hills. The gardener was so humiliated, he moved his family to Laguna Beach where I am sure he prospers.

Burglaries are scary but you can sort of understand them. It’s wanton destruction that is hard to understand, impossible to forgive.

Here’s what happened the other day. Two friends and I drove to the San Fernando Valley to a political event. We parked a block from the meeting place and walked back to listen to mercifully short speeches. We had a box lunch and left in a welcome sprinkle of rain.

The friend who had driven, went to get her car and drove it into the driveway where we waited. As she came to a stop, someone said, “Hey, you have a flat tire.”

So we did, flattened by a sharp instrument.

Stuck under a windshield wiper was a note mentioning a national rental car firm. It read, “You hit a rental car. We have a picture of your car and license plate to prove it. You will here (sic) from the car rental place.”

The writer was not constrained by logic or any such falderal. The picture would have proven nothing because the car is pristine and brand-new and had hit nothing.

Carol paid two helpful workers from the meeting place and they put on the doll tire that cars now are equipped with which cannot be driven any farther than the nearest tire store. While the tire store people put on the new $98 tire, we wandered up and down Ventura Boulevard in the wonderful rain.

Maybe there was no connection between the note and the slashed tire but we were left with the dilemma of why it happened. Did the tire slasher get a surge of ecstasy when he heard the air rush out of the tire?

Or have we become so full of hatred for each other that property destruction bestows glee upon the perpetrator? I wish we could practice a little civility toward each other. The other day, a clerk at the fish counter in a supermarket snarled at me. I stalked away without the fish I wanted. Nobody wins. Small meannesses proliferate and grow large.

Then I read of some marvelous someone who has done something good for someone with no thought of reward. Hope, like a daft daisy, again pushes its way through the hard parched ground.

What happened to us was not a tragedy. But I wish it hadn’t happened and I wish I had gotten my great-grandmother’s spoon holder back.