PRIVATE FACES, PUBLIC PLACES : A Brush With the Ghosts of Angels

On days that the city crowds in, that the eye tires of the Los Angeles door (bigger than the house), or the wretchedness of the street, there is a longing to be elsewhere. The spirit pines for noises that are not man-made, for yesteryear’s language with its space between words.

In such a mood, one is drawn to the highway, and, as chance would have it, to Sunland.

Others’ corners, others’ lives: how rarely we cross, shut into our cars, blindly crawling, like ants, along our narrow paths. And, indeed, at first in Sunland there is no sense of having traveled anywhere.

Bob’s Big Boy, McDonald’s, Sizzler, Thrifty, Payless: man’s plastic logos stretch mile upon mile. But St. Gabriel’s mountains rise right behind the main street. On clear days in downtown Los Angeles, they are distant, postcard mountains. Here they are fierce outposts of prehistory. They defy man’s franchises and conformity.

How could it have been for the early settlers, arriving dusty and frightened by train in Los Angeles from far away? Heavy-faced farmers with sickly wives, slight, uncertain businessmen with motherless children, spinsters who had toiled too long in offices and bachelors who had taken to hiding from life. Their savings tied in purses hung around their necks, their hopes quickened for finding a friendly land, a friendly climate.

Looking up at the implacable mountains, the familiarity of McDonalds and Jack-in-the-Box makes more sense. How much it must have meant to those early landsmen to find flying in this valley the same comforting Stars and Stripes that flew in Kansas and Michigan. It is too easy to forget that in this huge country, our memories are of traveling far and anxiously, looking always for signs of welcome.

All that was here then--all that God had left--were rocks and a stubborn soil, brush and rattlesnakes. Fires that burned for seven days. Floods that poured boulders and stones down through the canyons. What courage the newcomers had to bring to life vineyards and orchards here.

Signs of those old-timers are few, on the surface: some olive trees survive down by the Big Tujunga wash where, for years, a famous olive bottling factory stood. There is a home or two built of rocks carried from the wash, the smell of sage, the sound of wind blowing, of bird calls carrying far out by the canyon; slowly the past takes shape.

Along the back streets of Sunland, there is an ease that most of us have forgotten. Chickens scratch, children run from yard to yard; the notices are for dogs found, not dogs lost. In the bar of Sterlings restaurant, old and worn with bald red plush and deep, mid-day darkness, the men and women drinking at the bar do not even turn a head as the stranger enters. Few in the city have such confidence.

In the Salvation Army thrift shop, 30 and 40 years of history lie in bins and hang on racks. In this enormous cave are familiar old plastic cups and saucers, fussy lamps and desks, forgotten records, china puppies, teddy bears and dolls, squirrel boleros and spindly tables. It is as though 1959 had been frozen here--as though each of the old TVs, if turned on, would show President Eisenhower at peace.

Next door is another thrift shop, an Aladdin’s cave of vintage clothing. Out front are the ‘50s and ‘60s, lovingly preserved and pressed. Poodle skirts, straw hats with veils, long white gloves. Sandra Dee prom frocks. Jackie Kennedy pillboxes to perch on beehives. Petticoats and taffeta, crepe and net.

On weekends, they come here from the city to put together fashion outfits, club costumes--the world of dazzle and lightly tended money. During the week, locals come in--fingering the chiffon shyly, smiling wistfully at narrow-waisted strapless dresses, hearts fluttering under shapeless 2X shirts at reminders of young and slender days.

In a back room, behind a beaded curtain, a “museum” has been created. The finest outfits on sale, from a century and half a century ago: top hats, rich velvets, boa jackets, feather-light silk knickers, flapper hats with peacock feathers, flowing crepe tea gowns. Costume museums show less than this.

It is the old clothes, the very old ones, that work the strongest spell. Visiting outfits from the turn of the century, white lace summertime dresses, handmade with lace trimmings saved from dress to dress, a poke bonnet of velvet, a black-beaded dress covered with tucks and pleats, topped with ruched balloon sleeves. Who sewed these perfect, minute stitches? Whose hands turned the seams by kerosene lamplight in the nights of those hot, hard summers? The clothes are small--how short and fragile were these women who held themselves upright through heat, despair, temptation. Their spirits linger here, for these are the clothes they saved, the ones they laid away in dried flowers and memories.

We do not have to travel far; we simply have to pay attention.