CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : There <i> Is </i> a ‘Here’ Here (or <i> Was</i> ) : Natives still sense what makes L.A. unique and long for the days when it didn’t look like everyplace else.

It usually happens in August. I rise on a hot sunny morning, step onto the patio, sniff the air and announce to my wife that rain is imminent but won’t last more than five minutes. She’s always amazed when it happens just like I said it would. There’s no trick to it really; it’s called being a native. I resonate to the climate, topography, flora and fauna of Southern California. Its physical rhythms are my own. It’s home to me in every sense of the word.

Natives are not highly regarded in a state that is constantly flooded by newcomers, many of whom seek to replicate, in California, the world they left behind. We’re the ones who know the place, know the history, know its rhythms, and yet very little accrues to us as natives. We are, like Rodney Dangerfield, people who get no respect.

Aside from knowing the back roads, shortcuts and arcane routes to and from major events, we have our memories.

I remember when the only freeway in Southern California was the Arroyo Seco, and near the Southwest Museum exit was the Soap Box Derby run. In those days, the Arroyo Seco was unchannelized, and we’d make rafts and float lazily through the cattails to Camel’s Hump where we’d find arrowheads in the sandstone caves. Victory Park, now the site of the Rose Parade terminus, was only a dream not yet realized among the neatly laid out vineyards stretching to the mountains.

There was space between cities. Escondido, Fullerton, Cucamonga, Azusa, Covina and most of Orange County were still agricultural, with orchards, vineyards, orange and avocado groves. Smudge pots were a familiar sight, and 50,000-watt, clear-channel, Earle C. Anthony-owned KFI read the nightly fruit frost warnings from Pomona.

In those days, the big white steamer ran to Avalon, and the Hollywood Bowl had a reflecting pool in front of the stage. And, during the war years, Lakewood Boulevard, adjacent to Douglas Aircraft, had camouflage netting above it. Natives remember when doors weren’t locked, when NBC was at Sunset and Vine and Long Beach was more than sailors and Signal Hill, it was the Pike.

Eating out then had an excitement about it that has never since been the same. We had all those Brown Derbys and Frascatis, the original Stuft Shirt, Wil Wright’s and, of course, our own tropical isle, the Luau.

We remember, too, when real courtesy existed among drivers, and pedestrians were sacrosanct anywhere in the street.

We shared something as Californians and we felt connected by it. Many remember returning from the east on the Super Chief and experiencing the exhilaration of crossing the Colorado River into California and seeing palm trees again while rolling into Pasadena or Union Station. Everything clean and new and open to the future. What a place.

As natives, we know how to get around and we have our recollection of better times, but most of us aren’t satisfied with this. We hanker after a California whose spirit of place once united us. We’ve been subjected to an endless parade of “experts,” mostly from elsewhere, telling us who we are. New Yorkers are particularly prone to gratuitous definitions of Californians. They like to think that nothing was going on here until they arrived.

We natives understand why people come here. What we don’t understand is why they seek to re-create the world they’ve left behind. For us, the pain never ends, for while California may represent a better life for those who come here now, it represents a decline to those of us who were born and raised here and remember the 1940s, ‘50s and even earlier.

One small minor request from a native, if I may, to those who now call California home. Please stop saying “out here, in Los Angeles,” or “out here, in California,” or just plain “out here.” This phrase has its origins in Eastern geocentric snobbery. On the other hand, it’s perfectly accurate to speak of “back there,” because, we are, after all, here.

Los Angeles is a place of great enthusiasm and vitality. The land, our pride of place, is our strength. We’ve lost too many of our angels--our cultural landmarks, our open spaces, our historic buildings and brilliant architecture. A recent letter to The Times questioned spending $4 million to bring back Angels Flight. We must bring it back. It’s not the $4 million; it’s one of our angels. We’ve been promised its return for 24 years. Today, it remains at the foot of Bunker Hill, a languishing testimony to other times when we felt closer to one another and pride in Los Angeles was everywhere.