Shifting Allegiances as Autoland Commuter

Those of us raised in Southern California know that the brown bear doesn’t really belong on our state flag. I mean no disrespect to wildlife enthusiasts or stuffed bear collectors when I say this, but it seems to me that the more appropriate symbol would be a car--say a Toyota or a Honda.

That, of course, means putting a foreign import on a domestic flag, and I also don’t want to offend Rush Limbaugh acolytes or other superpatriots.

So we might want to think about putting a Ford Escort, a GM Saturn or some other American car on the flag. But can we really speak with any confidence about there being a bona fide American car anymore, what with so many of their parts being made in other countries, and the cars themselves being assembled here and there?

Perhaps a better idea would be to allow each community to choose its own auto symbol. Westlake Village might go for the Infiniti, while Santa Paulans might opt for a pickup truck. Residents of Ojai might like a Jeep, while Ventura, being the county seat, might go for a fleet-type car, like a Pontiac Grand Am or a GM Caprice.

Then again, many residents of Moorpark, Simi Valley, Camarillo and now Oxnard, might choose a little train car, a symbol of Metrolink.

What? A commuter symbol in Autoland? It still seems like a silly idea to most people, judging by the crowds that can be found just about anywhere on the 101 at rush hour.

It also seemed like an odd notion to freelance writer Barbara Weldon Tone, who, along with a couple thousand other Ventura County riders, climbed onto a train at the recently opened Metrolink station in Oxnard, to do this week’s Centerpiece story on the new breed of Southern California commuter.

“I had been hearing this train whistle from my house,” said Weldon Tone, who lives in Simi Valley. “One day, I was caught at the Metrolink crossing and I thought to myself, ‘I wonder who rides this thing? Somebody must be using it or it wouldn’t still be here after a year and a half.’ I decided to find out.”

Weldon Tone said it didn’t take her long to become a convert to commuter travel.

“I’m something of an environmentalist, and I had great hope after riding it that this might actually catch on,” she said. And she even took an active role to help ensure that it would--she purchased some tickets for herself and her daughter to go to downtown Los Angeles for next month.

But she’s still suffering a sort of cultural shock. It might take some time before she is really comfortable with the idea of wholesale abandonment of the automobile.

“I’ve been in Southern California for 27 years,” she said, “and I really thought I’d never see the day when Californians would ride the train to work like they do in New Jersey.”

New Jersey put its coat of arms on the state flag and they manage to do the right thing. Maybe we should just stick to our brown bear.