A July Sunday in L.A. . . .

Nobody seems to save newspapers anymore, not even newspaper offices. To read a complete Los Angeles Times from a Sunday morning 10 years ago requires hours at a library, reconstructing the paper from microfilm, page by blurry page. What emerges from this tedium, though, is a remarkable--if somewhat skewed--looking glass back into another time, and seemingly another city.

The major foreign crisis of the day--July 22, 1984--was set in Poland, where the Communists were under pressure to free political prisoners. The most prominent death was that of Jim Fixx, the fitness guru who collapsed while jogging. Inside the front section Geraldine Ferraro, the new Democratic nominee for vice president, was pictured pushing a grocery cart through a supermarket. Ah, enlightenment.

In Sports, a baseball roundup noted that Dodger relief pitcher Steve Howe, serving his first suspension for substance abuse, was hawking used cars on late night television. A business columnist declared that the 15% mortgage was here to stay. Cellular car phones were advertised for $2,195. And in a letter to the editor, Phyllis Hall Stephens wrote to thank firefighters for saving her home “from the dreadful fire in the Hollywood Hills.”

Dominating the edition was news about the 1984 Olympics, set to open in L.A. in less than a week. The front page reported the Olympic torch relay’s arrival in the city. A large color photo captured a celebrity torchbearer bounding up a hill into Santa Monica. “Every time I thought I was getting tired,” the runner was quoted as saying, “I would hear the crowd’s cheering, and that would keep me going.” The runner was O.J. Simpson.

Like I said, another time, another city.

*

I remember that day. I remember waiting with other reporters for Simpson to catch his breath before he obliged us with a quote. I also remember, in a larger sense, that time in the city. Los Angeles in 1984 was full of itself. The city of suburbs had grown up. It had developed both economic muscle and culture. It had developed a skyline. It had arrived.

The Olympics were to serve as a debut, an international coming out party. “Two and a half billion people,” Peter Ueberroth was quoted as telling a rally of his Olympic workers, “half of the living, breathing people on Earth, are going to be looking out here and watching us.” Evidence of a general municipal preening could be found in almost every section of the newspaper.

In Real Estate, a Downtown condominium development offered this testimonial from a tenant: “I left L.A. years ago for Newport Beach--When I saw the Skyline, I moved back.” A soap opera actor who carried the flame down Sunset Boulevard was quoted about the large spectator turnout: “It shows that the people here can come together when it counts.” Sunday Calendar, in its effort to document what the new L.A. offered the world, examined the migration of movie industry figures to Malibu. “My favorite metaphor for Malibu,” one screenwriter was quoted as saying, “is the airplane flying across the ocean. The planes flying in bring all the new talent. And the planes flying out cart away all the old talent.”

There was evidence that this tower of self-affection was on more than mere feathers. In the classifieds, the “jobs offered” category ran for a remarkable 71 full pages. Major aerospace companies made full-page appeals for engineering talent. “Skunk Works engineering is legendary,” enthused Lockheed in its ad. “Become a part of that legend.” Elsewhere, construction permit applications were reported running at an all-time high. New companies moving into Los Angeles were listed in small type.

*

Now, of course, the Skunk Works is a vacant relic. Now the planes flying out are watched with distress, and company departures are reported in full doomsday detail. Now, “when it counts,” the city often seems determined to pull apart. And the last time O.J. traveled a road lined with a cheering crowd, he carried, not a Grecian flame, but a gun.

Ten years later, it is possible to pick through the L.A. Times from that Sunday morning in 1984 and spot the cracks. The police commissioner’s concern, voiced in a Metro story, about the new menace of gang violence. The economist’s warning that the boom in housing starts could not last, a warning that merited four paragraphs. The complaint from minority-owned businesses that Olympic opportunity was not trickling down to all quarters of the city. And so on.

To travel back into that time now is to wonder, finally, what in fact was real. A city on the cusp of greatness? A city on the brink of decline? And what then to make of the news that landed on the doorstep today, another Sunday in July? Is it possible that things aren’t as bad now as we thought they were good then?