Best and Worsts / Valley Reader Write : Tributes Tell Why Valley Is Home

Couched as it was with reminders of the earthquake, the wildfires and the sagging economy, our question to readers was simple: Why do you stay in the San Fernando Valley?

In dozens of poems, essays and even a limerick, written on manual typewriters, computers or scrawled on note cards, you responded, defiantly defending your neighborhood, your strip mall, your Valley.

For some, it is the memories that keep you here: of orange groves, farmlands or the deer that once roamed the Valley floor. For others, it is as simple as the convenience of nearby malls or the endlessly sunny days. Others point to something less tangible, a collective spirit that rises in the face of each new disaster.

But we asked for your words, so we’ll let you explain. Here are some of our favorite remarks, illustrated with photographs by Brian Vander Brug about why there’s no place quite like the Valley to call home.

A Native Through Good Times and Bad

I belong here. I have been here 60 years and have roots that invade the bedrock. Nowhere else would I be me. Those who flee after a disaster are the drifters. They just as readily left the last place, and the place before that. They may have bought homes here and held jobs, but they still confuse Vanowen with Vanalden and can’t remember which streets cross the flood control channels.

I can’t count the times I’ve been shaken out of bed or watched fire race up a hillside or mud slide down one. But just as many times have I experienced the recovery. The rubble will disappear. The Northridge mall will open with newer stores. At Cal State Northridge, I have witnessed the most fantastic Phoenix rise, not buildings being rebuilt so much as spirit--doing what can be done, and then more.

I’m still here because we natives have learned to roll with the punches.

MARILYN MANSFIELD

Winnetka