Sing It From the Rooftops: Look Out Below

There recently were roofers singing on the roof of the house next to mine. What a wonderful tradition it would be, don’t you think, if, like gondoliers, it was a professional trait of roofers to sing as they slung the shingle?

When the big Dumpster arrived, word would spread down the block that the Joneses were getting re-roofed. Then the roofers would arrive, begrimed but noble tradesmen, with a warm sparkle in their eyes from seeing the world from a lofty vantage. The ladders would go up, and the singing would commence, arias and the smell of tar mixing in the air as the perpetually sunburned roofers lifted their voices in joyous song. Mockingbirds would pick up the melody. Blocks away, other roofers would wave to their elevated fellow tradesmen, their own voices distant but clear under the California sun.

Maybe some would specialize in flamenco, stomping out horse-like rhythms on the slanting tiles. Others might do the Sons of the Pioneers and Marty Robbins trail ballads, doo-wop or Broadway show tunes. Folding chairs would collect below, as hushed lawn parties gathered to listen. Maybe there would even be critics, who would also inspect the building to make sure it was up to code.

And on the roofs they would sing, sing, sing huge lungsful of song, until night prevailed and kitchen cooking smells wafted to the stars.

You don’t get quite the same effect when it’s meaty guys bellowing along tunelessly with the Bob Seger anthems and beer ads playing on a classic rock station, as my neighbor’s roofers were. Not the same effect at all.

I’ve got to tell you, this world would be a damn sight more interesting if you’d all let me run it for you. OK, I know the lipstick for dogs wasn’t such a good idea, and I’m sorry about the liability problems with the bunk Hummers, but my heart’s in the right place. What’s wrong with trying to liven up the place a bit?

For example, take these Angels. If you had been a striking ballplayer with time on your hands and you had any amount of soul, wouldn’t you have called your teammates and started up sandlot games with the other pro teams, playing for free for the fans who have supported you? Forget the owners, the stadiums, the TV rights, the agents, the money and everything and just play for the pure crack-of-the-bat love of it. Is there a law saying such things can only happen in movies?

If your life were a movie, would you want to watch it?

Yeah, me neither, unless they got Sophia Loren to play me.

But that should be how it is, to live a life where idealism, love, adventure, absurdity and a good soundtrack are held in high esteem. Instead it seems most of us are breaking our backs to create a soulless future none of us wants to live in.

How many more uniform gated condo tracts--motto: “If you lived here, you’d keep driving”--that look like minimum security prisons; how many more corporate tacos; how many more cog-like jobs where there is no place for the emotion, uniqueness and inventiveness that is the best part of us, how many more frozen freeway lanes, before we realize we’re living in hell and there’s no one to blame but ourselves?

A lot of my favorite people have abandoned Orange County for less imminently hell-bound climes. I may yet myself, though I don’t really think there’s anywhere far enough to run these days that a yogurt franchise hasn’t reached first.

When we started this column a few years ago, we called it Lost in O.C. simply because it was the first name that sprang to mind. It has proved increasingly apt for me, though.

There’s plenty I love about the county. I love the old ladies who keep their gardens so beautiful, and the surfer dudes who open juice bars, and the life on 4th Street, Santa Ana, and Main Street, Huntington, and the punker bands in their garages and the few wild places that remain.

After spending most of my 40 years here, I can even sometimes grow nostalgic about places I hate and take a bemused pride in the nut cases we keep sending to Congress. I’ve learned to enjoy a sunset despite the Kmart and billboards that may be in the way. I love the friends I have here, and any place that has produced their like can’t be so bad.

But I’ve seen so many dreams smothered here. There used to be wonderful folk dances at a home in Garden Grove, friendly, culturally intoxicating things that the neighbors loved and attended. Shut down by the city. Huntington’s Golden Bear, with nearly half a century of history in it, razed by the city to put up a lifeless mall. Other unique mom-and-pop businesses that wither, while city master plans instead exalt the monied and mundane.

Then there was Safari Sam’s, one of the most encouraging places I’ve ever been. Owner Sam Lanni and his partner, Gil Fuhrer, gave an embracing home to everything from punk to poetry, Texas blues, R&B; street singers, experimental opera and Samuel Beckett plays, always putting art and their fellow man above money. So of course the city of Huntington Beach shut it down in 1986, and I don’t think the county’s culture--the real culture, not that pre-masticated glop trucked into our bigger concert halls--has yet recovered the sense of community that was growing there.

I realize none of this means squat to most of the tanned folks I share the freeways with, and it isn’t like I’m so filled with wrath that I can’t go be a happy mall consumer myself when the mood hits. But I am doubly glad for the places here where the human side still prevails. I’m glad for places such as Newport’s Lido Book Shoppe, where the small but carefully chosen selection shows a love of reading; and for Laguna Niguel’s Shade Tree Stringed Instruments, with its intimate folk concerts; and for the little Cajun dances in Orange, and for the tremendous and varied multicultural series at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, where South American, African and other far-flung music found a great listening audience.

That last place may become yet another casualty, with series director Jose Aponte leaving for what he describes as the more active cultural climate of West Palm Beach, Fla. This is not a good reflection of the state of Orange County, because, according to those who have been to West Palm Beach, the idea of a cultured existence there is buying a sixer of Michelob instead of Bud.

So, yeah, I do feel increasingly lost here and yearn for a place where more people walk around conversing instead of driving by with the air conditioning on, while all our lives grow colder.

This is the final Lost in O.C. in this paper. I’ve had a lot more fun than I usually get paid for and hope some of that came across. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you on a rooftop soon.