Local Version of Main Street USA Is Quite a Road Trip

Main Street endures as a symbol of American life. What you see on Main Street is supposed to tell you what America is all about.

Orange County has several Main Streets, but the major one is the 12-mile stretch that runs from Irvine through Santa Ana into Orange. I imagined a visitor to America traveling our version of Main Street and then writing about it. The report might sound something like this:

“I traveled from south to north, beginning on the southerly end where Main Street sprouts from something called the West Yale Loop in Irvine. This is the America that many people believe represents the American Dream. Here, Main Street runs past neighborhoods with names like Woodbridge and Westpark. Wooden fences surrounded by shrubs, trees and manicured greens separate the homes from the traffic on the street, but it’s not at all uncommon to see women pushing babies in strollers along the sidewalks.

A neighborhood strip mall suggests nothing if not modern-day comfort: a video club, a juice club, a coffee shop, a vitamin store, a flower shop. Pastel is the color--and the mood--of the day.

Farther up the road, office parks and socializing sites dot the street, providing jobs and fun for the educated and leisure-oriented populace that lives here. I imagine someone putting in a long workday at a high-tech firm, then heading over to a sports club before dining at a trendy seafood restaurant/bar.

We pass under the 55 Freeway and, instantly, the landscape changes. We’re in Santa Ana and, for the time being, the low-rise office parks with futuristic names are gone. The first thing we see on the left is a farm worker on a tractor, touring rows of a celery field.

A little farther up on the right is an open field, sporting wildflowers. Companies with high-tech names are now replaced, every so often, by storefronts with Spanish names.

Life seems to pulsate a bit more, if only because there is more activity on the street as you continue toward downtown Santa Ana. Businesses become much more consumer-oriented or, as the Americans say, blue-collar.

The offerings on Main Street now tend toward auto repair, hardware, draperies and carpets, beauty salons, a Laundromat, and doughnut shops. It is not uncommon to see a crowd of five to 15 people waiting at a bus stop, or a woman pushing a grocery cart on the sidewalk. The scene is remindful of the blue-collar families of the 1950s and 1960s that toiled on city streets to earn their tickets to the suburbs.

Continuing into downtown Santa Ana, the transformation becomes almost complete. Here, Spanish signs compete with English on storefronts. The pastel Main Street of Irvine just seven miles back seems a distant memory, as greenery gives way to concrete sidewalks and glass storefronts.

Leaving downtown Santa Ana makes for another transition, as our northward trek continues. Once again, things begin spreading out a bit, as the confines of downtown give way to open spaces and beckoning freeways. Within a short distance, we come upon both the 5 and 22 freeways. From the six lanes on Main Street, you can look down on the tortoise pace of traffic on the 5 Freeway and understand easily how freeway construction helped Orange County explode with growth in the last 40 years.

In north Santa Ana, the scenery along Main Street changes again. The modest, confining nature of downtown surrenders to the more open, suburban feel of the MainPlace shopping center. Boarded-up storefronts two miles back are replaced by Nordstrom and Robinsons-May and Bullock’s. Merrill Lynch and Dean Witter do business on opposing street corners.

Into Orange now, a strip mall offers a quirky look at Americana--side by side in the row are the Yogurt Experience and Praise Chapel church. Not far ahead, Main Street settles into a residential neighborhood. Now, for the first time in a long time, rows of houses line the street. The side streets are named Birch and Sycamore and Cherry and Orangewood, and neat, modest bungalows with well-manicured lawns co-exist with four lanes of traffic.

Before long, though, the houses disappear and Main Street finishes its run between industrial parks on both sides and, in a noteworthy exception, a large strawberry field. The street dead-ends somewhat anti-climactically inside an industrial park.

If Main Street represents America, you must conclude that this is one diverse country, indeed. On this street alone, cultures and classes come and go and co-exist. Up and down Main Street, you see faces that are suburban and urban and, yes, even rural. You’ll see farmers, deli chefs, computer whizzes and stockbrokers.

You want to see America? You want to see Main Street USA?

Be advised: The trip may surprise you.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.