Where God Spends the Summer

An acquaintance came down from Seattle, where he thinks God lives, took one look at L.A. and declared it the ugliest place he’d ever seen.

His declaration came as we were driving up the 405 from the airport, which is not one of the prettiest sights in town but no strip by which to judge a city you’re visiting for the first time.

I bristled at his comment not because I have a home-town attitude, L.A. not being my real hometown, but because I have a natural resentment of anyone criticizing even my ugly stepchild. Ugly or not, it’s mine.

I’m using that metaphor, by the way, because I don’t have a stepchild and I don’t think L.A. is ugly. I think parts of the place are, well, unattractive but then I imagine parts of paradise are probably marginal.

I’ve been to some of the prettiest cities in the world like Paris and Prague and if you get to the industrial areas before you hit the beauty you might declare them ugly, too, and that would be insane.

Dan, which is my acquaintance’s name, was partially upset because the morning was overcast and he wanted to bask in what he referred to in a dour manner as “L.A.’s Famous Sun.” Its ugly sun, no doubt.

His endless babble about how he could never live in such an ugly place finally got to me. I pulled off the freeway in front of a 7-Eleven and said, “Get out.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because you’re ugly.”

He was still standing there by his suitcase looking frightened and bewildered as I drove away.

*

I will admit that when I first came here 25 years ago I didn’t feel as though I had arrived in Emerald City. Our plane descended through a layer of smog so thick and dark that my wife declared we would be spending the rest of our lives in a bowl of onion soup.

“I feel,” she said sadly, “like a crouton.”

But as time passed, the onion soup lifted and we began looking around and found beauty. We moved into Topanga with its mountains and trees and 10,000 different views.

I remember waking one morning and looking toward a ridgeline in the distance. A mist lay like a bridal veil over the peaks, a veil made faintly luminescent by the muted rays of sunlight shining through it.

It was yet one more of the Santa Monica Mountains’ shifting vistas, offering glimpses of strength and delicacy in the alternating light, sometimes ominous, often curious, mostly glorious.

Then I drove along an ocean that was a gleaming silver and onto a freeway looking toward the towers of downtown outlined against mountains in the distance which, in the fading days of winter, were still draped with snow.

It was a day of enchantment, a magical day, the kind of day to paint into memory and keep forever, like a rainbow over heaven--or the sweet face of a child in deep sleep.

Since then I’ve driven through every corner of the county and have found pockets of beauty so intense they absorb you: narrow, tree-lined streets in the San Fernando Valley, low, rolling hills in the desert, stately Victorians in the city.

And especially I’ve found the beauty of the people, strong and good and caring, reaching out and reaching in, adjusting, changing, thinking, evolving, trying to do what’s right even when it hurts.

*

I drove around the block and came back on Dan. He was still standing there looking terrified, as though he expected that at any moment someone would drive by and shoot him or maybe the earth would swallow him up.

“Get in,” I said. “You’re still ugly, but I can tolerate that if you can tolerate spending a few days in a place you despise. Think of it as being in the Army.”

As I assess the situation now, Dan wasn’t really seeing what was around him, if you know what I mean. He was subconsciously remembering what he’d heard about L.A. and that had become a part of his emotional vision.

It was easier once to mock the town as ugly, dumb, self-indulgent and dangerous. To see the smog dissipating and the crime rate going down and to witness the city dominating the world stage like an operatic diva just isn’t as much fun. Listen to it singing. Hear its voice rising.

I didn’t try to convince Dan, but at least by his experience of being unceremoniously dumped for a few moments he knew better than to keep brutalizing my stepchild.

Oakland will always be my real home, existing like a place in a kid’s dream of lazy days and happy thoughts, but this is my city now, up and doing, smiling, laughing, dancing, building, thinking, dreaming.

We like it here and we don’t feel like croutons anymore.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears every Tuesday and Friday. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com