Why No One Sings the Blues in O.C.

With all the terrible problems we face today, reflecting on not-so-terrible problems can be a welcome diversion, even a comfort. So in that spirit, let us spend a cheerful moment on the annoyances of Orange County life.

We’ll start on the streets. Because the county has two Chapman Avenues, half the people in Placentia really belong in Garden Grove, except that they took the wrong Chapman exit off the Orange Freeway. Perhaps trying to avoid further confusion, local officials have tried to be more creative with street names. Sometimes they have picked Spanish phrases with unfortunate translations. Fullerton has a street named “Camino Recondito,” which means “concealed road”--not very encouraging for people trying to find it.

Many of the English names are no better. A few years back, my wife and I lived in Orange on “Grisly Canyon Drive.” According to the Random House College Dictionary, “grisly” means “causing a shudder or feeling of horror: gruesome.” No wonder we didn’t get any trick-or-treaters.

Our home was in a new development, something plentiful in Orange County. New housing tracts are good for the economy but present unexpected problems to their residents. After you move in, it will be awhile before the next edition of the Thomas Guide includes a map showing your new street. And until it does, many people in Orange County will doubt your existence.

“Uh, I don’t see a listing for that street,” the skeptical operator will say when you call for a delivery. It probably won’t help when the operator asks for a cross street, since it too is likely to be a not-yet-listed strip of concrete. At that point, you should despair of ever getting the delivery. Still, some intrepid businesses will take the risk and send trucks out in search of your uncharted home. Legend has it that certain unlucky drivers never find the address and spend years wandering county roads.

So if you see a ghostly-looking trucker pass you in a vehicle marked “Webvan” or “Montgomery Ward,” you’ll know what happened.

In older neighborhoods, lost drivers can find their way by heading in one direction until they reach a familiar intersection. But you can’t do that in Orange County’s new developments, which have lots of cul-de-sacs. For those of you who don’t speak French, “cul-de-sac” translates as “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Even if you do know where you’re going, you still might not get there if lane changes are necessary. Throughout Southern California, and especially in Orange County, your fellow drivers will have a peculiar interpretation of directional signals. In most of the United States, for instance, turning on the left blinker means “I would like to move into the lane to my left. Please let me in.” Here it means “Speed up and block my lane change at all costs!”

If you do manage to execute a lane change, the driver behind you will respond with a hand signal. For the sake of patriotism and peace of mind, you should assume that the driver is saying that the United States is No. 1.

Eventually, you may reach your destination. And in a county full of single-family dwellings, that destination is often a big warehouse store. If you’re like me, you start this trip with anxiety, since you don’t know the name of the item that you need: You know only that the one you have is broken. You get even more nervous when you enter the big warehouse, since it contains thousands of things whose names you don’t know.

Once in the door, you must survive the determined attempts of forklift operators to run you over. Then you may try to find your way around on your own, but unless you have global-positioning technology at hand, your efforts will prove futile. You will have to ask one of the guys in the aprons. This is where it gets fun--for them. At least 50% of the time, they will direct you to the wrong aisle. (The figure is closer to 90% if you’re a man, since they figure that males should know this stuff genetically.)

When you finally end up in the correct aisle, you have to ask another apron guy for the item. “I need, you know, that round, rubber thing that goes up and down in the toilet tank. ...” The apron guy knows that the item is a “flapper,” but he will let you go on like this for a minute or two, just for the pleasure of watching you whimper.

Finally, you leave, defeated in spirit. You want to write a blues song about your whole experience in the county. And the final realization hits: Nothing rhymes with “Orange.”