A walk, a book, a piece of pie

Not long after moving to Los Feliz, I awoke one night to the sound of a truck that was trapped in my cul-de-sac. Perhaps trapped is an understatement. It sounded like the truck had come to die on my street. It snarled, clutched and made a terrible tractionless noise like a foot-pedal sewing machine gone mad. It seemed to stagger under its myriad compartments; at one point, I thought it was simply going to fall over in the street.

But no -- its three-point turn became a 33-point turn. As I stood clutching the side of my window frame, from the corner of my eye I spied the beam of a flashlight making its way down the hill next door, a light that swept in sure-handed arcs. At that moment, the truck heaved itself toward my guesthouse, skidded backward, then tore off, leaving two marks on my street like flat, black eyebrows. Such is life in the big city.

And then, out of the rubbery-smelling smoke, he appeared: the Man From Los Feliz. I hadn’t yet met any of my neighbors, and there he was -- a man in a bathrobe neatly tied over smart-looking pajamas. They may have been blue. They may have been silk. I ran down to meet him. “I was worried that things were on fire,” said the man. Calm, he seemed used to this sort of after-hours Cary Grant neighborhood patrol. I started to explain about the big crazy truck, how I’d thought it was going to crash into my place.

“Yes. Well. I see. All right, then. I just wanted to check on you,” said the Man From Los Feliz. He smiled, and then he was gone. I don’t exactly recall him walking back up the hill, but he must have. And there it was -- my first fleeting glimpse of the grace, the mystery, the small-town feel of the land parcel once known as Rancho Los Feliz.

Los Feliz is framed by -- depending on whom you talk to -- Hollywood Boulevard on the south, Western Avenue on the west, Hillhurst Avenue on the east and Griffith Park on the north. It was 1896 when Col. Griffith J. Griffith donated this urban hinterland to the city, in a possibly prescient move (a few years later, he went to prison for attempting to murder his wife -- out in two).

I moved to Los Feliz in February from a bougainvillea-covered cottage in Beechwood Canyon. I didn’t want to leave, but the property my home was on had been sold. I became worried, very worried, that I’d never again find anything that good. Instead of buying rental listings, I blew $30 on a book about worry. It said to imagine your worries as little fretful people. See them, really see them, it advised. All I could picture were a bunch of crotchety wagon-train types, tramping endlessly around a campfire that failed to catch.

How bad could a new place, new neighbors get? The image of a neighbor from years ago came to mind. Industrious, he practiced his electric flute (badly) by day and sold drugs (loudly) by night. His customers favored jackboots and never neglected to slam his screen door in their post-sale enthusiasm. I was suddenly hungry for a place like where I grew up -- a no-nonsense town an hour outside Boston where this sort of thing just never came up.

Perhaps this is how I came to discover Los Feliz, which is more like New England to me than Southern California and possibly even more like England. Consider the names of the streets I drive: Gainsborough, Amesbury, Glendower, Effingham.

My new place was a find -- a small gray, ivy-covered guesthouse that seemed like the type of place Jane Eyre might have taken a shine to. My backyard exploded with rosemary and roses. There were lemon and lime trees, an oak, a maple. Hawks drifted overhead in a late-winter sky the consistency of melted vanilla ice cream. In the evening, from my front window, a perfect oval of downtown could be seen -- a glittering pendant of Los Angeles dangling in the night.

A few years ago, Los Feliz (“the Happy”) was hailed as the Soho of Los Angeles. And yes, there are boutiques with displays of $200 hats next to pinecones, but alongside that might be a key shop or a surgical-supply store. At the end of the day, Los Feliz is still a place where the librarian remembers your name. If you need more excitement than that, just head to the Los Feliz postal station, where every day is as busy as tax day. No, Los Feliz folk don’t sit around all day popping off e-mails; we get out and wait in line good and long to buy postage for the real thing.

Sure, if you want a bit more of a scene, you can wait in line at Tangiers. Or try Vida or Fred 62. Once you get that out of your system, House of Pies will still be patiently waiting in the spot it has been in since 1965. Maybe there you’ll see a frazzled truck driver, head in hands, poring over his Thomas Guide, too tired to attend to his lemon meringue. Then go to Skylight Books, where Lucy the cat lies conked out in the front window, and the staff will take the time to bring you not only the book you asked for, but also something “you just might like.”

All this, within walking distance of my home. Which brings to mind a phrase I once heard: Solvitur ambulando. Latin, it means “It is solved by walking.” I have walked everywhere I’ve lived in Los Angeles -- Venice, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, the Hollywood Hills -- solving all kinds of things. Now I walk the streets of Los Feliz.

Last week, I was taking my daily ramble down Cromwell, the street with the enormous, concrete-defying tree roots bursting from the sidewalks, and I stopped to admire a froth of orange roses spilling over a wall. Who would miss one, I thought. There are so many, after all. So I nipped off one, just one rosebud, and I started to turn when I saw the owner with broom in hand, a woman I’d often seen sweeping the street in front of her jumbo Tudor, wearing a dress and heels.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I only took one.”

The woman put down her broom. She was quiet for a moment.

Then finally, “Take more,” she said. “Take more.”

Los Feliz: the mystery, the grace, the small-town considerations with the hip possibilities. Come for a visit. Wear your blue silk pajamas. And perhaps, from afar, you will spot the Man From Los Feliz watching over you silently and with easy goodwill -- just business as usual back at the Rancho.

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Mary Otis is completing a short story collection. She has most recently been published in “Tin House” and “Best New American Voices 2004.”