A town that’s a tonic for the soul

A cold rain fell on Ojai the Monday we walked its main street, giving the small settlement a lonely feel, like a woman by a streetlight, waiting for a bus.

Hardly anyone was out strolling in a place usually loaded with tourists. Shop owners and clerks looked out with a longing, hoping we’d stop and buy a scarf, a scented candle or a pair of onyx earrings.

The tearoom was empty and so was the wine shop. Only Bonnie Lu’s Country Cafe, where the locals hang out, was doing business. The word “culinary” isn’t mentioned there. You just get a damned good breakfast.

We spent time at Bart’s Books off the highway, where you could linger the better part of your old age searching through about 100,000 titles, most of them used, looking for the one that mattered.

Cinelli and I were on a brief R&R; after my heart tuneup, and Bart’s is a place we never miss. It’s been there for 43 years in an indoor-outdoor space with alleys of books protected from the weather. You squeeze through narrow passages to find old friends on the shelves and to make new ones.

There are books against a wall on the outside too, so if the place is closed, you can buy one and pay by dropping money through a slot. In L.A., they’d steal the books, the money and probably the slot too.

The last time we were there, or maybe the time before, the clerk was a big-bellied guy with a beard, hair and brows so thick he looked like he was peeking out through a cluster of bushes. He’s gone up north somewhere, leaving his image behind.

I found Jack Smith’s last collection of columns, the one called “Eternally Yours,” and was glad to sit reading in a protected section of Bart’s while rain rippled at the rooftop like the hesitant tapping of a child at the door. Jack preceded me in the features section, and his prose remains the sweet remnants of an old song still drifting through the air.

I came across a book of my own too, one I wrote in 1996 called “City of Angles.” I had autographed it to someone named Pat, and he’d passed it on until it ended up at Bart’s, a worn compendium of my early years in L.A., now distant and gone.

Ojai, in case you’ve never been there, is a town of about 8,000 souls, some of them rich, others famous, a few of them both. It’s tucked into the Santa Ynez Mountains, where once the Chumash Indians made their homes. I like its solitude and its style, and the fierce manner in which it clings to its identity.

Crime’s at a minimum in God’s little acres. Check out the police blotter in the Ojai Valley News and you’ll find items like, “Rollos and Gummi Bears were reportedly taken from a business in the 1100 Block of Maricopa Highway Jan. 23 following a forced entry.” The Gummi Bear burglars strike again.

I went to Ojai partly to say hello to legendary underground journalist John Wilcock, creator of the Ojai Orange, a kind of journal of his life and works that he’s been publishing for years. We’ve been communicating off and on for a long time and I was looking forward to actually meeting him in person, which is often rare in today’s e-mail world. He was one of the founders of New York’s Village Voice and has led a swift and varied life. So much so, in fact, that I missed him again. When I reached Ojai I discovered that he’d gone out of town, on his way to somewhere else.

We stayed at the Emerald Iguana Inn, in a cottage tucked into a garden of beauty that you don’t find around every bend in the road. It sparkled in the wet atmosphere of the storm, but because of the rain hardly anyone wandered through the way they usually do. A garden in the rain has to count on blurred views from passing traffic.

I’m always seeking the kind of hideaway that offers what the poet Shelley called the silence of the heart: peaceful havens where only Gummi Bears are at risk, and they don’t have to worry about gang wars or drive-by murders, the bloody assaults that take down old ladies and babies that haven’t learned to walk or be afraid.

My havens are generally isolated places like Ojai, 11 miles from the 101 on the southern tip of Ventura County, or Markleeville at 5,500 feet in Alpine County, or Etna, existing like Brigadoon, away from everything, just this side of the Oregon border. You feel embraced by the distance under stars so full and bright you can feel the weight of infinity. The far-away beckons like a teasing child.

Even though it was raining off and on in Ojai, I was at peace with the environment. High-end restaurants such as Auberge and Suzanne’s reminded me a little of a big-city’s gourmet pretensions, but Il Giardino, with a dining area not much bigger than a Beverly Hills kitchen, had the feel of a small-town eatery, with a gumbo that warmed the edgy places of a wanderer’s inner being.

I’m not sure that a few days in Ojai strengthened my heart, but it did wonders for my soul. Thanks, Ojai. And good luck in your hunt for the Gummi Bear burglars.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.