For us SoCal natives, there is, for lack of a better term, somewhat of a “no man’s land” between California’s central coast and the northern borders of the greater Los Angeles basin.
It’s my admittedly subjective opinion that Southern California officially begins in Santa Barbara on the coast and Bakersfield in the east, and extends down through Los Angeles and San Diego environs all the way to the Mexican border. Others think differently. It varies. But we’ll go with mine for now, ‘cause…well, it’s my stack, ain’t it. :)
Anyhoo, the region in question is a sixty or seventy odd mile stretch of Highway 101 between Carpinteria and the Rincon flats, to the northern borders of Reseda, Tarzana, Simi, and Encino. That whole area trends in similar cultural and infrastructural fashions; a lot of agricultural fields, strip malls, suburban areas ranging wide across economic class scales, from the barrios of Oxnard to the McMansions of Agoura Hills. Ventura, Westlake Village, Ojai, Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, Camarillo, Woodland Hills, and of course Calabasas, home to the Kardashian clans.
If one knows SoCal as the natives do, intimately, corner to corner, one would probably understand why they sometimes deem the San Fernando Valley and its coastal equivalent of northeast Malibu a “no-woman’s land” per se. While there are plenty of Southern Californian residents dwelling all about its districts, and there’s no small amount of fast food joints and movie theaters and car dealerships and shopping malls, the whole region is a gateway of sorts, more known for its 80s trope ‘valley’ lingo than near anything else.
To northbound travelers out of LA and San Diego, it’s the main route up to less dense, less urban areas like the central coast’s wine and ranch country or its many beaches. To southbound travelers, it’s the long haul down to standard SoCal destinations, including infamous concert venues like the Hollywood Bowl or the Forum, and theme parks like Disneyland or Knott’s, and global way points like the Sunset Strip, Griffith Park, the Getty Center, Hollywood Boulevard, the Santa Monica Pier, or Venice Beach. Same goes for San Diego (which has its own kind of similar “no-human’s land” in its equally nondescript sector between Oceanside’s San Onofre flats and the southern Orange County bastions of San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente, and Dana Point, with its own hallmarks like Legoland, Sea World, the Midway, Coronado, and the Gaslamp District.
In other words, what many Californians would surely say about that region of SoCal limbo, it’s a place to live, not often a place to visit. Though I do take umbrage with that assertion, because as a SoCal hick, I happen to enjoy its lesser known, local yokel trademarks, places like Port Hueneme (there are Venice-style canals there, by the by), the open air bookshop Bart’s Books in Ojai, Runyon Canyon Park in Woodland Hills, Neptune’s Net in Malibu (best surf-biker-tourist-claptrap joint in SoCal), the Inn of the 7th Ray in Topanga (yum, great food), and The Canyon in Agoura Hills, one of the best, genuine, honkytonk roadhouse style music club venues in all of SoCal.
And then there’s the hub closest to my hometown, that of Ventura, sort of like the poor man’s Santa Barbara, and its lesser known cousin of Oxnard, also not unlike Santa Barbara’s lesser known cousin Goleta. Same kinds of sweet SoCal beaches, same kinds of Channel Islands seafood, same disparate splits in bougeousie and proletariat classes. Ventura tends to run more lower middle class than Santa Barbara - a lot of workers commute from their homes in Ventura to work at their jobs in Santa Barbara - in large part due to its proximity to agricultural jobs, with plenty of undocumented workers and lower standard housing, as is usually the case around California. I hang out a fair amount in Ventura, actually. There’s a card room there I patronize. There are several off-leash dog friendly beaches. One of my favorite coffeehouses resides on its main drag (elephant chai tea expresso, extra vanilla).
Thus was how I came upon this descanso for a soul named Donny, a simple, plain, handpainted cross and a few plastic flowers. This corner junction where it stood is actually in Oxnard. It’s often manned by one of our drifting brethren, holding out cardboard placards for alms, and after I share a bit of what I have to give, I head over to the nearest Popeye’s Chicken joint, the closest one to my hometown. Their chicken sandwiches are actually worth the hype, for fast food anyway. Being a SoCal native, fast food is in my blood, literally and figuratively.
I don’t know if Donny met his untimely end there at that corner or not, but cars do tend to run speedier on Johnson Drive, the main road leading west to east as it intersects with Ventura Road, the off-ramp from the 101. But what I do know, taking into account my writer’s tendency to color-code certain juxtapositions of things and events and circumstances, is that every time I roll up at that intersection, Donny’s descanso, combined with the usual wandering soul in need, reminds me of our American society at large, and how so many people, and so many ways in which we’ve adapted to live, have fallen through the spiritual cracks, so to speak, and I become somber for a moment, before I head off to eat my twelve-dollar fried chicken sandwich.
I might think about how many of the deaths on our roads could be preventable, if only we applied proper, sustainable resources to our transportation grid, and maintained an appropriate foundation for accountability and acuity in driving personal transports. And of course, how the true hallmark in any civilization’s advancements can be found in how that society treats (A) their incarcerated citizens, and (B) their unhoused citizens.
Yep.
So.
Dollars to donuts - or chits to chicken, if you will - says that Donny’s likely premature death could’ve been avoided, and the unhoused person du jour surely didn’t have to perpetually live that way, if only we concerned ourselves with what’s obviously pressing matters, and not, say, what’s cultured to accept as a norm. I talk in far more detail about our drifting, wandering, unhoused brothers and sisters over in my column The Bear and the Star, if you’d like to explore my takes on that phenomena further.
It’s even possible, I suppose, that Donny was one of those wanderers in question, was panhandling in the right place at the wrong time, and some fellow gadabout vagabond decided to memorialize him.
Who can know?
Actually, we can know. In time. There’s a record. An archive of all true things that have happened, beyond our perceptions of those things, beyond how cultures and societies choose to remember that history, a hardwired reality out of reach of human tweaking. I am as sure of that as I am anything else, which is to say, I’m as sure of it as the sun rising tomorrow, and that higher road I keep mentioning does indeed await us all.
Including Donny.
What’s that old quote from The Blues Brothers?
Come on, Gen X. You know it too well. Sure ya do.
“It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses." - Ellwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd)
“Hit it.” - Jake Blues (John Belushi)