1987. Hollywood, California
Walking on a street in our new neighborhood I heard a car behind me. The streets in the hillside area where I live are narrow, with no sidewalks and, sometimes, no curbs and gutters. I tucked myself closer to the edge of the road to allow ample room for the vehicle to pass. The sedan slowed, then stopped beside me; the woman in the front passenger seat lowered her window. “Can you tell me where I can find the Hollywood sign?” she asked.
It was early morning and unusually clear. In 1976, when I moved to Los Angeles, the frequently cloudy mornings surprised me. The sunny California that I had expected often didn’t arrive until after eleven. Sometimes my husband and I carried umbrellas with us. After a few weeks, however, we began to trust that the clouds and fog, what the TV weather people called the marine layer, would dissipate and that, eventually, the sun would shine.
“It’s behind you,” I said. With a sweep of my hand I pointed to the famous white letters, high on a hillside, beyond the car’s rear window, that spelled out Hollywood.
The lady turned her head and craned her neck. “There it is, Hon,” she said to the man behind the wheel.
He leaned across the woman towards me. “How do we get up there?”
I hesitated. Although people had in the past (one time, just before Easter, someone had climbed up and covered an “L” so that the sign said HOLYWOOD), I didn’t think you could get up to the sign anymore. Even if you could still get up to the sign, I didn’t think you were supposed to. I didn’t want to encourage these tourists in any illegal venture. Their out-of- state license plate indicated they were from West Virginia. Wasn’t that one of those tobacco states? They were probably heavy smokers. Smoking was banned in the hillside areas because of the fire danger. Maybe I’d send them up near the sign, they’d light up and I’d be responsible for the destruction of a neighborhood.
“I don’t know if you can actually get up there,” I told them. “But if you turn around, you can get up to the Hollywood reservoir. That’s a good place to take a picture of the sign. And across the lake you can see a house that someone told me Madonna owns. But I don’t know if she’s there very often.”
We were only a half-mile away from the reservoir, but the streets wind this way and that way and the street signs are often obscured by palm fronds and bougainvillea. If they were lucky they found someone else to direct them to the reservoir. New to the area, unsure of the street names, I may have given them directions with one too many left turns. Fussing about my poor navigational help, I walked home. Suddenly an eerie feeling percolated within me. Being asking for directions… it was déjà vu...
1964. Silver Bay, Minnesota
Riding my blue Huffy bicycle along Banks Boulevard on a warm summer afternoon, about halfway home, I stopped. I had been at band and orchestra rehearsals at Kelley High School, and my violin and clarinet each dangled from a handle bar. I was at the point where the boulevard began a steep, downhill grade. You could pick up considerable speed on descent which was why Silver Bay’s local Soap Box Derby competition used this section of Banks as its race course. I still had scabs on my knees from an earlier incident when I had skidded on the gravel near this same spot. The violin, being longer and heavier than the clarinet, had unbalanced me. Unable to regain equilibrium, the bike had crashed and pavement had peeled layers of skin from one elbow and one knee. As I readjusted my cases, I heard a vehicle behind me. I turned as the station wagon slowed and rolled to a stop beside me. The woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window.
“Can you tell me where we can find the business district?” she asked.
I hesitated.
“We saw a sign… business district ahead…”
I knew the sign on Outer Drive. It wasn’t far from the junction with Highway 61. Driving into town they had actually seen the shopping area they were searching for, but gone on by. Eventually, on their way back towards the highway, they had spotted a twelve-year-old girl on a blue bike and asked her for directions.
“This is it,” I said, sweeping my hand toward the nearby parking lot and shopping center below us. It was a gesture stolen from Dinah Shore when, on her weekly TV show, she presented the features of the latest models from Chevrolet. The Silver Bay Bank was just down the hill which anyone who has been on Banks above the shopping center in Silver Bay will tell you.
The woman looked disappointed. The man in the driver’s seat leaned across his wife, craning his neck to see what he could see. He shook his head. Maybe he felt snookered for turning off Highway 61 and driving into the City of Silver Bay. As the station wagon sped away, without turning toward our Shopping Center, I tweaked the positions of my violin and clarinets cases for balance, and then coasted down Banks Boulevard toward home.
