Peripatetic Postcards

The crawl out of Los Angeles includes a pass through Agoura Hills, a city dubbed “The Gateway to the Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area”. The city, first settled by the Chumash Indians, and later by Spanish Franciscan missionaries in the 1500s, once served as a staging area for Paramount flicks in the 1920s—providing it, temporarily, with the name “Picture City”. No kidding. It says so right there on Wikipedia. It also says that the city adopted the name of one of its prominent residents, a local Basque-French immigrant-turned rancher, Pierre Agoure, Most likely (one infers) after the one-two of depression and war put a kabosh on Paramount’s use of the hills as cinematic backdrop.

Lore abounds on 101, but since it’s pitch black beyond the windshield and since we’ve finally managed to shake the bump-bumper-grill-grind, it really isn’t the time to be lingering over “what wases”. No, now that we can actually stretch out and move at some sort of decent speed, it is definitely time to open it up and gooooooooooooo! So: goodbye, Agoura Hills. Hospitable home to a slew of 80s-rehash acts such as Peter Frampton, REO Speedwagon, Boys II Men, and Alan Parsons, Fixing that past in our rearview, we push on—through Ventura County and on up to the next gateway.

That would be Buellton, the so-called “Gateway to the Santa Ynez Valley”.

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Ventura highway
in the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger
than moonshine
You’re gonna go I know

America, Ventura Highway

At some point every Californian takes a trip up the coast. In my lifetime, growing up a So-Cal kid, I’d estimate that—between family vacations when I was a lad, student politics during my college years, law school up in Sacramento, and a girlfriend from San Jose—well, I’ve probably gone up and back 37 times. It’s one of those treks that, done right, you can never really tire of. Especially, if you are doing it with loved ones for the first time. A new lover, a spouse, children. The cruise up 101 and then Highway 1 never gets old.

It’s sort of like a rite that one has to experience before they can gain state citizenship. Why? Because one can’t truly understand the rhythms, the prospects, and the capabilities of this great Golden State until they have sampled the spectacular views along the craggy coastline; the lush hues of the ocean, kissed by the ever-changeable, vibrant sky; and the quirky folk and idle pace that define the seaside lifestyle. Taken together, these aspects of the coastal trek—and particularly from Southern California up to the San Francisco Bay Area—form one of the United States’ essential experiences; a national treasure, decaring uniqueness, demanding encounter.

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Super Sunday. Super Tuesday. Super Signing Day.

In America, three events this past week, all national in scope. Events declaring this place—regardless of one’s feelings about the events, themselves, or their situs (America, itself)—a “Super Society”. For those of you unfamiliar with American ways, we are speaking, respectively, of the final professional football game of the year; the largest slate of primary elections to ever be contested in a single day; and the first day a high school football player can declare the college he intends to don a helmet and pads for, thereby serving as four-year grist for their multi-million dollar sporting mill.

And, for those of you unfamiliar with American ways, these are all major cultural events, witnessed by millions on-line, through newspapers, or on radio and television. One event, a culmination, another the weigh-station, a third, the prelude, of significant societal phenomena. Believe it or not, these three events tell us so much about what the United States is—what its preoccupations are, what it stands for, what America means.

A football game. An election. A meat auction.

No kidding.

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