Caveat: Looking Down on Other Cars

Dateline: Los Angeles

…

Coming to L.A. is, of course, another homecoming: the familiar street on the hill at my dad’s house in Highland Park; the cluttered house, occupied by cats and friends and a nearly infinite amount of stuff. I spent a lot of time here, in the decade before coming to Korea.

I’m tired. I’ll be driving my dad’s cousin’s truck. Larry Macomber was not just my dad’s cousin – he was an adoptive brother, raised in the same family as my dad, and in the same generation. Larry passed away just a few weeks ago, and so my father was up in Northern California sorting through Larry’s possessions, and one thing he has, until it can be sold, is Larry’s truck. So I get to drive it. Cheaper than a rental car – but being a giant Chevy Silverado truck, its fuel milage will be so poor that the gas cost will make using the truck pretty comparable to renting a car. But I get to sit up high and look down on other cars, like a true American.

Here’s a picture my dad found, that I took a picture of, with Larry in a Ford Model A (a particular hobby of my father’s and Larry’s too). I think the date is early 1960’s.

The house in the background is the now lost San Marino house (on the edge of Pasadena), where my grandfather grew up. L.A. – and specifically, the northwest reaches of the San Gabriel Valley – more than any other place, is my patria, by the etymological meaning of the word: the land of my father, my father’s father, and his father, too.