A CALIFORNIA SALAD
Like America, southern California is a mix of cultures. Travel along the old Route 6 from the Sierras to Long Beach and you'll get a taste of this mixture - more like a tossed salad than a melting pot.
You'll start in mountains and desert, where it's not unusual to see coyotes or an occasional wolf. In winter, it's a cold, windy area dotted with small towns and friendly people who think going to the city is punishment. They like their country life.
Mojave is the unofficial border line between this area and the new cities of Lancaster and Palmdale. Just 20 years ago, Lancaster-Palmdale had a combined population of about 40,000. Today, the two cities total nearly 250,000 - many of them LA commuters.
Even the small towns along the Sierra Highway south of Lancaster-Palmdale are growing. Local folks say Agua Dulce's once-sweet water isn't the same because so many people are tapping the aquifer.
Turn from the Sierra Highway onto San Fernando Road and you're not far from LA. Up north, people warned us to avoid San Fernando. Too much crime there, they said.
 The sunset silhouettes container cranes which tower from the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, CA - a prominent scene along the harbor. The Port of Long Beach is one of the world's busiest seaports for trade between the United States and Asia and the second busiest in the United States.
Here's what I found on a lazy, Sunday morning: a town center filled with shops, merchants sweeping the sidewalks, families heading to church, women shopping in the fruit markets - and no crime. Maybe the crooks were still in bed.
San Fernando Road, right down LA itself, is jammed with car dealers and auto parts shops, all guarded by high, black iron fences and junk-yard dogs that bark and snarl at passers by. I was happy the fences were there. I think some of the dogs were, too. One of them growled and frothed menacingly as though he'd tear me to shreds if only he could get out. Then he ran right past an open gate to growl and froth some more.
 Shoppers browse for goods at a downtown open market near the Union Station in Los Angles, CA. Various products are sold by merchants out of small shed-like buildings where shoppers can walk through the open market.
In Burbank, you enter a different world where tourists and shoppers mingle in trendy stores and restaurants at an open-air mall and on the tree-lined main street that had a more "homey feel." If you're chilly, there's an indoor mall too. I didn't even bother to check the prices in Burbank.
Soon, you're in downtown LA, where the contrast really strikes you. Men are wearing jackets and ties. Women have high heals and business clothes. They're sipping lattes and shopping at Brooks Brothers. It's only 50 or 100 miles from Sierras and San Fernando, but it's a world apart.
 The Watts Towers created by Simon Rodia is a complex set of 17 separate sculptural pieces built on a residential lot in the community of Watts, CA. Constructed from steel pipes, wire mesh, coated with mortar, and embedded with pieces of porcelain, tile and glass, two of the towers stand nearly 100-ft tall. An Italian immigrant, Simon Rodia, spent 30 years (1921 to 1955) building a tribute to his adopted country and a monument to the spirit of individuals who make their dreams tangible.
Then you walk through the south side of the city on Figueroa, near Watts and Compton where the reputation for crime is worse than San Fernando.
Here, you're only a few miles from downtown, but still a world apart.
Yet many folks in south LA greeted with me smiles and nods - even though I was dressed like Crocodile Dundee. Maybe they weren't smiling, maybe they were laughing. Either way, I brightened their day a little. And they brightened my day.
FAITH
On most weekdays, you'll find Barbara Yamamoto was preparing dinner for her "family": the guests at the Inn at Lancaster, on the Sierra Highway.
The dinners are one of the personal touches Barbara added when she became manager at the Inn 20 years ago. You'll also find cookies, coffee and videos in the reception area, breakfast in the dining room and a security guard watching your car at night.
But it's the dinners that make this place unusual. Travis and I have been to scores of hotels across the nation but none has offered a free sit-down dinner five nights a week.
Barbara says it's just good business. Treat people well and they'll come back.
"We have an 80 percent occupancy rate," she said.
But folks who know Barbara say it's more than business.
"She's like a mom to everybody," said Lenny, the night desk clerk.
Many of the inn's customers are young men and women from the nearby military bases; some of them away from home for the first time. Barbara keeps a close eye on them.
"I try to make them feel comfortable. They're all my little people," she said.
A few weeks ago the inn got a letter from one of its customers who praised the staff then said "and say thank-you to that sweet lady who cooks the food."
Barbara says it's just business, but I think it's about faith; faith that people are worth caring about and caring for. Faith that they'll recognize a kind gesture when they see one. I hope she's right.
HOPE
Rudy Gonzalez works in LA, but he doesn't wear a jacket and tie.
You don't need a pin-striped suit to pick up garbage.
Every morning Rudy drives a street cleaner through Chinatown, then he leads a team of a half-dozen teen-agers through the streets in search of trash. He's a program coordinator for the Los Angeles Conservation Corps' Clean and Green
Program.
 From Lt to Rt- Sergio Pekez,Rudy Gonzalez, Robert Ortega, (far back) Ruth Gomeze and Itzel Sanchez are part of the City of Los Angeles Clean Sweep program a citywide anti-litter and anti-graffiti program. Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) programs are designed to improve neighborhoods and communities challenging residents to become part of the solution and play a major role in the maintenance of their neighborhoods.
The teens, working for minimum wage, sweep the streets, bag trash and toss the bags into the back of Rudy's pick-up truck.
"We get about 90 bags a day, but it's a lot more on weekends when the tourists are in town," Rudy said. "It would help if people put their trash in the containers."
He's just 22, but Rudy's been working in the program for eight years, so he has an idea of why these kids sign up - and it's not just for the money.
|
.. |
 |
.. |
"These are good kids. I give them a lot of credit. They'd rather come to work than stay home and do nothing," he said. Most of the teens volunteer for the program though their school.
The kids with Rudy come from tough sections of the city. Some, like Robert Ortega, of East L.A., said they'd rather work closer to home and improving their own neighborhood. Others are happy to be in another part of the city.
"There should be more programs like this," said one of the students. They all agreed.
When we met them on York Street, the teens were brimming with smiles. But it's not all fun and games.
"You get a lot garbage on you," Robert said.
Walk maybe five miles from Chinatown on Figueroa Street and you'll be in South Los Angeles. Listen closely these days and you might hear the foot-tapping, hand-clapping rhythm of drums beckoning from the parking lot at The House of Uhuru near 80th Street.
That's where about two dozen people are practicing their steps for the Martin Luther King Parade later this month. It's a march that could help change their lives.
Uhuru is a private organization that helps people overcome drug and alcohol problems.
About two dozen of the center's clients march in the parade each year. For them this is therapy.
"It motivates them to participate in community events," said Alton Hammond, a social worker at the center. Hammond said many clients think of themselves as community outcasts.
"Here they get out of their image. They participate in a community event. Their community spirit is awakened," he said.
It sounds like happy-talk, but Hammond said he's seen it happen and he sees people every year whose eyes light up when they participate in the parade.
That sparkle in their eyes is called hope.
CHARITY
On the day before Thanksgiving, Steve Baker didn't have much to do. Sure, his organization would serve turkey dinners to upwards of 300 people on the holiday. And, sure, there would be another 8,000 folks to feed over the next month.
But these days Steve lets his staff and volunteers take over the day-to-day work at the Grace Resource Center in Lancaster, CA. It's a sign of how far the program has come in 14 years.
There were many Thanksgivings when Steve spent most of the day delivering dinners. You can call that dedication, or you can call it survival.
Either way, it helped make Steve a local hero. Ask most anyone in town, they'll know the Grace Center and they'll probably know Steve, who was raised here.
"At first this was a little, bitty place. But it kept growing and growing. Steve got donations from lots of people," said John McCaulley as he waited outside the center just before dinner time.
This month, John will get an apartment and the Grace Center will help him furnish it.
"I don't know what I'd do if this place weren't here," he said.
Grace also offers self-help programs like welfare-to-work, computer classes and counseling.
The center also restored Steve's life. After some hard times of his own, Steve put aside his calling as a minister and took a job as jet mechanic in Lancaster.
Two years later, a group of ministers asked him to start a food kitchen and he jumped at the opportunity.
He still does a lot of one-to-one work in what has become, in essence, his congregation.
"We feed 8,000 people a month and each of them has a unique struggle. Feeding people is easy. Getting involved with them is hard. You're dealing with people at their hardest times. If you're not careful it can overcome you emotionally," he said.
On the other hand, people don't have to look any father than Steve, himself, to know that people can overcome their hardest times.
You might call Steve's work dedication. I call it love.
10 MILLION STEPS - ZERO TO GO
The endless walk has ended. After traveling 3,700 miles across 14 states and 500 communities I'm finally hanging up my walking shoes and resting my very weary bones.
My legs hurt, my feet hurt, my toenails and eyelashes hurt. During the past few weeks, my body parts took turns creating havoc. One day, the big toe would screech in pain. The next day it would be the neck or a knee. Every day I feared that Travis and I would have to stop short of our goal.
 As the sun sets on Downtown Long Beach, CA. the Cyclone Racer Pedestrian Bridge spans the Shore Line Drive connecting the Pike (an area of entertainment, shops and restaurants) to Long Beach harbor. The Pedestrian Bridge was built to replicate and commemorate the historic wooden roller coaster the Cyclone Racer which was in use from 1930 to 1968.
But we arrived in Long Beach, California Wednesday right on schedule.
Long Beach, of course, was once the western end of Route 6, perhaps America's first coast-to-coast highway. It's still one of the nation's longest roads even though California eliminated most of its portion of the highway.
We set out in Provincetown, MA on a cold March day and ended on Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach on a chilly California day. Frankly, it's been so cold here for so long I'm beginning to think sunny, warm southern California is a myth.
 Joe Hurley walks down the palm tree lined sidewalk on Figueroa St. which used be the old Route 6 in CA - running through Downtown Los Angeles and into Long Beach, CA. Joe is only one day away from his final destination in Long Beach.
I've worn out six pairs of shoes, a couple of dozen socks, several shirts, one car and one cell phone (they don't like being dropped).
But the journey isn't about Travis and me. It's about the people we met and the places we encountered.
People like the men women and children who walked with me, like the firefighters who met us in Long Beach and other places, and the folks at the first black church in Sandusky, Ohio who greeted this stranger like a friend, and the Indian family who shared their lunch with us.
It's about the stories we got to share with our readers: the tour through the least-known U.S. Mint; the incredible fish feeding frenzy in Linesville, Pennsylvania, the Amish struggling to maintain their way of life in Indiana, the small towns and friendly people across the Midwest, which is far more interesting that I ever imagined.
It's about the canyons and deserts of west and, of course, "warm, sunny" southern California.
Next week, in the final story of this series, we'll offer our reflections on the trip and we'll write more about Long Beach after we've sampled the Queen Mary, the aquarium and maybe Catalina Island.
And by next week, maybe - just maybe - I be able to write that southern California really is warm.
|
