Lost in Transit

by Jim Washburn

A man was walking down a country lane when he spied a farmer in an orchard. As he watched, the farmer picked up a pig and held it overhead so the pig could eat an apple that hung from the branches. After the pig had his fill, the farmer hoisted another pig, and then others still.

Finally the man could stand it no more and he approached the farmer, asking, “Sir, may I ask what you’re doing?”

“Why, I’m feeding apples to my pigs.”

“But I have to say that how you’re doing it looks like a huge waste of time.”

“What’s time to a pig?”

We don’t need an Einstein to tell us time is relative, though I guess we sort of did. If you’ve got all the time in the world—like if you’re young enough to listen to machine-generated noise all day, because what better way to say you have time to burn than to burn it?—then maybe you don’t mind taking the slow road. But if you’re older and packed with responsibilities, and you know your days are numbered because contemporaries keep keeling over dead, then maybe you’d prefer a faster road.

But there isn’t one, nor is there one less crowded, stressful or dangerous. Nearly any road in Southern California blows. The freeways of the 1960s are to today’s freeways what miniature golf is to playing the Masters while swarms of dog-sized giant ants with faces like Dwight Eisenhower try to eat your pancreas.

I was recently offered a job in L.A. Instead I opted to do nearly as much work from my home for a fraction of the money and no benefits, largely because driving to L.A. once a month, much less thrice a week, sets my teeth on edge and pushes them over.

“The further one travels, the less one knows,” some ancient Hindu smart guy whispered in George Harrison’s ear. In a more recent incarnation, as Miller in Repo Man, he expanded upon that truth: “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.”

So it figures that it was after a day of driving that I decided to take public transportation to L.A. the next time.

Let’s add one more to the sage sayings: “All travel begins online.” Via octa.net, metro.net and some other .net, I was able to plan a trip that commenced from my Costa Mesa front door at 7:20 am and arrived at my dad’s Toluca Lake apartment at 11:45, using nothing but public transit and some feet.

Step one was walking a quarter mile to a bus stop. Had I walked another quarter mile I could have tried availing myself of an option the OCTA site didn’t mention: From what I read in the papers, I gathered you can pretty much walk to Costa Mesa’s College Hospital, present yourself as an indigent patient, and get a free van ride all the way up to LA’s skid row, on the house, no thanks needed. According to staff at skid row’s Union Rescue Mission, that’s what a College Hospital van did on April 29, leaving a severely mentally ill patient named Steve Davis at the curbside to fend for himself.

Modest to a fault, the hospital through its attorney declined to take credit for this vehicular kindness, telling the Daily Pilot newspaper, “We do not engage in patient dumping.” I’d like an attorney, so he could tell my wife I did not eat the last Tofutti Rich Rewards bar in the fridge, the one that was especially delicious after a long day on the bus.

But that came so much later. That morning, I was at the curbside fending for myself, checking the bus schedule six times, gripping my $1.25 like it was my Vichy-approved Letter of Transit, worrying like it was my first day at a new school.

I’m not alone in that, evidently. A friend loaned me a book by a local writer—The Bus and I by Van Arsdale France—that is largely about overcoming such fears with matter-of-fact advice about reading bus schedules and watching those steps! Granted Van Arsdale France was 80-something when he wrote it, when just finding your teeth can be a daunting enough task. Not to worry! You can always find more teeth on the bus.

Mine came along, and got me to the transfer intersection in plenty of time for me to find the right corner stop and inhale five minutes worth of concrete dust. Someone had dropped a big bag of concrete in the street, and every time right a vehicle ran over it, a mini-9/11 plume of the stuff came billowing our way.

While there, I re-read my printout instructions for the ninth time, wondering about the word “transfer” in “Walk to Tustin Metrolink Station Platform, wait for Transfer.” I’d asked for a transfer when boarding the first bus and the driver looked at me as if I was wearing a trilby. “We don’t do transfers anymore. You’d have to buy a daypass,” he said, and I didn’t because I only needed one more bus fare in OC. But now I was wondering if a daypass might portend some transfer value in boarding the Metrolink.

When in doubt ask a total stranger at a bus stop. It worked for Marilyn Monroe. The guy I talked to had been riding the bus for years. Sure, people used to think there was something wrong with him for riding the bus, but now with gas at $4 more of them were following his lead, he said. And he was pretty sure that a day pass got you at least a 30% discount on the Metrolink.

So, rather than buy another $1.25 bus fare, I bought the $3 pass for the one-mile ride, only to find that the Metrolink ticket kiosks were rather indifferent to them, lacking anything like an aperture into which to stick said pass. Thanks, Bus Guy.

The Tustin Metrolink Platform has nice space-age metal awnings, which would provide useful shade if you don’t mind sitting on the tracks. Absent that, you quickly realize why record-breaking heat is not always a thing best celebrated outdoors.

There are many songs about waiting for a train, many more than there are songs about waiting for a cab or for your microwave ramen noodles. Trains carry myth and pig iron. There is a slow-burning thrill to spotting an engine on the horizon and watching it approach until it fills your vision.

You climb aboard, becoming part of the mass that’ll head down the track to the next batch of transfixed station-waiters. Then conductor’s voice cries out, not “All aboard,” but “If you’re going to Los Angeles, don’t board this train. We’re going to Riverside. The Los Angeles train is 15 minutes late behind us.”

Indeed it was, sleek, air-conditioned, and a pleasure to ride. I know people who say they get work done on their train commute. I don’t know how, unless their job is mixing drinks. Once up to speed, the Metrolink jostles and shakes enough to reduce your mouse to an Etch-A-Sketch level of accuracy.

The train was far from crowded, and I chanced upon a good way to keep a seat row to yourself. I’d gotten a lot of cement dust up my nose. Attempting to manually extract some, I managed to give myself a heck of a nosebleed. Nothing says “privacy, please” quite like blood gushing from your head.

This is somewhat beside the point, but I never like to miss an opportunity to quote from one of my favorite interviews, one I did with Little Richard when his autobiography came out in the 1980s. He had done rather a lot of cocaine in his day, and to illustrate this point he said, “I’d blow my nose, and there’d be blood all over my handerkerchief. I mean my membranes was comin’ out fantastically!”

On the Metrolink you see parts of Southern California you never see from the highways. Granted, it’s the ass end of everything: back yards, junkyards, the rear walls of warehouses and factories. Some yards have clotheslines, some weathered washers and dryers on the patio; some have cactus gardens, some metal sculpture, at least I think it’s metal sculpture. You’ll see acres of piled-up colorful fertilizer bags, looking like a giant bowl of Trix. You’ll see the Chateaux Cheese Company in a building and neighborhood that looks like it would be better suited to extruding aluminum.

And, wow, do you see graffiti, so much of it scrolling by on the back walls of buildings and fences that it seems like an endless river of text.

I’d counted on having a good 19 minutes at Union Station to locate the Red Line Subway. The Metrolink being late pared that to three minutes, to find it, get ticketed and on, which I did with just the hope it was the right line and direction.

I was kind of shaky about the whole subway thing anyway. I’d read the occasional newspaper article—usually with the word “sinkhole” prominent—and had some vague notion that there are now actually subways running beneath parts of Los Angeles, but it’s not something the rational mind accepts. I don’t expect palm trees in London and I don’t expect subways in L.A. When you’ve got tar pits and earthquakes, you really want a nice monorail system.

Still disbelieving, I emerged at Hollywood and Highland, within sight of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. I crossed to my bus stop, which was right by Marilyn Monroe’s star. (We can only hope she likes being sandwiched for all time between Stefanie Powers and Arsenio Hall.) What a town. Guys in Chewbacca and Hulk costumes were there talking with a maps-to-the-stars’-homes vendor. Every fifth guy walking by had a gig bag on his back. Curious, as there just aren’t that many gigs at 11 am.

That bus was late, too. Did I mention it was record-breaking heat? The bus arrived, I rode it to Barham and walked the last quarter-mile to my dad’s, tan and rested. We lunched at the Smokehouse. George Clooney recently mentioned in interviews that he named his production company after this restaurant, which is near his office on the Warner lot. Ever since then it’s been the place to go if you like to look at people looking for George Clooney.

There are times I’ve made the drive to my dad’s in an hour. Usually it’s more like 90 minutes; sometimes the roundtrip has been more like five exasperating hours. So 4:20 in time, $14 in cash, a nosebleed and a mild sunburn? Not so bad.

Let’s just pretend that I had the journalistic dedication to make my experiment in mass transit a round-trip one. Instead I got a ride home with a relative, in plenty of time for me to motor down to Newport’s new A Restaurant and wish I’d had my nosebleed there. But that perhaps is another story.

Comments

No comments.

Comments closed.