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| Excerpt from DIRTY LAUNDRY |
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When I was having trouble in elementary school with
remembering dates and battles of the Revolutionary War,
my father would take me to L.A.'s Bunker Hill, developed
a little less than a hundred years after the historic Boston
landmark. At the corner of Third and Hill, would catch Angel's
Flight, billed as "The World's Shortest Railway," and ride
up and down Bunker Hill in the creaking old cars, spending
untold nickels while my father quizzed me on the dates and
battles of the Revolutionary War. Once I'd passed his personal
test, we would ventured among the office buildings and occasional
Victorian mansions that occupied the top of the hill, my
father pointing out where this or that famous residence
once stood, most gone or chopped up into flophouse apartments
by then.
Years later, after the buildings were razed, my father would
bring me to the barren site to point out where the Music
Center, the senior citizen's complex and high-rise condominiums
would go. While my child's eyes continued to populate this
hill with red-coated British and scrappy Colonists, my father
would predicted that the area would become as famous as
Boston's ever was, "even though they've displaced a bunch
of poor people to do it." For the developers who had conquered
L.A.'s Bunker Hill had decreed it would be downtown's Mecca,
drawing visitors and workers to its gleaming office towers,
high-brow entertainment and chic downtown living. But for
me, L.A.'s Bunker Hill was more Oz than Mecca, the wondrous
landscape controlled by old men in Brooks Brothers suits,
hiding behind the curtains and pulling strings while they
cloaked their greed in civic pride.
If you would like to read more of Dirty Laundry, check it
out on the Books
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