I often sit in my window seat that overlooks the back yard of my house in
Washington State. This spot, above all others, is where I do my best
thinking, my most lucid writing. Within the sunshine of a perfect spring day
that is flooding the room, my memories of what I saw in Los Angeles still
engender fear and trepidation as they did in the heart of the dragon's
breath that was Los Angeles for a time. However, today, with the sunlight
beating a gentle murmur on the faded linoleum the kitchen floor, the Fat Cat
sleeping with its kittens, the road back to Los Angeles seems like a bad
dream.

With Eastern Washington's economy sagging I had difficult time during the
last winter making ends meet. About three weeks ago when I received the
query from Firestone Bonded Adjustment Service in Los Angeles about writing
a dBase program, jumped at the chance to make some money. Rodney King, the
jury at Simi Valley and the whole issue of random police violence were the
last things on my mind when I boarded the jet few days early to better avail
myself of a few days' rest the beach, perhaps take in a concert. 

I have a historical perspective since, at the height of the sixties I lived
Los Angeles. was attending U.C.L.A. during the day and working at a Malibu
restaurant and trendy-spot by night. Life was exciting, working at the Raft.
Hollywood stars and hangers-on frequented the place, and quite by accident I
even developed a passing friendship with Lee Marvin, who spent more of his
time passed out drunk on the bar than he did talking to anyone. I slept in a
cabin behind the Raft, even met a nice group of people who sometimes lived
in a black school bus. Several years later I heard that these people who I
merely had considered strange at the time, were none other than the Manson
family on sabbatical from Homicide U.

So, memories of the old days and the possibility of new money burned
together in my mind, so I decided upon staying in Malibu once more and
commuting into downtown Hollywood. As soon we landed I was able to secure
what I considered a good rental, a hardy little beastie, half-Japanese,
half-Jeep, at a price I could afford. As I zoomed down the canyon road
toward Malibu, I could see the remains of the damages that had been wrought
by the floods earlier this spring. Here and there new wood, masonry and
paint all showed where nature had ravaged, and new buildings and walls were
being rebuilt despite the seven year floods.

I was able to spend two blissfully, unaware days walking the beaches,
writing in the evenings on the laptop and reminiscing with former employer
at the Raft over delightfully cholesterol-ridden fleshly parts cooked to a
fine fettle and served with the richest condiments and desserts imaginable.
Be damned the diet! This IS Los Angeles.

The morning of the third day started on schedule, as I drove into Hollywood
to report to my temporary employer for work. I even stopped at a familiar
espresso bar on Sunset and bought the obligatory cup of moca java, a rare
treat indeed, in Eastern Washington, where espresso is the term they used to
refer to fast food.

Time stops for no one but computers, they say. I scarcely remember a bit of
the rest of the day until one of the employees in the building came and told
me that there was trouble afoot, and I might want to come into the other
room and watch on a television set someone had set up. I joined the mass of
people from all over the building who were gathered around the ornate color
set, silently watching the outbreak of the violence from a safe distance.

Looking up and glancing southward from the windows, I could clearly see
several big black clouds of smoke rising like giant mushroom clouds. The
general manager told everyone to go on home early. I hadn't paid for my
plane fare and the motel costs to turn and run away at the first sign of
trouble, so I managed to coerce the him allow me to stay and continue my
work. After all, I was in a multi- story, high-security sky scraper. It was
nearing six o'clock when hunger finally drove me away from work.

Although I had continued to intermittently monitor the progress of the
violence on Los Angeles' News Radio, it wasn't until I actually got out into
the parking lot that realized that the rioting and looting had already
reached Hollywood. As I reached the JapJeep, and was fumbling with the keys,
I saw, or rather heard the ominous WHOOMPSH that gasoline makes when it is
ignited. I looked up and watched as a storefront across the street from
where I was standing went up in flames. Suddenly I felt very threatened, and
I jumped into the JapJeep, wanting nothing more than to get the Hell out
there, to go anywhere but where I was.

I turned west, driving back down the route I had traveled that morning, only
to discover three blocks further down the street, yet another building
afire. This time the fire was well-established, with flames shooting out
into the street, with no fire trucks anywhere in sight. When I slowed down,
a guy dressed in rough-looking clothing ran off the curb and grabbed the
door handle on the passenger side, yelling and gesturing violently at me
through the partially open window. He continued screaming obscenities at me,
and yank at the door handle, although the door was locked. He persisted in
his epithets and attempts to gain entry until he finally broke the glass on
the right side, by which time I was already accelerating, my foot buried
into the gas pedal. The last time I saw him, he was limping, heading back
toward the fire. By now, I was on the alert in all directions, having seen
several other buildings afire, and witnessed at least a dozen separate
instances of looting going on.

The building right next to Frederick's of Hollywood was burning like a giant
roman candle as I went by. As I grappled around the rear seat while driving,
I found my dictaphone and started dictating my observations, hoping that I
survive to transcribe them. 

I can see more of the now-familiar black mushroom clouds dotting the sky to
my south during a momentary space between the buildings that dot both sides
of Sunset.

The cops are attempting to sporadically deal with things. They scream past
me at the next intersection, and as I wryly note that there are four men in
the car dressed in riot gear, I take a transitory memory trip back to the
sixties riots in Berkeley cracks. Two black kids, barely teenagers, are
assaulting a woman in the crosswalk ahead of me. Despite several cars
driving by, no one stops to lend a hand. My emotions are embroiled between
survival and the "right thing to do" before I slam on the brakes in
frustration. Taking a quick inventory of the rental car, now a shambles with
broken glass from the passenger side window everywhere, I finally grab the
tire jack from its receptacle in the rear of the JapJeep, and tossing my
tape recorder under the driver's side seat for good measure, I jump out of
the car. I cannot remember what I said, much less if either of the
assailants saw me approach.

Perhaps in the heat of trying to wrestle the woman's purse from her arm,
feeling relatively secure, they dismissed a pudgy middle-aged honky dressed
in a business suit as of no concern. I smacked one of them, the one who was
waving the knife, over the head with the jack, and when the second kid, a
pock-faced little kid who I would estimate to be about fifteen or sixteen,
released his hold on the screaming woman, and turned toward me, I kicked him
once as hard as I could in the gonads.

The woman was hysterical, screaming at the top of her lungs, with her eyes
half closed in the ecstasy of panic. I finally tried something I had seen in
the movies all my life. I slapped her hard, once across the face, and it
worked, it actually worked.

Two more angry-looking black kids were moving in fast from across the
street, so with no preamble whatsoever, I pushed the woman into the JapJeep
and left the two black kids, one semi-conscious, the other screaming, in the
middle of the street. I scarcely remember it, but I eventually drove the
woman to where her husband worked at a small machine shop in West Hollywood,
my hands shaking the whole time. I guess I must have been quite a sight, as
when I banged on the locked door of the machine shop, her husband yanked out
a nasty looking .357 automatic from his belt the minute he saw me. Where was
this guy ten minutes ago when I really needed him?

His wife starts reciting what happened, and promptly gives me a wet,
emotional smooch the mouth right there in front of him. I was embarrassed,
he is still waving the gun and she is vascillating rapidly between
hysterical and relieved. I just hope, for my sake, that she doesn't remember
my slapping her face so long as he is waving that pistol around. She
didn't. 

When I tired of her repeatedly breathlessly carrying on and on about 'them
nigger kids' I tried diplomatically to get back the JapJeep. Every time I
made a subtle move toward the open driver's door, the woman would grab me
and start to relive the entire episode all over again.

I have no idea if this was particularly for her husband's edification or her
own weird sense of chronology. After hearing the entire tale from start to
finish for the fifth time, hastily bidding my farewell, I literally leaped
into the JapJeep, glass and all. Ten minutes later, still driving west
toward Malibu and perhaps safety, suddenly realized I never even got her
name.

They remain nameless strangers, one with gun, one slightly hysterical...both
with a strong hatred for black kids, that swam out of life as effortlessly
as they had swam in. We truly have become anonymous society.

In Malibu, the policeman's convention must have been just breaking up, for I
saw more police cars between Topanga Canyon and Crestline Drive and Pacific
Coast Highway than I had seen the entire time I was in Hollywood.

A Los Angeles Sheriff's Department cruiser unceremoniously pulls me over at
a red light, two officers ungently bringing me out of the car at gunpoint,
and asking questions about the broken window. When I produce satisfactory
proof of who I am and why I am driving a new car with two shattered
passenger side windows down the street, finally starting to tell them about
the two kids in the middle of the street, the one black officer brusquely
hands me back my papers and license.

"Don't think anything of it. All the street niggers are up in the air this
afternoon. The Governor has already requested the National Guard, so if I
was you, I'd git' my ass to wherever I had to go and stay the hell there."

His partner indicates that they have another call, and without further
conversation, they turn a U-turn in the middle of Topanga Canyon Road and
roar back toward the city, their siren echoing off the trees either side of
the road. Since both officers were African-Americans, I presume one cannot
label him a racist because he referred to the rioters "street niggers", but
still I wonder whether racism or justice would be handed out by most of the
beat cops on duty tonight.

I drive into the motel parking lot, under the watchful eyes of a pair of
heavily-armed private security guards that certainly were not there earlier
in the day. Grabbing the dictaphone and my laptop computer from the JapJeep,
I made my way to my room, tossing everything akimbo on top of the bed. When
I step in front of the mirror, seeing myself as others had seen me, I was
doubly shocked. 

Somehow unnoticed during the last three hours my shirt is torn right down
the front and I was bleeding from several small cuts on my face and hands.
Here and there in my hair were little blotches which were, upon
investigation, more glass cuts. I spent the next two hours alternating
between the television set which was whoo-whooing the latest fires, and the
mirror in the bathroom where I cleaned up and doctored myself as best I
could.

About ten-thirty that night, when the shock finally began to ebb, I realized
I was famished. Lunch had been over ten hours ago, and I was famished. I
also knew, from hearing the television, that the curfew was being enforced.

Finally, I called my ex-employer down the road about two miles and asked
tactfully if he was still serving dinner. In inimicable fashion, despite the
curfew, within ten minutes I was sitting at his side in an otherwise totally
empty dining room, biting into a thick delicious salmon steak. To all
appearances, we were merely two old friends who were enjoying each others'
company. However, on the way in the front door, I had seen his cook, who was
doubling for the matre'd for the evening (who had outraged him by calling
sick) surreptitiously slipping a pistol back inside his waistband.

I too, had come armed, I always pack a gun in my suitcase when I am going to
Los Angeles, and I was not about to repeat the circumstances of the earlier
part of the day. I have no doubt whatsoever, that my host probably was
bristling with firepower, either. I somehow managed to return to my motel
room without further incident, and upon considering the news still pouring
in from the television set, promptly did something I haven't done in years:
downed two tranquilizers from my emergency ration kit and promptly slept
like a baby. 

The morning brought back other memories, for as I stepped outside, trying to
catch a cup of coffee and perhaps a bite to eat, the smell of smoke, like a
heavy wet cotton blanket, lay in the morning air. I called the airport
rental service to switch vehicles as soon as the airport re-opened, and
called and learned that nobody would be at the insurance company's office in
Hollywood today. Second day on the job and it's a vacation day. What a
world!

Several hours later, after searching for a decent place eat breakfast, I
found a little hole in the wall at the upper end of the San Bernadino
Valley. Ma and Pa Grits is ALWAYS open! the sign in front said, and judging
by the mass of people inside, I guessed offhand that either there were a lot
of people in my plight, hungry with most of Los Angeles County shut down for
urban recreation, or else the food must be palatable.

Imagine my shock when I walked inside and found the place to be full of a
variety of races, all chatting with one another, leaning over booths circa
1960's style. I was delighted with the breakfast, but what was even more
fascinating were the number of people who were as concerned about the plight
the rioters themselves, as they were about the burned out buildings. The
waitress, middle-aged black woman with a gold front tooth and a middle-aged
spread about the same size as my own gave me the benefit of her infectious
grin, and hustled my food back to me in what has to be the fastest I've seen
it done.

When I finally got to the airport and turned in the JapJeep for a very
similar JapJeep, learned that the airport would be closing for the day at
5:00 p.m. that night, due to the governor's declaration. 'Please pardon Los
Angeles while we shut down the entire town.' someone had written felt tip
pen beside the official looking sign on the huge glass doors. I did notice
that the typical mass of Moonies, Croonies and other assorted panhandlers
that usually live in the airport terminal seemed remarkably absent.

I spent a long quiet weekend in Big Sur with friends I hadn't seen in nearly
ten years. Somehow, watching the ocean curls break on the sands nearby where
they live in relative isolation, and watching their young daughter laughing
as she played with a vagrant starfish among the rocks, I forgot the ails of
the urban plight, put aside the pain I felt at thinking of the anguish that
the riots brought to many lives.

Most of all, for a time, forgot the fact that during this last ten year
episode of Republican demi-progress, the rich have gotten richer, the poor
poorer and those of us in between are just plain scared. For a time, there
among the rocks beside the sea, I set aside everything for the sake of a
spot of friendship, a taste of sun and unbridled love of life. 

On Monday, back in Los Angeles, I accomplished what I had been paid to do in
two days' time, and headed back to Washington State, complete with four
diskettes full of impressions the aftermath and personal involvement during
the opening hours of the riot.

There are those in this country who would tell you that the rioters were
wrong, that they were boldly criminal in nature. Whoever it was that coined
this statement probably never knew the feeling desperation, or of hunger.
They probably never have had to deny their children those new Nintendo toys
that kids seem to demand these days for lack of money. I imagine that, were
the shoe on the other foot, surviving on welfare, they probably would have
helped throw the first brick, lit the first firebomb and probably helped
their neighbor lift the first television set out of the shattered window a
storefront where only the day before, they could not afford to shop on a
mere $400 a month. My sympathies are really mixed. 

According to two cops with whom I spoke anonymously, they were expressly
forbidden from entering the riot zone until two hours after things were
already burning. Therefore, feel empathy for them, as well, for they
ultimately lost not only the fight for control of the streets, but also the
respect of those they serve; all in the name of politics it would appear.

Now that the political juggernaut seems to be once again firmly place, with
promises of largesse and purposeful politically-motivated promises aid for
Los Angeles from high places, once again sitting in Eastern Washington
watching the sun dancing on the dandelions out back, I start remembering the
words of an old, old black woman with whom I spoke on Crenshaw Avenue
several days after the riot was ended.

"Dey's folks who cares about one another, and den dey's folks who don't give
a good gosh-damn about nuttin'," she said, leaning on her cane and surveying
the burned out remains of her neighborhood grocery store. "The thing folkses
gots to remember is that there are lots of mean niggers in dis here ghetto
with white skin as dey are with black skin. Only thing is, dat the white
nigger, he like as not, is a politician lookin' for black votes or gonna
open up a store somewhere here and charge outrageous prices for what he
sells..."

Somehow, find a great deal of wisdom in the words of this nameless eighty
year old woman with an eighth grade education, living on pension somewhere
in South East Los Angeles.