thedrifter
03-31-08, 11:03 AM
Al Martinez:
The lost art of asking directions
March 31, 2008
Ihave watched the television show "Lost" once or twice, not because it is the best program on the air but because I have to occasionally remind myself to get very specific directions when I am headed into unfamiliar territory, and above all to remember how to get back to where I began.
The actors on the TV show are young, sexy and hip to the ways of survival. When they aren't fighting or groping each other, they're turning bark into pork chops and sand fleas into penicillin. I am not so innovative, which is one of the reasons when lost that I end up in a state of panic. And I get lost a lot.
A case in point is a recent attempt to maneuver down from Mt. Washington in the dark on winding roads that changed names or that ended abruptly against a hillside. I had only a vague notion in the first place of where I was going and no one else seemed to know either.
I was there to join in honoring Jack Smith, the late Times' columnist who once lived in the tight little cultural biome overlooking . . . well, I don't actually know what it was overlooking because I don't know exactly where I was.
Smith died in 1996 and this was the 50th anniversary of the start of his column. He had been much beloved by everyone, including me, although I think admired or respected might be a better term to describe the connection between two ex-Marines. We aren't usually beloved to each other.
Directions provided by Eliot Sekuler, president of the Mt. Washington Assn., got me to the meeting site, whereupon I gave a short, messed-up speech, but only after a much longer presentation by a lady who was showing slides and talking about improving life in L.A. I think she was from the city attorney's office, which has very little to do with improving anything.
Sekuler had to catch a plane, so he was gone by the time I stood up to speak, which was fortunate for him, and he was not there to guide me down from the mountain, which was not fortunate for me. I left the meeting place about 9 p.m. and was still wandering around the narrow streets of the remote community at 10:30. Three times I asked someone how to get out of there. Two people gave me wrong information and the third said she didn't know and rushed into her house.
Standing in the middle of the street with the moon looking down on me I felt like the woman who was wandering in front of our Topanga home one night shouting to no one in particular in a voice of desperation, "Will somebody help me? Please, help me!"
I rushed out not quite sure what I was going to do if she was under attack from someone bigger and stronger than I, which is just about everyone, and discovered she was lost. She was looking for one of those streets that appear and disappear like donkey trail in Brigadoon. The street name was vaguely familiar to me, so I began giving her directions when my wife, who had followed me out, said, "No, not you. I'll give directions. We don't want her ending up in a cow pasture now do we?"
Back to Mt. Washington. Skidding to a stop at a barrier that prevented me from driving off a cliff, I said to hell with this and used my cellphone to call Cinelli. She said, "Don't move, the helicopters will be there in a minute," and laughed. My plight was not unfamiliar to her. But humor, as everyone knows, involves what's happening to someone else, and so what was happening to me wasn't funny to me. "Just get me out of here," I said.
Working together, we managed to get me off of the devil's peak only to get me lost again. Winding through the flatlands, I somehow ended up on the wrong freeway, which took me to Pasadena. I have been to Pasadena many times but not in that part of town.
Lost again.
I headed in one direction and decided that the 134 Freeway must be in the other direction and finally parked and considered suicide.
Just my luck, a person with tattoos, arms longer than his legs and palms that faced backward as he walked strutted by. Normally I avoid people like that but I was desperate.
I said, "Excuse me, sir," which was probably a phrase not completely familiar to him, "can you direct me to the 134 Freeway?" He pointed without missing a strut and kept going.
Thanks to him, it was the right way to the 134, exactly in the opposite direction in which I had been driving. When I arrived home about 11, Cinelli rushed into my arms and said, "Thank God, you're safe," and began laughing like hell.
I smiled in relief, though weakly.
almtz13@aol.com
Ellie
The lost art of asking directions
March 31, 2008
Ihave watched the television show "Lost" once or twice, not because it is the best program on the air but because I have to occasionally remind myself to get very specific directions when I am headed into unfamiliar territory, and above all to remember how to get back to where I began.
The actors on the TV show are young, sexy and hip to the ways of survival. When they aren't fighting or groping each other, they're turning bark into pork chops and sand fleas into penicillin. I am not so innovative, which is one of the reasons when lost that I end up in a state of panic. And I get lost a lot.
A case in point is a recent attempt to maneuver down from Mt. Washington in the dark on winding roads that changed names or that ended abruptly against a hillside. I had only a vague notion in the first place of where I was going and no one else seemed to know either.
I was there to join in honoring Jack Smith, the late Times' columnist who once lived in the tight little cultural biome overlooking . . . well, I don't actually know what it was overlooking because I don't know exactly where I was.
Smith died in 1996 and this was the 50th anniversary of the start of his column. He had been much beloved by everyone, including me, although I think admired or respected might be a better term to describe the connection between two ex-Marines. We aren't usually beloved to each other.
Directions provided by Eliot Sekuler, president of the Mt. Washington Assn., got me to the meeting site, whereupon I gave a short, messed-up speech, but only after a much longer presentation by a lady who was showing slides and talking about improving life in L.A. I think she was from the city attorney's office, which has very little to do with improving anything.
Sekuler had to catch a plane, so he was gone by the time I stood up to speak, which was fortunate for him, and he was not there to guide me down from the mountain, which was not fortunate for me. I left the meeting place about 9 p.m. and was still wandering around the narrow streets of the remote community at 10:30. Three times I asked someone how to get out of there. Two people gave me wrong information and the third said she didn't know and rushed into her house.
Standing in the middle of the street with the moon looking down on me I felt like the woman who was wandering in front of our Topanga home one night shouting to no one in particular in a voice of desperation, "Will somebody help me? Please, help me!"
I rushed out not quite sure what I was going to do if she was under attack from someone bigger and stronger than I, which is just about everyone, and discovered she was lost. She was looking for one of those streets that appear and disappear like donkey trail in Brigadoon. The street name was vaguely familiar to me, so I began giving her directions when my wife, who had followed me out, said, "No, not you. I'll give directions. We don't want her ending up in a cow pasture now do we?"
Back to Mt. Washington. Skidding to a stop at a barrier that prevented me from driving off a cliff, I said to hell with this and used my cellphone to call Cinelli. She said, "Don't move, the helicopters will be there in a minute," and laughed. My plight was not unfamiliar to her. But humor, as everyone knows, involves what's happening to someone else, and so what was happening to me wasn't funny to me. "Just get me out of here," I said.
Working together, we managed to get me off of the devil's peak only to get me lost again. Winding through the flatlands, I somehow ended up on the wrong freeway, which took me to Pasadena. I have been to Pasadena many times but not in that part of town.
Lost again.
I headed in one direction and decided that the 134 Freeway must be in the other direction and finally parked and considered suicide.
Just my luck, a person with tattoos, arms longer than his legs and palms that faced backward as he walked strutted by. Normally I avoid people like that but I was desperate.
I said, "Excuse me, sir," which was probably a phrase not completely familiar to him, "can you direct me to the 134 Freeway?" He pointed without missing a strut and kept going.
Thanks to him, it was the right way to the 134, exactly in the opposite direction in which I had been driving. When I arrived home about 11, Cinelli rushed into my arms and said, "Thank God, you're safe," and began laughing like hell.
I smiled in relief, though weakly.
almtz13@aol.com
Ellie