Just a Trickle Away : It’s Another Case of Double Dribble

There’s a river, a rollin’ river

Flowin’ through our town

It’s not so very mighty

But it sure does get around.

I long to sit and cool my feet

On its sterile banks and gray concrete.

Ooze on, L.A. River, ooze on.

--From the song “L.A. River,” author understandably anonymous.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water. . . .

When last sighted, the Explorer, cruddy but unbowed, had completed his turkey trot along the Los Angeles River from its mouth in Long Beach to its putative source in the west San Fernando Valley.

High and dry at last on the playing fields of Canoga Park High School (which had a lot better season than he did), the Explorer had surveyed his handiwork and found it good.

The fabled river, he had determined, had its origin at the confluence of two dubious dribbles. From the northwest, brackish Bell Creek had coupled with acidic Arroyo Calabasas, slinking up from the southwest, to spawn the splendid sump.

The Explorer’s mission was accomplished. Advent, the season of joy and remuneration, was upon the Explorer and he had returned home to a hero’s welcome: “Oh yuk! Leave your shoes at the door, willya?”

Embarrassed by the adulation attendant upon his remarkable feet, the Explorer had sought solitude, an unspoiled corner where he might ponder the implications of his historic hajj. Fittingly, he chose his own fountainhead, 3,000 miles east of his California Eden. Thoreau had his Walden; the Explorer had his Duck Pond, the doughty little wallow in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., from which none other than George Washington had drawn psychic sustenance.

(It has been duly noted that Washington threw a dollar over the Potomac River. Less well documented is the fact that the Father of His Country, while waiting impatiently in 1781 for Rochambeau’s reinforcements from the north, had performed a far more personal act on the shores of the Duck Pond, one that has inspired generations of small boys who grew up in Westchester County. Whether he did or didn’t is immaterial; it’s the thought that counts.)

In theory, it was a time for contemplation, but old habits die hard. Pavlovian, the Explorer had set out through the snow to trace the source of his pet puddle. Duck soup. Within 45 minutes the wellspring was located. (Historic note: The source of the Duck Pond lies between the 10th green and 11th tee of the Ardsley Country Club golf course.)

And there, squatting in the slush atop an unlisted hummock, the Explorer came to realize that his work in Los Angeles was not done. No more was Canoga Park the source of the L.A. River than the Duck Pond was the genesis of the Gowanus.

Footsteps echoed in the memory. “You gotta be outta your gourd,” Sam Toan of Atwater Glen had said some months earlier. “Rivers got no beginnings, only ends.”

Rosalie, a bespectacled secretary in North Long Beach, had begged to differ. “The true source,” she had said, “has to be where the first raindrops make the first rill that makes the first runnel that makes the brook that makes the stream that makes the creek that makes the river” . . . that lives in the house that Jack built.

“Look at it this way,” said Fiona Carter, a finely tuned English tourist encountered near Chinatown. “The river’s an artery. Arteries

branch off into arterioles. Arterioles are fed by capillaries. And they probably split up into Capulets. Maybe even Montagues. Bloody hopeless. You’ll be 106, luv, before you find the proper Capulet. Why don’t you buy me a pink gin instead?”

Whatever, the Explorer now knew where his duty lay. An interminable $99 flight westward--exploring is not for the frill-seeker--afforded ample opportunity to calculate the odds.

Between the discovery of America and the assault on the L.A. River, the last great geographical riddle--the source of the Nile--had remained unresolved for 2,000 years. Even Ptolemy had thrown in the sponge, and before him, the redoubtable Herodotus. “Of the source of the Nile,” the Greek geographer had written, “no one can give any account. It enters Egypt from parts beyond.” The “parts beyond”--rough equivalent of the Simi Valley--Ptolemy had dismissed on his world map with the curt notation, “Here there be tygers.”

The Explorer, or so his dispassionate editor had warned him, did not have 2,000 years. Herodotus, on the other hand, did not have Mike Wiener. . . .

A month previous, in a Canoga Park High School classroom, the scene--controlled chaos--had been familiar, and an off-course explorer had marveled at the precocity of today’s youth. Still in their teens, teacher Mike Wiener’s wards, putting out the school newspaper, appeared already to have mastered the First Rule of Journalism: Promise the editor a story, then turn it in two weeks late, just minutes before deadline. Better still, minutes after. Then you get to yell, “Stop the presses!”--a heady exercise forfeited only by delivery of the assignment on time. No such dereliction at CPHS. These kids were pros.

Under the circumstances, Wiener, reputed L.A. River scholar, had only had the time to bark back over his shoulder, “Of course I know where the source is!”

The Explorer had heard it before, and from experts. Throughout his expedition, opinions on the source had been thicker than goo. West Covina was a popular choice, with the Pacific Ocean a close second. Ballots had been cast for Sacramento, Caesars Palace, Big Bear, Little Tokyo, North Hollywood and the swimming pool at Playboy Mansion.

Somewhat more scholarly, Dr. Robert W. Boyle, under a Worth Research Associates letterhead, had written: “ . . . I have been struck by the observation that the Los Angeles Basin, which is unnaturally flat compared to its surroundings, is actually a delta of some very large drainage source. (Promontories like Palos Verdes and the Baldwin Hills must have been offshore islands at one time.)

“The source for all this outwash must have been the Mojave Desert, or possibly areas farther north. If you look at the topography of the Mojave and the valleys that form the headwaters of the present-day Santa Clara River (the one that goes to Ventura, not that other one up near what’s-its-name), it’s clear that this comprised the early source of the L.A. River.

“The only thing needed to support this argument is the existence of a present-day impediment to flow, namely a dam.

“If you drive north on California 14 just south of Palmdale (or fly; flying is better), you’ll see the dam. Nowadays we call it the San Andreas Fault. . . .”

On slightly shakier ground, Kim, a receptionist at the venerated Thomas Bros. map company, had opined that, “The river starts up in King’s Canyon in Yosemite. I was camping there 10 years ago and it sure looked like the source. If not, how about Bakersfield?”

Reluctantly--who among us would willingly pass up a trip to Bakersfield?--Kim had been disqualified when she had also placed the mouth of the L.A. River at Rosarito Beach, just west of Tijuana.

Now, recrudesced from his pilgrimage to the Duck Pond and eager to put paid to the whole fershluginer affair, the Explorer sought a second rendezvous with the stream-wise Mike Wiener.

The teacher came prepared. They always do, the good ones.

“Canoga Park,” Wiener said, carving a neat half-moon from the orbit of his IHOP flapjack, “is a watery place. Particularly in 1938, when the community was 10 feet under water. Bell Creek overflowed to the extent that only the top of the street sign at Hart and Topanga could be seen. That’s when they decided to straighten the creek, and eventually line it with concrete.

“The town used to be called Owensmouth, you know. The Owens Aqueduct was supposed to end up here, but never made it. So in 1931, the community was renamed Canoga Park. ‘Canoga’ was the Indian name for ‘place to water your horse.’ Maybe they watered them in the creek, who knows? I wasn’t around. . . .

“In any case, Bell Creek--the kids call it ‘The Wash’--comes in from the mountains just west of here. Follow it up, and you’ll find the origin of the Los Angeles River.”

The Explorer stopped in mid-chomp. Symbolically, perhaps, a drop of ersatz maple syrup spurtled down his fork, onto his favorite finger and all the way down to his wrist. Unnerved, Wiener averted his eyes.

“It’s as simple as that?” the Explorer asked.

“Hey,” Wiener said, “never look a gift source in the mouth.”

In a way, it was good to get back into the muck. In another way, it wasn’t as simple as all that.

For nearly a mile, and with typical disregard for personal safety, the Explorer followed Bell Creek through the curried backyards of Canoga Park, huffing over fences, darting under clotheslines, detouring around dervish lawn sprinklers and skirting an Amazon army of hostile housewives in fascinating permutations of deshabille.

Just west of Shoup Avenue, the whole thing came unstuck.

Another concrete channel, a capulet not more than 20 feet across, had insinuated itself into the equation, drawling in from the north to demand equal time. This one was called Chatsworth Creek. The Explorer dithered. At length, instinct guided his feet to the north--instinct, sloth (the north mountains looked a lot closer than those to the west) and Sanford Wohlgemuth.

“On the long shot that you’re taking your time,” wrote Wohlgemuth, who knows a thing or two about explorers, not to mention journalists, “let me say something about Lee’s Lake, a tiny blue triangle on an old Thomas map.”

Wohlgemuth, a Reseda environmentalist, pinpointed the lake “on Roscoe, just west of what is now the Hughes plant at Fallbrook.

“Some 20 years ago,” he wrote, “when we took up bird-watching, we stumbled on Lee’s Lake. It was a small pond surrounded by tall trees and a deserted old wooden mansion. We were delighted to find wintering ducks and stately egrets and herons--real wild birds, not your city-park bastard mallards.

“The big house and the grounds were not yet fenced in, yet few people seemed to frequent it . . . It was supposed to have been used as a movie set.

“It was also supposed to be the source of the L.A. River . . . “

And it was worth a shot. Making a mental note of another pretender--one Dayton Creek, peeling off to the west--the Explorer followed Chatsworth Creek to Roscoe. North of the boulevard, the creek shucked the horny husk of progress and reverted to a natural runnel, two feet across. Roiled by a recent rain, the water was the color of thrice-washed khakis, or even a pot of gold.

Bobbing along in the tide like a balsa bumboat was a perfect, pristine leaf, the kind of leaf that looked as though it might have hitched a ride from far up the side of an unbruised mountain.

Around a corner, the brook burrowed under a weedy hill, never to be seen again. Beware of creeks bearing gifts.

Humbled again by the vicissitudes of nature, the Explorer backtracked, around Roscoe, up Ducar Avenue and Through the Looking Glass.

There, nestled in the foothills north of Canoga Park, was Ruritania West, a scene very close to what a Christmas card would have looked like had a mellower Caesar Augustus summoned the Nazarenes to Southern California instead.

Centerpiece was a lapis lagoon. Around it, suburban houses sparkled in the sun like rhinestones on a green belt. Each house seemed to have a perfectly coifed lawn, a little white boat, a smiling child, a 10-speed bike, a friendly dog.

At the south end, a clubhouse, tennis courts, swimming pool, gazebos. In the center of the lake, four or five gushing fountains. At the north end, a woman in gardening clothes feeding a flock of ducks. Had he lived, Norman Rockwell would have died on the spot.

If this wasn’t the source of the L.A. River, it damn well ought to be!

Lurching unsteadily up the road--more speed bumps per square person than anywhere else in California--the Explorer approached the northernmost house and hailed the Duck Lady.

“Do you realize,” he asked, “that you are living on hallowed ground--the very source of the Los Angeles River?”

“I doubt that very much,” said the chatelaine of the manor, an amiable woman named Carol Tawes.

“Back when it was Lee’s Lake--it’s Hidden Lake now--it was fed by springs. Every winter they’d flood the houses. When they developed the property, the builders sealed off the lake. No way in; no way out.”

“So where does the water come from?”

“From the fountains,” Mrs. Tawes said, effectively scuttling Shangri-La. “It’s city water.”

Less than gruntled, the Explorer took the high ground; half-heartedly circled the leached concavity of Chatsworth Reservoir (“Empty,” the Thomas map dryly notes); scuffed down Santa Susana Creek to Brown’s Canyon Wash. The wash entered the river at Mason Avenue--too far east to count--clogging the artery with a half-inch of “water” the color and consistency of leftover spinach.

Upriver, the sun was setting over the soup. The source, if there was one, would have to wait for another day.

The Explorer headed home again, a new tune on his parched lips. Several days earlier, a music cassette, “Windmill,” had arrived in the mail, courtesy of Ken Graydon, the troubadour of Sherman Oaks. On the tape, Graydon’s version of “L.A. River.”

“I picked it up from Clabe Hangen, the folk singer from Claremont, about 20 years ago,” Graydon said by phone. “It was a big favorite in Death Valley, don’t ask me why.

“Keith and Rusty McNeil, who’re still touring, recorded it too, and maybe a few others. But even though we all dredged up every name we could think of, we never did determine who wrote the thing. Maybe if you print the words, somebody will step forward to claim the credit--or the blame. . . .” It’s not so very mighty It’s not so deep and wide Its current has a longing Just to stay at low, low tide. I thank the Lord it’s not blood red, It’s a cool and peaceful algae green instead. Ooze on, L.A. River, ooze on, . . .