A Street With No Name

The man who came into the office of Acton’s Unocal service station was dressed in ordinary street clothes, but his face was made up like a clown and he wore a punk style fright wig streaked in bright reds and yellows. It was hard not to notice him. The others in the office had on denims and plaid shirts and sometimes heavy jackets because there was still snow on the peaks that loomed over the Antelope Valley and a cold wind was blowing across the high desert.

The clown man was in a stew because he was late for something and wanted to know how far east Sand Canyon was. The lady behind the counter, who couldn’t take her eyes off his wig, said it wasn’t east, it was west. He said, “Are you sure?” the way people do when they don’t get the kind of answer they want. “I’m sure,” the lady said. “You’ll see all the housing tracts on the side of the road,” a customer offered.

“I’ll never get there,” the clown man said, hurrying off. Those in the station office watched him go and one of them said, “He belongs in Sand Canyon.” Then they laughed and went on about their business. Someone said later the clown probably reminded them of the jarring red-roofed tract houses that trim Sand Canyon’s “designer hills” about 15 miles away, hills flattened and restructured to accommodate new development. The folks in Acton look upon it as a kind of residential circus.

I was in Acton not in search of a circus but of serenity. It’s a small town about 50 miles northeast of L.A., just before you get to Palmdale. Someone told me it was one of the last outposts of quiet living, a place where horseback riders mosied down the main street and pigs were sold for slaughter, but now land speculators are moving in and things are changing. It’s understandable if not desirable.

We’re all searching for what a line in the song “‘Midnight Train to Georgia” describes as “a better place in time,” which is to say a safer and more peaceful climate, like the small towns that exist in song and memory. Developers understand our longing and seek out places like Acton because they’re peaceful and the land is gracious. And then they set about destroying the beauty with tract houses.

It’s obvious just driving into Acton that change is in the wind. A large sign on Crown Valley Road announces that 32 luxury homes are coming soon. “That says it all,” Steve Miller said, standing behind the counter at Acton Auto Parts. He’s president of the town’s Chamber of Commerce. “That’s what we’re afraid of. Big developers built one tract of $300,000 homes on the other side of town and they were sold overnight. Now they’re going to build $700,000 homes and they’ll be gone overnight too. It’s getting so there’s no place to hide.”

What Miller meant was that when he was a kid he lived in Torrance, which was horse country then, and when the rural nature of Torrance changed, buried under a burgeoning population, the family moved to Corona. When Corona changed it was off to Chatsworth, always just ahead of the advancing hordes of suburbanites, and when Chatsworth boomed Miller came to Acton. He has no idea where he’d go from Acton, and neither does anyone else.

I can understand the quest. If you’re looking for a quiet life in a rural setting, Acton is it. The town was started by miners and ranchers more than a hundred years ago and still has a 19th Century feel to it. About 6,000 people live in areas that surround an idyllic village setting. I spent the afternoon wandering around and ended up on a street with no name looking toward the market and the 49er Saloon.

Hills cascade in perfect symmetry to a distance that overlaps into diminishing shades of brown and gold. Acton’s older homes, shielded by pine and eucalyptus trees, blend perfectly into the setting and from where I stood you couldn’t see the stark new tract houses across the freeway. Nothing violates the land from the street with no name.

“We talked about incorporation but we just don’t have the tax base,” Steve Miller said. “Instead, we’re working to create a community ordinance that would control development. I just hope we’re not too late.”

As I drove out of town, I passed the sign that said 32 new luxury homes were coming soon. I also passed one that said Bingo was played on Friday nights at the Acton Community Club. I realized suddenly that they pretty much summarized a world in conflict, like the guy with the clown face in a town of muted tones, and I wondered how long it would be before the Bingo games were gone too. Euripides said all is change, all yields its place and goes. I thought about that and about Acton as I drove back into the calamity of the city.