Holy Motoring

The first time I had reason to visit the downtown headquarters of the Automobile Club of Southern California, it took me about half an hour to find the darn thing. I kept swinging around the blocks off Figueroa, past the Popeye’s Chicken, past the two churches and round again. Heaven knows why it took me so long to notice that one of those two churches was adorned not with an icon of the requisite saint but with the superhero-esque, white-on-throbbing-red-bell-on-dark-blue AAA logo. Perhaps because AAA offices I have previously patronized (hey, proud member since 1980) did not have corner towers, terra-cotta tiles or cupolas.

I suppose it is appropriate that a city that worships automotive travel would erect a temple to it. And the cathedral-like setting offered a sort of reassurance, considering my mission: to negotiate an insurance claim. I had been praying for justice tempered by mercy--that and a one-day turnaround.

Constructed in 1923 by then-prominent architects Sumner Hunt and Silas Burns (they designed the Southwest Museum in Highland Park and McKinley mansion on Lafayette Park Place), the headquarters resembles the St. Vincent de Paul church across the street in a sweetly self-conscious way, like a really earnest, polite person wearing drapey robes, gazing skyward and holding a little flower in hopes of being taken for St. Teresa or maybe her first cousin. The arched entrance is guarded by a 100-year-old Moreton Bay fig tree (and a younger, very nice man in a uniform), opening onto a courtyard lot where there is always free parking, a true sign of divine intervention.

Approaching the door, I half expected a sanctuary handle around which a wimpled head would peer to ask: “And what do you seek, my child?� but of course there is just a plain glass door. Within, it looks and sounds suspiciously like a AAA office (ah, the delicate mothlike flap of the TripTik). I maneuvered around stands of proselytizing literature--�Favorite Dog Hikes,� “Cooking Aboard Your RV�--in search of redemption. In a hush-filled cubicle, my insurance agent patiently listened to my litany of sins (smashed headlight, crumpled driver’s side door) and my self-justifications (“he backed right into me�) and offered absolution and penance: The check will be at the dealer’s in the morning and my insurance rates will ascend.

To soothe my ruffled interiors, I wandered over to St. Vincent, with its just- scraping- the- underside- of- heaven ceilings and echoing interiors designed by Samuel Lunden. The creakings and whisperings of those kneeling beckoned while prayer lights flickered at the feet of the Blessed Mother, Baby Jesus and a host of saints. The auto club doesn’t have a candle to hold in the deity department since St. Christopher turned out to be a fraud, but this is still a pretty holy corner, Adams and Fig. Between these two buildings, you’ve got a lot of bases covered (even if there are plans to move the headquarters to Costa Mesa later this year). I believe in the power of prayer, but there are times when 24-hour road service ain’t bad either.