Taking a Last Look at L.A. in the Rearview Mirror

The freeway was the same freeway it had been since God made freeways. Same long, ribbony lanes, same green signs. On this day, though, it stood out. The traffic flowed like a mighty river, cars and trucks coursing in and out of each other’s paths with split-second timing. People tend not to say it out loud (maybe for good reason), but there can be something strangely thrilling about a moving freeway. The world was bathed in 60-mph sunshine. It was a wonderful ride.

This was on a Sunday, coming back from the airport, which was also suddenly lovely. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for that big new LAX gateway. Funny, the things that catch at your heart when a goodbye is impending. Who knew the East L.A. interchange could get to a person this way?

But it did, and that was probably to be expected. Events had, after all, conspired over the years on these byways. Commutes, interviews, car-to-car calls. Arguments over who loved whom most. A trip from the east San Gabriel Valley to Cedars-Sinai in the late stages of labor. The sudden, enchanted silence from the back seat as the eldest daughter heard--really heard--Miles Davis for the first time.

That same daughter’s first, frightening, car accident. A SigAlert one hot summer night where the cars were so backed up that everyone put it in park and just got out, walking around between lanes, shooting the breeze. The first ride, on a visit in the 1970s, with a real, native L.A. driver, a kid who had KROQ-FM cranked to full volume in his dad’s car as he jammed at 75 mph from Thousand Oaks to Disneyland.

A life had transpired, or a big part of a life, on these freeways, though getting all misty about it seemed unimaginable until recently. But it’s funny, the things that catch at your heart when a goodbye is impending. Though we were coming home from the airport, the trip we’d just taken had been for a relocation. Your correspondent will soon be leaving Greater L.A.

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The particulars are mundane, and no doubt of little significance on the eve of an important (yes, voters, important) election day. My husband has taken a new job in the Bay Area, and a journalist-spouse’s motto must be “Have Notebook, Will Travel.� That the new place has subways that work and air that is scrubbed and that San Francisco is, at this moment, like some wired version of Paris in the Twenties--well, those should count, too, and probably will someday.

At the moment, though, those nice things seem more rationalizations than attractions. Seventeen of the best years of my adult life have transpired here. I will miss Southern California. I will miss it from its June jacarandas right down to the grimy offramps that led me to my husband and my first home and my family.

And I will miss this small, regular stop-off with you, the neighbors on the other side of this news page. Southern California is a big place, but not so big that someone up in Herb Caen-ville can do “local� punditry. So to all who’ve stopped in this space over the past several years to visit--or fire off a counterpoint, or share a memory or dole out a little well-deserved what-for--save this e-mail address and watch for the Bay Area datelines. The assignment will change, but not the pleasure in connecting with friends.

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Goodbyes, however, do have a certain journalistic consolation: They point up the good things about the place you’re leaving behind. News, almost by definition, tends to mean bad news; it can reduce a place to little more than a collection of worst-case scenarios and the accidents waiting to happen. Being forced to put the pathology into perspective has meant remembering why this place is worth fighting for, and not just on eves of elections. In a place as fractious as Southern California, that sort of reminder is worthwhile.

It includes all the things that flashed into focus from the car window on that Sunday: the mom-and-pop storefronts, the stunning palm trees, the signs and conversations in many languages. The offramps to every variation on community a traveler’s heart could wish for. The mountains, the beaches, the rivers. The warmth. The beautiful, sleepy-eyed kids.

And, yes, even the freeways, so mocked and accursed, and yet such a powerful backdrop for so many lives. There is no place on this planet like Southern California, no memory more thrilling, even at 60 mph. Thank you. It’s been a wonderful ride.

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Shawn Hubler will be working from The Times’ San Francisco bureau. Her e-mail address is [email protected].