I Still Miss Los Angeles

I know L. A. is crowded. I know that the traffic is horrible. I know that people aren't friendly, sometimes even rude. I know the city is fueled by narcissism. But I still miss Los Angeles.

My wife, Jane, and I were living a regular, mostly pleasant, life in Winter Park, Florida, in 1986. We had friends. I had a tenure-track teaching job at Valencia Community College, and my wife was employed in alcohol-drug rehabilitation. We could've easily gone on like that until retirement. But in our mid-forties, we wanted a new adventure. The place we chose to have it, after some serious consideration, was Los Angeles, California.

I had been to L. A. many times over the years, and I had enjoyed each and every visit. Without being able to explain exactly why, I always felt better there. I always enjoyed the atmosphere in every sense of the word. And I had wanted to live there for a very long time. In 1981, before we married ourselves, we were invited to an old friend's wedding, a man I had known since 1964, when we were poor college students in Alabama. He had come to L. A. to become an actor, which he did. Having just received a small inheritance, Jane agreed that we should go. So we did.

My old friend and his lovely bride were married on the beach as the Pacific Ocean gently slapped the sand. It was a lovely ceremony, and the restaurant facing the beach housed the reception. Sorry to say that this nice beachfront eatery was destroyed by one of those awful Pacific storms which occasionally threatens everything on or near the water. Anyway, on that wedding day, a good time was had by all. Jane loved Southern California, and we subsequently talked often about returning. We finally made the decision in 1986.

We drove into SoCal on January 6, 1987, under a double rainbow that arced over Indio, California. It seemed like a good omen, if you believe in stuff like that, and what followed was almost 20 years of the best and worst times of our lives. In Los Angeles, my wife's professional life simply soared. She serendipitously entered a very special field which not only paid well but was very interesting, too. I was able to experience the best years of my work life teaching at several community colleges and universities in the area. I also worked a couple of years at Paramount Pictures, where I saw things I never dreamed I'd see. The worst times need no description, as they were far outweighed by the best.

However, one very, very important reason for our going to Los Angeles had to do with our ongoing abstinence from alcohol. My wife and I have been members of a well known "self-help" group since the 1970s. Becoming a part of that group saved our lives, as it has hundreds of thousands of others since its founding in 1935. So, when we attended my friend's wedding in 1981, we, of course, attended some meetings of this group in the city, and what we found figured prominently in our decision to move there. It was the best we had seen in our many years of affiliation.

Even though the principles and guidelines for living that this group espouses are the same all over the country and in the many nations in which it is also active, some areas are simply stronger, in a word, better. We're still members of this wonderful organization as we live in Minnesota, but we both miss the way it's done in L. A. We always will.