I was lucky to have been born in Southern California when there were less than 1 million people living in greater Los Angeles.
At the age of 11, my grandmother gave me my first major freedom in the form of a balloon-tired bicycle for my birthday. I could peddle it to the beach at Santa Monica that was about 20 miles away, spend most of the day body surfing and then with the afternoon wind at my back I somehow had enough energy left to peddle home. In March after the winter rains, every vacant lot had tall green grass growing that was almost 3 feet tall. Sliding down those steep, grass-covered hills on cardboard boxes occupied most of the time after school during every March of every year of my childhood.
I spent weekends for a couple of years riding my bike on the many fire roads in nearby Griffith Park. The crash helmet had not been invented yet so we rode our bicycles in Levi’s and T-shirts. We lived about 2 miles from the Griffith Park swimming pool that you could use from 9 to 12 or 1 to 4:30 for 5 cents. For another 5 cents, you could get the key to a locker and a clean towel. The ride home from the swimming pool was up a long hill that forced me to push the bicycle up rather than trying to peddle it.
I could peddle my bicycle up to the summit of Cahuenga pass and then west on Mulholland Highway and then west to Boy Scout Camp Arthurlet. If you took your rucksack and sleeping bag you could camp out there for $.10 a night or $.25 a night if you wanted to sleep in a bunk with a mattress in a wall tent.
There was a great swimming pool to use at no extra charge. You could either bring your own food and cook it yourself or buy three meals a day at the camp for an extra dollar.
This is probably the time in my life when I got irrevocably dedicated to peanut butter. From those early Boy Scout days until now I always have at least one jar of peanut butter available in my food box in the car or somewhere around the house.
There were Friday nights when I rode that bicycle all the way to the Pan Pacific Auditorium to make endless left turns on my ice skates. By the time I was a senior in high school I had saved $38 to buy a pair of custom-made racing skates with offset blades. Those blades were offset to the inside of the left turn so I could skate faster without the shoe hitting the ice.
One night I fell badly and they put a dozen stitches in my kneecap. The 12 stitches occurred two days before I entered USC where I had to hobble around on crutches for the first week or so.
The big red electric streetcars that were laid out crisscrossing the Los Angeles basin originally dictated as the development corridors of the future.
My parents prohibited me from hitchhiking, but from the age of 11 until I got out of the Navy at the age of 21 I don’t know how many thousands of miles I hitchhiked but I do know I had seen most of the state of California by the time I had enough birthdays to qualify for my own driver’s license.
On La Cienaga and Beverly Boulevard there was Gilmore Stadium, a massive farmers’ market and the Pan Pacific Auditorium n that vicinity of the La Brea tar pits. The bottomless tar pits had claimed countless prehistoric animals including saber tooth tigers and all other form of life from ancient times. I was fascinated seeing the city and area wherever my bicycle and roller skates took me.
My mother worked from 9 in the morning until 9 at night six days a week, my father never worked. I kept my skis and surfboards in my bedroom in the family home until I was almost 30-years-old.
The wanderlust that I was privileged to have kept me on the move until I met my wife Laurie 30 years ago. We were G.U. or geographically undesirable because I was living in Manhattan Beach California and she was living in Seattle. It only took me three weeks cruising in my 20-foot camera boat with her in the Pacific Northwest to realize that there’s an awful lot more to the world than the boundaries of Southern California.
Two of my three children still live in Southern California and I enjoy visiting them for a few days, but then the crowds and traffic and lack of green trees and the beauty of the Northwest puts me back on an airplane to our home in the San Juan islands.
In short, anyone who is privileged enough to live in California during the 30s thru the 70s or Washington currently is among the privileged few in the world.
At the same time only 5 percent of the people who live in Seattle have ever traveled the 80 miles north to the San Juan Islands. I have spent my entire life wondering what is just over the horizon and going and taking a look at what is there.
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller. Read more of Warren’s stories at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
