It’s been four years since I spent any time in Los Angeles, a city I’ve been visiting on and off since the 70’s. It’s not a city I would imagine anyone can know that well, even if you live there - it’s that sprawled and low-rise. As a visitor all you ever do is get to know a few areas well, which over time you connect up with other parts of town. Back in the 70’s it was the coastal strip I was most familiar with, mainly Santa Monica and Venice. Latterly it’s been the Beverly Hills area and a bit of biz on Wilshire. In 35 years I think I’ve been downtown twice. I’ve never been exactly sure why LA needed one. I suppose the mayor and local bureaucrats have to sit somewhere. Up until the early 1980’s it was a pretty hick town apart from the beach culture and the movie business. It was hard to find half the things you wanted in the shops. By the mid-90’s you could find a store somewhere selling round about anything the earth possessed and the place was the city of choice for all the world’s immigrants.
Flying into LA from Asia is the tough leg, you may gain a day but you lose three through jet lag. Most days the city lies in a grey opaque haze and that’s pretty much how the inside of your head feels. Driving around a familiar area you soon get the hang of things, but I avoid the freeways for a week if I can.
Joining a freeway and having to cross 5 lanes in 400 yards to make a freeway divide when you’re fresh off the plane can stress a person I’ve found. And, ever since denting a row of parked cars 20 years ago I also try to make it easy on myself by renting a familiar European car. While I wouldn’t say I was spatially challenged exactly, if the wheel has to be on the wrong side, the car better be a sensible size in my case.
So pretty soon you’re cruising around the hood feeling good and are ready to start connecting up the dots, visiting pals 30 or 40 miles up or down the freeway. It’s a big mistake to get too cocky though, as I found one well-remembered and mortifying day ten years ago. My undoing then, is a tendency I still have, when not consciously concentrating, to turn hard left on a left hand turn into the oncoming traffic lane. Of course when there’s a load of cars headed my way I don’t do it. I’m not suicidal. It’s when the road is empty I can go unconscious until I meet a car coming my way head on and I get a swift reality check as to which country I’m in.
And so it was, early one fine morning on the day I was due to fly back to Hong Kong that lunchtime I was dropping off a car I’d rented in Anaheim. I’d been staying overnight with friends in Orange County and my pal offered to lead the way to the car rental place and give me a ride back to pack in good time for him to take me to LAX. So there I was in cut-offs and a T-shirt, with no ID, no cash and chasing my pal, who’d taken off at a fair lick, heading North up the freeway. By the time we’d reached the place where the freeway divides I’d lost him and within a mile I knew I was on the wrong road. No worries, stay cool, just take the next exit and head South back down Route 10 and hang a right across to the 405. So I took the next ramp up to the bridge over the freeway and turned hard left. Within seconds I was made acutely aware of my mistake. Every car in the vicinity was flashing and honking me. In a state of shock I pulled as far as I could onto the pavement and with two wheels on the walkway and two in the gutter I inched across the bridge at 5 mph praying I could make the downward ramp before the traffic cops got me. Heart pumping and hope surging I had just turned Southward onto the downward ramp only to hear the sound I dreaded......
Whee!, Whee! Whee!
A cop car siren went off a few yards behind me. Heart sinking I knew I’d never make the flight that day and the next six hours or so were not going to be any fun. I started to get out the car.
“
Don’t Move! Stay in the car! bellowed a voice.
I froze. Oh God he’s going to shoot me! I knew if I twitched a muscle I’d get blown away. I’d seen it in the movies, I’d heard how the LAPD were. The video’d beating of Rodney King was all over the news. I wasn’t in Beverly Hills now. More like the territory of the Crips and the Stranglers. A beefy young cop slowly swaggered over toward me. Crouched in a weird position, half standing half sitting, half-in half-out the car, I started babbling at a hundred miles an hour. It must have been a weird sight. An ashen faced middle aged Englishman visibly peeing in his pants in cut offs and a torn T-shirt.
I’m most awf’ly sorry Officer, I didn’t know what I was doing. I mean I do, but I was following this car my friend was showing me the way. I was following but I lost him. You see I’m dropping off this hire car then I have to catch a plane.
He let me burble on, all the while looking at me with an expression comprising equal parts incredulity and menace. Rather like some strange insect that had done something unmentionable on his freshly pressed uniform.
“
Where are you from?, he demanded after what seemed an age.
“
I’m from Hong Kong. Well no actually, you see I’m not in fact Chinese, of course - as you can see, I mean I’m actually English but I live there, that is Hong Kong, if you see what I mean. I’m actually just visiting LA and..... blah, blahbittty, blah, blah, blah.
“
Hahng Kahng!”, he interrupted and roared, throwing back his head and cracking up.
Sensing I wasn’t going to be shot and might live through this, still in the half crouch position I was nodding and grinning idiotically, submissively, and encouragingly all at once, in manic, cringing and ignoble desparation so anxious to please and placate I was.
“
Well OK, he says, still shaking his head and chuckling Hahng Kahng incredulously to himself. “You go on your way now, but you be careful out there from now on, OK?”
So from that day to this I’ve had a rather different and rather more favourable view of the LAPD than perhaps their record warrants. When I tell the story to my friends in LA today they all say I was incredibly lucky and it could never happen nowadays. I also make a point these days of trying to overcome my instinctive dislike and distrust of the boys in blue, wherever they may be found and be nice to them on the ground that they too are human beings, that not all of them are ethically challenged and once in a while may give you a break. Such are the first faint glimmerings of tolerance and wisdom I like to think.
ParacelsusAsia
Comments or queries
ParacelsusAsia@yahoo.com
