Waiting For Good Dov, PART 1...
Back in 1982, when my former best friend Dov relocated to Woodland Hills after his parents split up, WH seemed to this here narrator (or better yet, his diminutive, non-traveled, sheltered suburbanite younger self) like a faraway land: getting there involved freeways and offramps and strip mall upon strip mall upon traffic congestion; the town had a major thoroughfare (Ventura Blvd) that dwarfed our own quaint Denny's-promoting Kanan Road; and there was much woodland, abundant hills, I don't know--to an 8 year old, Dov mightaswelluv been moving to Minnetonka.
I was bummed. I knew that to get from Agoura to the house off DuMetz that Dov's dad's Pool Service truck got parked each evening entailed a long journey. And in between Agoura and Woodland Hills was a no-man's land, where supposedly (sub-urban lore had it) nomads roamed the land in burlap sacks and those Sheik (and sure, sorta chic) headwraps that got held in place around the skull with a piece of robe whose knotted tails dangled dangerously down the back of said sack-and-Sheik-donning men. Their job, as legend had it, was to shepherd the cows and horses and goats and whatnot that grazed on the hills of The Virgins (I'm utilizing much background in Spanish linguistics--i.e. don't try this at home--to translate from the Latin into the Vulgate. e.g. we Agourians knew the hills as Las Virgenes, but the sack-and-Sheik society, not to mention the wackjobs and drug addicts and misunderstood youth at that hospital off the 101 to your right as you climbed the grade towards Calabasas, all of these enlightened peoples called it The Virgins). Now whether sacrifices involving flames and pure women and intricately carved and painted masks transpired, well that's kinda anyone's guess. There are obscure sources on dusty Conejo Valley library shelves that allude to such shenanigans. But that is not where my diatribe today is headed. Stay put, to see where we're directed.
Calabasas was a way-station for stage coaches, a passing-through place, the kinda blip on the map that people didn't so much settle down in as become unsettled at all the rotten pumpkins and resplendent oak trees that blotted out all sunlight. No one lived here. Unless of course your name was Sherri Samiloff and you were hot and the 5th grade boys of Willow Elementary (including but not limited to Leeb, Finch, West, the Bird, and moi, e.g. Ross and Roll) had maddening Outdoor Ed-generated, fanboy-type crushes on you...
But when this narrator (now a bit surlier, more mullet-laden, intermittently pimply and a whole lotta angsty) moved to The Land Of the Pumpkins (again, translating Latin-to-Vulgate for you, saving you all kinds of scholastic acumen here, since we still are in the dog-days of summer and I wouldn't want you all furrowy-browed and frustrated and like prone to bang on a bag of Cool Ranch chips smashing them into orange-blue garlicky dust, screeching: "And but what does Calabasas meeeeeeean in OUR LANGUAGE, Bubba!"). When I moved to Calabasas in 1988, it was the Gobi Desert: an Oasis of heat mirages and shattered dreams and giant banana-leaf fans concealing squiggly puddles of water that turned out to be hot air...
TO BE CONTINUED
I was bummed. I knew that to get from Agoura to the house off DuMetz that Dov's dad's Pool Service truck got parked each evening entailed a long journey. And in between Agoura and Woodland Hills was a no-man's land, where supposedly (sub-urban lore had it) nomads roamed the land in burlap sacks and those Sheik (and sure, sorta chic) headwraps that got held in place around the skull with a piece of robe whose knotted tails dangled dangerously down the back of said sack-and-Sheik-donning men. Their job, as legend had it, was to shepherd the cows and horses and goats and whatnot that grazed on the hills of The Virgins (I'm utilizing much background in Spanish linguistics--i.e. don't try this at home--to translate from the Latin into the Vulgate. e.g. we Agourians knew the hills as Las Virgenes, but the sack-and-Sheik society, not to mention the wackjobs and drug addicts and misunderstood youth at that hospital off the 101 to your right as you climbed the grade towards Calabasas, all of these enlightened peoples called it The Virgins). Now whether sacrifices involving flames and pure women and intricately carved and painted masks transpired, well that's kinda anyone's guess. There are obscure sources on dusty Conejo Valley library shelves that allude to such shenanigans. But that is not where my diatribe today is headed. Stay put, to see where we're directed.
Calabasas was a way-station for stage coaches, a passing-through place, the kinda blip on the map that people didn't so much settle down in as become unsettled at all the rotten pumpkins and resplendent oak trees that blotted out all sunlight. No one lived here. Unless of course your name was Sherri Samiloff and you were hot and the 5th grade boys of Willow Elementary (including but not limited to Leeb, Finch, West, the Bird, and moi, e.g. Ross and Roll) had maddening Outdoor Ed-generated, fanboy-type crushes on you...
But when this narrator (now a bit surlier, more mullet-laden, intermittently pimply and a whole lotta angsty) moved to The Land Of the Pumpkins (again, translating Latin-to-Vulgate for you, saving you all kinds of scholastic acumen here, since we still are in the dog-days of summer and I wouldn't want you all furrowy-browed and frustrated and like prone to bang on a bag of Cool Ranch chips smashing them into orange-blue garlicky dust, screeching: "And but what does Calabasas meeeeeeean in OUR LANGUAGE, Bubba!"). When I moved to Calabasas in 1988, it was the Gobi Desert: an Oasis of heat mirages and shattered dreams and giant banana-leaf fans concealing squiggly puddles of water that turned out to be hot air...
TO BE CONTINUED
So funny--WH really DID seems far away back then, didn't it? And now I've cursed myself to an eternal existence in the Valley, just because I thought it was so cool way back when. . .
Reply to this
I was in Girl Scouts with Sherri Samiloff -- my mom was the troop leader and Sherri was my bud back in the day -- Calabasas circa '77. ur funny dude.
Reply to this
Really? Have I met you Dianne? Send Sherri the Ross and Roll best...
Reply to this