Elysian Fields in the Suburbs

                                                                                          

Palisades Park, Santa Monica, painting by Daniel Alonzo

    I was about ten years old, so it must have been 1957, a casual Sunday at the "Park," or Stoner Recreation Center, they call it today, a small Elysian oasis surrounded by post-WWII stucco homes, in a neighborhood known as Sawtelle, a diverse community in the greater West Los Angeles area. The "Park" was just down the street from the home my parents purchased in 1954, for something like $10,000, on the G.I. Bill. Most communities had them – “parks,” that is, but according to sociologists, not nearly enough for a city the size of Los Angeles.

     It was probably the same in most American cities, the dearth of recreational public space, even the great New York, without Central Park, a wasteland of public spaces, mostly kids stuck in concrete jungles, with shabby basketball courts tucked away between old brownstones. Ask the kids. They knew how to get find the parks. At least, that’s how it was for us out west.

     In L.A.’s working-class westside, Santa Monica, south of tony Wilshire boulevard, the kids had Memorial and Jocelyn parks, and a little way south, along the border with L.A., there was Pen Mar Park and Mar Vista Park, and a few miles to the west was Oakwood, in Venice. Culver City had Mar Vista Gardens and, another, Memorial Park. East toward the wealthier communities of Rancho Park and Cheviot Hills, they had the mother of neighborhood parks, across the street from the Twentieth Century movie studios, Cheviot Hills Rec Center, a park with its own mountain and pine trees, long stretches of grass, an archery range and dog park.

      In the 1950s, parks were a big deal, a kid’s Eden, an escape from school and problems at home. At many of the parks in Los Angeles, the city built Olympic size swimming pools, monstrosities, so swimmers from around the world had a place to practice for the 1932 Olympics.

     At Stoner Park, the “Big Pool,” we called it, was packed with teenagers jumping from the tower and the diving board, their hollers of ecstasy echoing across the fields and tennis courts. The smallest kids, under their mother’s watchful eyes, ran and splashed in the “little” pool, a large, round cement pond, barely two feet deep in the center.
They also played on the swings and jungle gym, while older men, my dad’s age, mostly WWII veterans, reformed pachucos now responsible for families, hid beer wrapped in brown paper bags as they sat on the large boulders in the Japanese Garden, dubbed the “Rocks,” shaded by tall elm, sycamore, cedar trees.

     This particular Sunday, our artificial Eden was shattered by violence. I was playing with friends out by the "little pool" area when the chaos broke out. Big kids, high schoolers, some a little older, in “tricked out,” Chevys and Fords, sped into vacant spots, their brakes screeching. Before anyone knew it, these guys were chasing other guys through the park. Some wore jackets, their club names and insignias splashed across the back.

     They were serious. I remember one guy taking a thick chain from the back of a lowered, yellow pick-up, a decorated metal plaque, “Falcons, W.L.A.” in the back window. A few cars sported the plaque Cobras, Santa Monica, out their back windows. It all happened fast, guys fist fighting, sometimes two guys duking it out, one on one, knuckles cracking into bony jaws, other times three on one, a guy on the ground covering his face with his arms, rolling around, as two guys kicked him. The guy with the chain swung it over his head and chased another guy. I heard some yell out, “Godfrey, the cops!” The other side of American culture.

     Mothers scooped up their kids and, quickly, shuttled them off to safe spaces, their fathers running over to help. People rushed in from everywhere to watch. From a distance came the sirens, just like that, a few minutes later, black and white LAPD pulled up, officers pouring out.

     The guys fighting tried to scatter, but not before getting in a few last punches and kicks. I saw a football fly through the air. All of the guys who had been fighting were calling out to each other, like friends, and it didn’t matter whether they were Falcons or Cobras. They gathered in a wide-open grass area, and, as if they’d rehearsed it, took up various football positions, and started running plays, tackling each other hard.

     The cops grabbed some guys who tried running from the park, tossed them up against a chain link fence, and handcuffed them, but, for the most part, LAPDs finest didn’t seem to be in a hurry. It was like they enjoyed the chaos, watching these kids go at each other, even laughing at them. A few cops decided to stroll up to the car clubbers-turned grid iron stars and started questioning them. 

     “Gang fight! What, us?” 

     I moved in close to get a good look. The guys on the field, blood oozing from cuts on their faces, the corner of their eyes and mouths, played dumb when a cop asked, “What about you?” One “clubber’s” long blonde pompadour had gone flat, but his ducktail survived the ruckus. The kid tapped at the blood on his cheek and said he’d been hit hard trying to run up center, or some such ridiculous excuse. When the cops threatened to arrest them, the clubbers started vouching for each other, saying they’d been there the whole time, playing tackle, and didn’t “know nothing about no gang fight.”

     Sure, the cops knew they were lying, but what could they do if nobody wanted to finger the other guys? The cops told them to beat it, get the hell out of the park, and not ruin a Sunday for decent people trying to have a good time. I could hear muffled laughs as the guys walked off, opposite club member giving each other dirty looks, but, I guess, respecting each other for not ratting. These were the days before American culture turned gun crazy. A man's mettle was in his fist, even if a chain might be dangling from it, or a switchblade in its clutches.

     Oh, like kids in every American city, even, as young as ten, I’d heard about gang fights, heard my older teenage cousins talk about them. Guys would meet-up for fist fights, after school, at the park, often in the “Rocks,” like the time a guy named David Arujo fought Ryan O’Neil to a standstill. Right, that O’Neil, he of movie star fame. Santa Monica and University High schools filled with the kids from the elite side of town.

     It was a time when Hollywood blasted television dramas, like Marlon Brando in the Wild One, Glen Ford in the Black Board Jungle, or re-runs of the 1930s and ‘40s, gangster movies, romanticizing rebel culture, an integral part of American culture, life on the open range, so to speak, the “Wild, wild west,” but what we saw on a calm Sunday afternoon, wasn’t a movie. This was the real deal, real blood, kids getting hurt. The noises still ring in my head.

     It was a strange period on the 1950s westside, different, than say, East L.A. or Pacoima, where car clubs were already segregated into ethnic groups. On the westside of L.A., there was a mixture of ethnicities, White boys, Mexicans, and Japanese, barely a handful of African Americans, except in Santa Monica and Venice, where they congregated in their own neighborhoods, or mixed with Mexican. So, the car clubs, and the rowdy rebels, were more like the kids in James Dean’s Rebel without a Cause, more whites than Mexicans, even.

      One of my cousins told me the only reason the Mexican even started their own car clubs was because the Whites started getting selective about who they let in. The Cobras and Falcons were in transition, still a mixture of whites and Mexicans.

     Where I’m going with all this? I have no idea, but only to say that the Elysian fields and Edens, Americans like to portray to the rest of the world, never “was,” or “were.” The wonderful sounding “Make American Great Again” slogan, is pure propaganda. American never was great, no greater or worse than any other developed country, and I can point to a few members of my family who succumbed to the myth to prove it. hell, even Paris and Madrid have better parks than we do, unless you play golf. 

     No one out-beats us in the number of golf courses, but that's, as they say, another story for another time. For now, I'll just keep enjoying the solitude of the "Rocks."