“Why Didn’t You Get Out of My Way?”

I am going to have a hard time writing this.

Because I had really intended to take a break from what I was working on that day and head over to the Wednesday market to have lunch. It was only a few blocks away from where I lived at the time. And the variety of things you could find there were and still are, beyond what one finds in a typical farmer’s market on any continent. But something, I can’t remember what, spurred me to postpone lunch and get some brilliant idea out of my head into my word processor.

It may have saved me.

I did finally take that break when I heard the helicopters. Helicopters are a common thing in Southern California. Geography and road congestion dictate it. But they are not usually a sign of good things having happened. The police use them to patrol. The fire departments use them to transport persons needing immediate care, usually for trauma. The media use them to cover the story from above. You will know which helicopter is which, because usually the media show up first and “park” high above the area in what can only be likened to a geo-syncronous satellite staying high above a fixed spot.

The man lived on 25th Street in Santa Monica. He was in his Eighty-Sixth year on this planet. The day was overcast and threatened rain, which it later did, when the 1992 Buick LeSabre was backed out of the driveway. Just one-half mile (750 meters) away, across the boundary with the City of Los Angeles formed by 26th Street, was the Brentwood Country Mart with its long-extant contract post office. Mail would have been dispatched from there at the close of the day, at 5pm or thereabouts.

But the man thought that if he took it to the main Santa Monica Post Office, the card he was mailing to his daughter would be sent on its way sooner. This was further away and he, like many Americans, was of the firm belief, into which they have been conditioned and infra-structurally built, that the only way to make such a journey was via his private automobile. Which he probably would have also done even if he decided to go to Brentwood. Which he did even though there was and still is a Santa Monica-operated bus that runs on Montana Street just ten or so houses away, every fifteen minutes at that time of the day, on which he could have ridden for just twenty-five cents, the “Senior Citizen” fare at the time.

The car is king in Los Angeles and there are large portions of the population who would not dream of traveling by any other means. This has changed somewhat as gasoline has increased sharply in price since and credit, with which cars are usually purchased, has been more restricted. But it was the Summer of 2003 and these new realities had not arrived. Organizations who lobby for causes important to the elderly in the USA were still Ignoring the Bull in Society’s China Shop.