But Look Where You’d Have to Live

July 23rd 2005

PASADENA, CA – Today while I was sitting in the stands of the swimming pool of the local community college, whiling away the time whilst my children were taking their swimming lessons (for my youngest son, whom I’ll call Spiderman, this is illustrated by how well he can climb the swimming instructor), I overheard a conversation between two women.  Ok, I actually only overheard a portion of it before my ADD kicked in and I was scanning the clouds for lightning, watching aircrafts, counting the molecules…

“She bought 32 acres that included a house, and it was only 110 thousand!  You know what you could get here for 110 thousand?”

“A box below the interstate,” I thought to myself.  So where was this wondrous place, where you could buy a house and land  and not need the prerequisite riches it would take locally? 

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, Ev'ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk
Makin' lazy circles in the sky.. 

Cursed ADD…

So, if I packed up the wife and kids and headed for the plains of Oklahoma, I could buy a house, a big one from the sounds of it, and a bunch of land, and I’d be living the American dream.  Except I’d be living in Oklahoma!

See, I’m a rarity on the Left Coast. I was actually born and raised in California,  the southern part to be more precise, living the first five years between Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, an amusement park for the locals, which has skewed my reality somewhat.  Most of my life I’ve lived in Southern California Suburbia, and except for a short stint in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico (Socorro – it is in the middle of nowhere, or it was 15 years ago),  my residence has always been in sunny Southern California, the most reviled place in the universe.  Not by me! Mind you, I did go through that phase that all Southern Californians do, especially the transplants, where I just couldn’t stand living here.  Like everyone else living here that hates it, I did exactly the same thing:  nothing.

Unlike practically every other soul that is stuck here in this purgatory, I have stopped the bitching about living here, and have done part of the new reverse migration that’s been quietly occurring here.  Namely, I moved from the suburban wasteland to the more urban setting of Pasadena, and I couldn’t be happier.  Unlike everyone else that is hell bent on owning a little plot of land to call their own, my wife and I sold our home, paid off our debt, and moved the clan into an apartment in a great location within short walks of shops, eateries, and theaters.  And I’m a lot happier than I was in suburbia.

For a split second, nay, more like a fraction of a microsecond, the thought shot through my mind of moving to Oklahoma, where I too could own 32 acres and a home for the low, low price of 110 thousand, give or take a little.  But what would I do?  Sure, I do work out of my office in my apartment and I could work anywhere, at least for my current employer, but that’s not necessarily going to happen forever.  At some point I may have to return to the corporate world, spending time in the cubicle jungles again.  That was one of the reasons, amongst many, that we chose Pasadena when we moved last.  Pasadena is rather central to the LA area and has a light rail line, very near where I live, that can whisk me to Union Station in 30 minutes, and from there I can catch the subway, more rail lines, or a bus ride to practically anywhere that employment could be.  I couldn’t do that in the corn fields of Oklahoma.

I frequently walk around my environs, here, either alone equipped with the iPod, or with my family, and I haven’t yet tired of the scenery.  Granted, it’s not serene, like watching the sunset over the corn fields of the back forty, but it is dynamic and constantly changing.  When I lived in suburbia, it rarely, if ever changed, and I doubt it would in Oklahoma, either.

Oh, and contrary to what people say, city folks, at least the ones in Pasadena, tend to be friendlier than those in the suburbs.  If you go around smiling like a doofus, they won’t give you the time of day, but is that any different than in a housing tract?

People here spend more time walking than they do where we lived last, the high desert.  Because of this, you end up making more eye contact than you would in a cookie cutter community.  Oh, you can get chummy with your neighbors in suburbia, but honestly who does that anymore?  You go to work, come home, go shopping, cut the lawn, pull a few weeds, maybe wash the car, all as quickly as possible to you can retreat into your fortress of solitude.  You could go and try and make friends with the neighbors, but did they come and welcome you to the neighborhood?  Maybe one or two did, but aren’t those the ones you try and avoid?

At our last place, we got to know two of our neighbors.  One became friends of the family, and we’d get together and chat, have the occasional beer, and gossip about everyone else on the block.  The other we really didn’t know well, but since they lived next door and had boys similar in age to ours, we did have the occasional “please tell your son not to shoot paintballs at our house again,” or “please ask your son to stop tripping our son,” or my favorite one, the “could you please shut your dog up,-it’s driving us (me) insane and ruining my buzz!”

That was it; we weren’t friends with anyone else on the block.  Now, in the block’s defense, I am not very handy around the house, and when someone, probably our son, broke the sprinklers in the front, I decided to let the lawn die off because I wanted to replant with Bluegrass instead of the Fescue that was there.  Of course, I never got around to it and the house started to look like a crack house, but that does provide a bit of protection as you wouldn’t normally rob the crappiest place in the street.  This didn’t happen for a couple years after we moved in, so that doesn’t excuse the lack of a warm welcome that we received from the rest of the block,

If we move to Oklahoma, will the closest neighbor a couple miles away pop in to welcome us with a hardy hello and an apple pie?  My guess is no, and I bet if they saw me cruising up their driveway, they’d have the safeties removed from their Oklahoman standard issue shotgun before I had the engine quelled.

The fire trucks racing by at night with their sirens blaring, the upstairs neighbor dragging what sounds like a large wooden electric chair for the umpteenth time, the traffic noise, the helicopters buzzing by, none of these sounds bother me, surprising, really, considering my suburbia pedigree.  The thought of spending my time divided between work and DirecTV while locked up in my Fortress of Solitude, walled off from the world on my little, well defended, plot of land, while only really venturing out for supplies or sustenance, bores me to tears.  And when I think about the small town or suburban politics… forget it.  At this time in my life I want no part of that dream.

Perhaps if it was only 95 thousand…

By John Conrad
Mr. Conrad is a writer based in Southern California

Keywords and misspellings:  Price of housing prices Attention deficit disorder