Father's Day on the Freeway

“Go play on the freeway” my uncle Victor would jokingly tell me and my brothers, when, as children, we would complain about having nothing to do. In June 2003, my family celebrated our last Father's Day with my Dad by doing just that. My family, along with thousands of people from across Southern California walked, biked, strolled, and skated on the Arroyo Seco parkway, known to most locals as the Pasadena Freeway (See more photos on flickr.com). For this one morning, the freeway was closed to cars for the ArroyoFest, a celebration of the communities that flank the freeway organized by locals and Occidental College. I was a volunteer on the steering committee that planned and organized the event. When I started working on this effort, the date of the event was uncertain, and I could not foresee that the event would take place on Father's Day nor that my Dad would die suddenly 4 months later.

In a way, spending the day on the freeway with my Dad was a very ordinary experience for me and my brothers. After our parents split up, we logged many hours crossing the city for our weekend visits with our Dad in Venice and later, the Valley. Because of my Dad's devotion to our extended family, we often spent holidays on the road, visiting great aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins and godparents, relatives who, to our childish minds, were connected to us only in vague, mysterious ways. Though I could not tell you the addresses or zip codes of my family members, I can still recite the routes we drove and the freeway exits we took to see family spread out across the LA area in Sun Valley (the 10, to the 101 to the 170) , Baldwin Park, City Terrace, Norwalk and other communities. These journeys are deeply etched in my brain and make up a large part of my own personal geography of Los Angeles.

Some may see my memories of time spent on the freeway as evidence of the toll that sprawl takes on Angelenos. And, some days, especially when I recall the times that Dad's old '64 Ford pickup or later, his beloved '69 Mustang that he called Geraldine, stalled halfway to our destination, I would agree. Other times, I recall the timbre of his voice each time we passed Kent Twitchell's Old Lady of the Freeway mural on the side of a building visible from the 101 in Echo Park when he said “Man, that is a cool mural”. I remember him sharing his memories of walking with his father from their house in Van Nuys to visit family in East Los Angeles via San Fernando Road and Riverside Drive, in the days before the LA freeway network would make this journey easier while also forever altering the landscape of East LA and the lives of those displaced. As he described it, traveling this distance was a big adventure, made more arduous by the fact that my Dad walked a lot of the way, since my grandfather couldn't afford the streetcar fare for both of them.

Passing certain personal landmarks while getting around the city keeps me connected to the self I was as a child, who learned to see the world through the eyes of a remarkable man who taught me all he knew. The smell of roasting chiles--so strong that it would burn your eyes and throat if you weren't passing by at 6o mph-- from the salsa factory near the intersection of the 5 and 10 freeways on the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles always reminds me of sitting next to my Dad in the front seat of his old truck, listening to Bob Dylan, jarocho , or Bill Withers on his 8-track player. From that vantage point, I learned to appreciate the landscape of our hometown, from the most humble apartment house to the much photographed facade of City Hall. He pointed out places that members our family lived- in the belching shadow of Interstate 5 in the City of Commerce, in Boyle Heights near the 2^nd street off-ramp- and worked-chrome plating facilities, lumber mills and garment factories. The most fantastic story he shared was about the location of our family's famed buried treasure, hidden under the paving and earth behind the modest shop that once housed a great uncle's landscaping business, a short distance off the Cahuenga exit of the 101. When I look out at the lights of downtown LA from my house in Highland Park, I remember the view from the westbound 10, and the joy shining in my Dad's eyes as he said “Look at that, Lex” pointing to the skyline behind City Hall, “Isn't Los Angeles purdy?” Today, when I see that view, I think to myself “Yes, Dad, it is.”

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This is the fourth Father's Day since our family made LA history and fond memories by walking together on the freeway. As my husband and I prepare to celebrate our first Father's Day with our 9 month old son Elias, I struggle to figure out how to best deal with the heavy sense of loss that deposits a knot in the pit of my stomach whenever a holiday or birthday without my Dad looms on the calendar. I am angry that my Dad is not here to tell my son all about LA, and that my son will never hear the joy in my Dad's voice as he narrates his knowledge of our hometown. And, on nights when I'm kept awake by these emotions churning in my brain, I toss and turn as I think about how the untreated high blood pressure that contributed to my Dad's death was likely aggravated by the stress he dealt with, growing up poor and Chicano in the 50's and 60's and later as a single father with a high school education trying to earn a living and raise a family in this city.

The best way that I've figured out is to share the stories and the joy that my Dad gave me with the rest of the world and to keep applying my professional skills, education and passion to the goal of making LA a more livable place. And I know that one of the most important ways to connect my father and son is by making sure my son knows and experiences the natural environment, landmarks, culture, festivals, food and people that represent the richness and promise that LA can offer.