A Love Letter to Altadena

My hometown has burned down. The town where I and my three older siblings went to elementary and junior high school, played on little league teams, learned to drive, and got married. The town where my mother died in 2017 at the age of 96 in the same house where I was born in 1955. We lived in that house on the corner of Altadena Drive and Tanoble for almost 70 years.

The home still stands, miraculously.  But as I drove slowly through the burned-out debris that made up my neighborhood, I noticed that the house directly to the south, and the one to the east had crumbled.  Chimneys protrude through the rubble, standing sadly amidst the grey ash.  I contemplate the randomness of it all, why one house can stand unscathed while three others, or whole blocks nearby, cease to exist.

It’s estimated that twelve thousand “structures” have burned down. At this time 16 people have perished in the Eaton fire.  That number may rise.

“Structures:” Treasured family homes, favorite coffee houses, local churches, elementary schools and junior high schools, synagogues, and beloved restaurants, all gone, the result of mother nature and global warming gone wild, taking everything with it.

My hometown, where I walked the three blocks to Noyes Elementary School, located on the hill above Altadena Drive, from ages 5 to 10. We’d play foursquare on the blacktop and against tall wooden backboards with red rubber balls made specifically for kids.  I played catcher on the girls’ softball team and placed second in a short story contest with a story about the Vietnam War.  It was the 60’s.

Noyes has burned to the ground.

My best friend lived two blocks away on Porter Avenue, and the two of us would traverse those blocks daily from her house to mine and vice versa. We’d bounce for hours on her backyard trampoline and pilfer her mom’s freshly baked banana bread from the kitchen.

 Her home has been lost, along with those of too many friends and acquaintances to name.

My hometown, where my brother and I rode our stingray bicycles to the candy store at Webster’s Pharmacy, saving our nickels and dimes to buy root beer barrels and Butterfingers. 

Amazingly, Webster’s still stands, but the commercial offices, grocery store, and post office to the south do not.

My hometown, where my packs of girlfriends and I would walk a mile south to Eliot Junior High School daily, trading laughs and gossip on the way there and back. As the school mascot, I remember donning a long green cape and an oversized papier mâché mask to parade around at football games.  As a senior, I edited the slim school yearbook using Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changin” as the epigraph.

Parts of Elliot have fallen, their empty burned arches outlining the ashen sky.

On Sunday nights, my family of six would often dine at the local Altadena Town and Country Club. I loved their Sunday night Buffett and would beg to go. While we didn’t play golf, we often spent many hours as children frolicking in their big blue swimming pool.

The country club no longer exists.

We played baseball with the neighborhood kids on our sloping front lawn bordering Altadena Drive. My right upper lip still bears the scars of a too-hard-hit baseball to the face.

It was an idyllic place to grow up in in the 50s and 60s.

Tucked up against the Angeles natural forest, we’d spend weekends hiking through Eaton Canyon to Henniger Flats, a long three-mile trek upward and back.

Eaton Canyon is where the fire began.

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We are all heartbroken.  I pray daily for all those who have lost their homes, businesses, and family members. I say a silent “I’m sorry” to the lost homes and the families who made their lives in them. I pray that they will find a way forward, a way out of this unfathomable mess. 

 I don’t see the way, but there has to be one.  I’m reminded of the little plaque I bought outside the childhood home of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, a plaque that sits on the windowsill in my office:

“Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” 

May that staircase reveal itself to all those who have lost their homes, their family members, and their livelihoods.  And may we be helpers along the way to hold their hands as they ascend those stairs.

I love you Altadena.