Claremont, Los Angeles, Laurel Canyon.
I’ll be heading into Los Angeles again today, as I forget to release some of Bev’s ashes into Laurel Canyon, and I feel pulled to make sure I do that. This will be the 56th place that I’ve released Bev’s ashes, including London, where I really started my journey, although a couple of weeks before I started this blog.
As Marg is working today, I went in on my own, and stayed just a few hours, wanting to beat the rush hour leaving LA in the afternoon. That didn’t actually work, though, as traffic started to get heavy heading out of LA by 1 pm. Oh well.
I started out by driving straight to Laurel Canyon again, this time on a mission to release those ashes. I began at the Canyon Country Store, and spread some of Bev’s ashes there, along with the vibes of all those famous musicians and rock stars there ahead of us.
I drove up and down and all around Laurel Canyon, looking both for good places to release ashes and also to take some photos. It is a beautiful area, but very difficult to park on these very narrow streets, and even harder to walk, with no sidewalks and narrow roads/lanes. But I did find places to release Bev’s ashes into the canyon in several locations, as well as seemingly driving almost every street in the Canyon, up and down, in and out.
On limited time, wanting to get of the city to avoid the rush hour (which didn’t work out, anyway), I headed along Hollywood Boulevard to see the local sights, including people dressed as Spider-Man, and Wonder Woman, and Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and so on, parading along the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (Now TLC Chinese Theatre), waiting to get their photos taken with tourists and make their living.
From there, I headed to Canter’s Deli, a famous Jewish Deli since 1931, that seemed worth visiting… if only because I haven’t had a Jewish corned beef sandwich in years (and years)m and because the deli is famous. I’m glad to have gone, but it weren’t nothin’ to write home about. The corned beef sandwich, expensive I might add, was big enough, and actually the right size for me, but much smaller than I recall Jewish deli corned beef sandwiches being, and tasty but not write home excited tasty.
Canter’s was included in the movie “Deli Man,” a documentary about the rise and fall of Jewish delis in the United States, with thousands in the 1930s (over 1,500 in NYC alone), and now less than 300 across the entire country.
I headed out of the city, seeing on the map that rush hour had started, but decided to visit Disney Studios in Burbank on my way, which was to go slightly out of my way but nevertheless on the ay back to Claremont, via Pasadena.
No such luck. Like all the studios, you need a pass to get in, so wistfully I drove past the studios in Burbank, remembering the letters I used to get back from Disney when I was 12 and 13 and would send fan letters, and I would get replies from their offices on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, with a large Mickey Mouse in the top left hand corner of their stationery.
Back to Claremont I meandered, stuck in slow to not moving traffic much of the way, and stopped off at the Claremont Folk Music Center, where I delivered to Marguerite hamantasch, bagels, and a marble rye from Canter’s. Door to door delivery. The Folk Music Center has been a very important place in Marg’s life, to this day, and is where she and David first learned to play guitar, and have both worked over the years, as well as being a very important part of the music community in and around Claremont.
No wonder she’s so good at sales.
I got to walk around downtown Claremont a bit, another nice town with a good feel about it with a a very community feel to it, and later, on my last night with Marg and Mark, we went out to dinner in town. I head out tomorrow, first to San Pedro where I’ll spread some more of Bev’s ashes, and then directly onto Yuma, Arizona, where I’ll spend the night.
Once I’m on the road again tomorrow, I have no more planned schedule with respect to being somewhere in particular on a specific date (like meeting Kaye in Denver or arriving at Marg’s), and in a very real way, although I’ll be meandering up and down the country, I’ll also be beginning the journey back home to Massachusetts. At the moment, “going home” holds no appeal at all, as, besides friends, there’s really nothing there for me.
Indeed, I only have two more places ahead of me where I plan to release more of Bev’s ashes: San Pedro and Sedona, which makes me feel a little sad.
Still, the journey continues with whatever it may bring, and it will be several more weeks and several thousand more miles before I get back home. I keep thinking of the guy from Texas that Kaye and I met in Virginia City who’d driven 55,000 miles in the last year, and had no plans to return home.
Anyhow, off to bed now, and on the road tomorrow, heading for Yuma.