Central Coast Evan: Global Dampening

I know. People who come from areas where it rains a lot will say that light green isn't rain, it's more like a persistent drizzle. But the last decade has been so persistently dry that every drop seems amazing. It rained more in Torrance when I was a boy. I've believed that all my adult life. It rained and rained when I was young. Things flooded, roads were closed. Department stores almost always had displays of bright yellow slickers or rain outfits and when it rained kids walked to school like an army of fishermen. I remember lying on the floor of a 1940s Dodge watching the cables and pulleys under the dashboard zip back and forth with a clack-thud, clack-thud pushing the windshield wipers back and forth. I remember jumping from the car to the sidewalk fearful of being swept away in a gushing torrent.

It doesn't rain like that anymore. Or so I believed. The dry spell has had something to do with El Niño and the Pacific High. I smile because of George Carlin's line, or a version of it, from the hippy dippy weatherman routine, The Pacific High was in Encino this afternoon. The change in currents and the ocean temperature interferer with the rain by changing the Pacific High, or something like that, so it doesn't rain like it used to. The evidence seems rather obvious. For one thing, they don't sell rain gear like they used to. For another, Torrance used to be half under water after a good rain. Now it's covered with schools and houses.

I shared these thoughts two or three weeks ago with someone while it was also drizzling and as I got to the part about great torrents of water, something snapped into focus. The weather's the same, it's we who are different. They don't sell rain gear like they used to because no one buys it. No one buys it because no one walks in the rain anymore. How unthinkable to send a child to school on foot in the rain, unless you live directly across the street, and even then. We had a 1950 Studebaker, later a 1955 Buick Special. My father drove the car to work and dropped my mother off on the way. When the car wasn't available, we walked. When it rained, we put on rain gear and walked, just as I did this morning to the store and back. We didn't have three cars, a truck and a motor home parked out back. We had one family car, two working adults, myself, and the twins. So, we had rain gear. Not because it rained that much, or because it rained much more than it does today, but because our lives never got rained out. We walked to school, to the market, to our friends, and sometimes downtown and back, whether it rained or not. Of course, if it was raging outside, we stayed home.

As for the flooding, the source of such lasting memories, Torrance and the greater Los Angeles area engineered it out of existence. It happened gradually. No headlines, no falderal, it happened in the background, the sort of civic activity we take completely for granted, like the control of infectious diseases through the gradual advancement of sanitation. Today it rains and the water disappears. But, it still rains. Today we have the choice of waiting for the clouds to pass in order to play outside or loading the kids in the SUV for an afternoon at the mall. If the kids are gone, we can watch the rain on television, or follow its progress on the Web. Whatever we do, we are not likely to get wet. The rain's the same. It continues to rain with or without us. But the world it rains upon has forever changed.

Anonymous January 17, 2010

The last time it rained around here I got my gear together that I usually wear when I work the "hoot" shift and went for a walk. The other people I saw weren't prepared. I've got it down. Light weight gear that fits in a pack and doesn't take up much space. The trick is to find breathable stuff, so you don't end up as wet on the inside as on the outside. I found some Patagonia stuff that's pretty expensive. Something that cuts the wind and has a hood. I like cotton sweatshirts with thermals underneath for cold weather that's only damp. It gets really cold in the middle of the night. Something with high visibility or reflectors if you like darker colors. For work, shoes are really important. I have a nice pair of insulated black boots with steal toes. I'm looking at a pair with gore tex on the inside. Nothing worse than wet feet all night. Remember going to my principal's office and telling him that O.P. shorts and vans without socks were our rain gear? The more it rains, the more I want to play in it or work or sit inside and listen to its music. Remember acid rain? In the 1980s people used to run inside to avoid the rain. They were afraid of acid rain. I think you read my mind. I was just thinking that it used to rain a lot more when I was a kid. You got Willy and me yellow fishermen outfits at ROSS. chris

Evan Jones January 17, 2010

I put most of your email up as a comment. Thanks for writing. I'm glad you enjoyed the post. For everyone else, the "hoot" shift is the one in the middle of the night when only the owls are awake. It comes after the swing shift. Yes, I remember that particular principal only too well. He thought rain was cold by definition. The rain we were going through was a Pineapple Express, warm tropical rain. There's a reason you don't see Hawaiians wearing thick white socks with their flip-flops. You had the perfect outfit on, one that you put together all by yourself. He wanted you in winter gear. I'm going to resist mentioning what I called him, and skip the part about him threatening to file charges. By the end of the day, you were the most comfortable kid in the school. By the way, you both looked really cute in your yellow fishermen outfits.

Evan Jones January 18, 2010

It's raining in earnest this morning. The report shows thunder and lightning on the way. After coffee and oatmeal I corrected a few things and rewrote the ending. Sometimes I know the parts but can't quite piece them together. It's a process I don't fully understand, but I think the parts must be visual — I tend to see what I'm going to write, not the words, but the things and thoughts long before I find an opening phrase and my fingers start to move. What holds those parts together appears to be auditory. First the images which evolve into words, then the order of those images which by now have become thoughts, ideas, memories, and finally the cement that holds them together, the play of prepositions, adverbial phrases and all that.

Evan's early morning rainy day mini-theory on writing. After another cup of coffee, perhaps I'll revise it.

An interesting comment. I've been thinking about it all afternoon. I'm not sure it's true, but I'm also not sure it's not true. It helped that I was only half awake this morning when I jotted down my thoughts. There is definitely a sense in which I see the argument and then hear it come together. I would have thought that a mosaicist's visual component was more intensely visual than mine, or more visually visual. How the mosaic comes together verbally I don't understand, but I do understand that the elements of vision and execution are related but distinctly different.

My father was a landscape designer most of his life. He's in his nineties now and still capable of sketching out designs. As a young teacher, he did the backbreaking work himself during unpaid summer vacations. I was in junior high school before he forced himself to learn conventional rendering techniques. He had a style all his own, influenced by his years in Japan after the War, but drawing in realistic perspective, the sort of straightforward thing his clients expected, was very difficult for him. It was too rational, I think. Perhaps it was entirely rational. He walked around sites, no tape, no sketchbook, considering the view, the lay of the land, the structures, the light, and other almost mystical things until the entire job down to the last one gallon plant or the last board of an awning was in his head. In his prime years he worked with a Japanese landscape contractor who had interesting abilities of his own. He would go out first. When my father had time, he would go out next. Soon there was the strangest phone call. In a kind of landscape shorthand my father would "tell" him the job over the phone. The contractor would count the materials, the plants, the sizes, the hours in his head, and before a single shovelful of dirt was dug, he knew the cost of the job down to the last dollar. He also had an accurate "picture" of the design in his head. My father showed up shortly before the plants were in the ground to make final adjustments, to turn the trees, to check lines of site. He knew exactly what he would find when he got there, the contours, the grading, everything.

And yet, I see things my father does not see. In retirement, he was a volunteer docent at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). He was a real showman explaining Art to everyone from school children to visiting dignitaries. He got to rub shoulders with the likes of David Hockney, whom he did not like at all. We visited a gallery during that era, more or less by accident, and he asked me my opinion of an icon on display. It was a very nice one. I explained the tilt of the head, the twin crowns, the angles of the feet, and as I turned my head I could see that he was already half-way to the door. What he meant by my opinion was did I like it. In his own words down the street he said, "I don't give a shit what you think about it. Is it good Art or isn't it?" He was severely intimidated by two classes of people, those he could not diminish and those he could not control. Still, God gave him very interesting abilities.

Just one more thing, since it has to do with your specialty. My father rode his bicycle from Harbor City to Long Beach in 1938 to watch with amazement the progress of the huge WPA mosaic (38 by 22 feet) that crowned the arena. He slowed down to tell that story every time we drove past it. It was preserved or salvaged when they built the now aging convention center but it was repositioned at ground level. It was never meant to be seen that way. It's like looking at an El Greco from the wrong angle. I don't think the city elders understood that or, perhaps, as my father's Japanese friend used to say, they had no eyes.

Now that I'm fully awake, I just ramble on. I'll be more informed about mosaics once your books arrive. I have two of them on order. Mosaics are a bit like watercolors, aren't they? They trick the eye into seeing things that aren't actually there. If you get too close, or maybe if you're too awake, the picture disappears.

JoAnn January 19, 2010

Well, yes I suppose that is always an option. However then you would deprive your readers of the eccentricities of your family and your life that add texture and hue to the literary mosaic (with its mix of preposition & adverbial grout)
that is your blog. I'm honored that you ordered my books, thank you. I will be curious to know what you think of them.