Orange!

My hometown of Glendale in California, a suburb of Los Angeles known as “the jewel city of the Verdugos,” prides itself on not being a part of “the Valley,” properly named the San Fernando Valley.  It sits at the east end of the Valley, and the Verdugo Mountains, foothills of the much larger San Gabriel Mountains just to the north which separate greater Los Angeles from the Mojave Desert, form Glendale’s backdrop.  There are many hiking trails in the Verdugos – I know them intimately, as my father used to bribe me with an ice cream cone from Baskin-Robbins “31 flavors,” founded in Glendale in 1945, if I’d hike them with him. There are also several inhabitable and developed canyons.

One such canyon, Chevy Chase Canyon, provided a shortcut to my high school, located northeast of Glendale in the city of La Cañada (Spanish for “The Canyon”).  One could take Chevy Chase Drive to Linda Vista Road (which turned into Lida Street as it crossed the Pasadena city line) and end up in the Arroyo Seco, home to the Rose Bowl, just south of my school.

We’d scored a ‘STOP’ and a ‘winding road’ but I remember I really wanted a “beware falling rock” caution sign to put over my bed at home, so we turned up Lida.  It was around 1 am and there were very few streetlights, so it was dark.  By dark, I mean pitch black – when someone came up with the phrase “so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face” they must have been driving on Lida in the middle of the night like we were.  No luck finding a ‘falling rock’ sign, so we turned our attention to real estate signs, which were much easier to steal as they tended not to be screwed in to things and we’d neglected to bring any tools.  We tossed ‘FOR SALE’ signs and ‘MODELS OPEN’ signs on our growing pile of stolen signage in the back of the station wagon.  I grabbed an ‘IN ESCROW’ sign thinking how awesome it would be to put that over my bed at home, though none of us, myself included, really knew what “escrow” was or why someone or something would be in it.

It’s called a combocade, which sounds like a portmanteau of ‘barricade’ in combination with something – in this case a flashing orange light.  Nomenclature wasn’t my concern that night, acquiring it was.

As I tossed it onto our pile of ill-gotten gains in the back of the station wagon, two headlights appeared around a bend.  No sooner had they appeared, then red and blue flashing lights on the roof of the car the headlights were attached to turned on.  Oh shit… it’s the fuzz, the five-O, the popo!  I jumped in the front seat in the shotgun position, and breathlessly screamed “hit it,” oblivious to the fact that in the history of evading the police a 1974 Chevrolet Caprice Estate station wagon complete with faux wood sides had never been chosen as the getaway vehicle of choice.  We sped off, reaching dizzying speeds of 15-20 mph, into the dark of night.

“Up there… turn up there” I barked as the self-appointed ringleader and criminal mastermind of our group.  Onto a short, residential side street we turned.  “Pull in that driveway.”  We parked in someone’s driveway; given it was probably 2 in the morning by now, they were sound asleep and all their lights were out.  “Duck down, pull your jacket over your head,” I commanded with a confidence that belied the stupidity of what we were doing.

After about five minutes of lying low in complete silence that would have made a Camaldolese hermit proud, I realized it was my responsibility, and mine alone, as the leader of our little band of outlaws to break cover and check if the coast was clear.  Slowly, quietly, with stealth and caution, I poked my head out from under my jacket.

ORANGE!  ORANGE!  ORANGE!  ORANGE!  ORANGE!  ORANGE!  ORANGE! 

The last thing we’d thrown on top of our pile of booty was the combocade with its flashing light.  Given the extreme darkness of our environs, the light, which happened to be orange, pulsated in the night like a beacon.  So bright was its metronomic strobing I wouldn’t be surprised if it could be seen from space.  With each flash, it illuminated the whole neighborhood, as orangeness emanated outward from the back of a 1974 Chevrolet Caprice Estate station wagon complete with faux wood sides.

I looked around nervously, thinking ‘this is it… I’m getting the Chair’ – but there were no cops.  I can only imagine they’d seen our little light show in the dead of night and thought our own stupidity was punishment enough as they headed off to Winchell’s Donut House on Fair Oaks in South Pasadena.

Whew!

There was only one problem – what were we going to do with all this signage we’d amassed in the back of a 1974 Chevrolet Caprice Estate station wagon complete with faux wood sides that now flashed orange from inside illuminating everything around it?

Now I don’t think Ed was our target when we set out several hours earlier, but our proximity to his house, which sat on a promontory overlooking the Rose Bowl a few miles up Lida just past Pegfair Estates, and the unique nature of his driveway just fell into our laps.  The house could not be seen from the street; the driveway sortof wound its way up to it, past a pool and into a cobblestone courtyard.

Imagine a 1974 Chevrolet Caprice Estate station wagon complete with faux wood sides barreling through the darkness of Chevy Chase Canyon in the wee small hours of the morning with an intermittent circle of bright orange light about 50 feet in diameter framing it as it made its way east toward Pasadena.

We pulled up where Ed’s driveway meets the street and proceeded to unload our signs.  I placed a ‘MODELS OPEN’ sign there, pointing its arrow up the driveway and positioning the combocade behind it to draw the eye’s attention with its flashing light.  Then, up a way on the driveway I placed the ‘winding road’ sign in a tree by a curve, and then the ‘STOP’ sign in a shrub just before the courtyard.  The rest of the signs we dumped in some bushes.  Unless Ed’s gardeners disposed of them, they’re probably still there. And home we went.

The following Monday in homeroom Ed told me the strangest story about how he and his brother Walter and their mom and dad were sitting around the table eating breakfast on Sunday when their doorbell kept ringing with people wanting to see the models.