Where are we? Here’s Thornton Wilder in Our Town: A friend of a character in the play gets a letter addressed “Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God.” Mil-Spec GPS would one day give Miss Crofut’s place in exact degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude. She would know her place, but with no more precision about where she was in the universe or in anyone’s mind. Where we are is even less precise. I don’t live in Los Angeles (a municipal corporation with eccentric boundaries), but I act as if I live in L.A. - a place only partly geographic. Like the mind of God, L.A. is harder to encompass. Everything in the County of Los Angeles could be L.A., but parts of the county aren’t entirely (or they become L.A. the further away you get from, say, Gorman or San Dimas or Walnut). We used to say “the Basin,” and meant the flatland (mostly) in Los Angeles and Orange counties at the foot of the San Gabriel, Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains and the Palos Verdes peninsula. A sort-of-bowl 35 miles along the coast and approximately 15 miles inland. That’s geology and hydrology (the shallow valleys of the Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana rivers), and a lot of other things (formerly the richest oil fields in America), but “the basin” doesn’t rouse imaginations. No one’s from the basin. A lot of us are from L.A.
A grudging admission for some, with risks. State Senator Tom McClintock from Thousand Oaks is running for Congress in northern California, in the “gold country” - El Dorado County, Placer County, Sacramento and Nevada counties and the empty northwest corner of the state. Thousand Oaks is/isn’t L.A. Still, McClintock’s Democratic challenger in a mostly conservative Republican district is calling him “L.A. Tom.” Tom’s not just another carpetbagger; he’s an L.A. carpetbagger. North of Santa Barbara, it seems, everywhere south is more or less L.A. Tom’s a political target of “vernacular geography,” the fallible, internal map of memory and verbal shorthand that we use every day to find our place, to distinguish it from other places, and to put other people in theirs. (Interestingly, the GIS people are on to mapping this, too. Real maps of imaginary topography.)
I’m always being asked directions, typically because I’m the sole pedestrian who looks the way I do (see author’s photo). Looks harmless. I’ve been asked directions in London and Paris (places I was visiting for the first time and knew not at all). I’m always asked in L.A. But my vernacular geography is sadly incomplete. I’ve given what I thought were good directions that sent the trusting wildly into error.
I have a large collection of maps of L.A. now; often I carry one with me. (A collection of L.A. maps are on display at the Riordan Library until January 22.)
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And what about the term Southland. It's used so much in print, television and radio (we debate in our newsroom whether it's conversational if no one outside the news-business uses the word). Amongst our regional brothers and sisters it might be a term that could replace L.A. but nationally it doesn't stand a chance. A resident of the midwest or East Coast would think you're from Alabama if you told her you hail from the Southland. No?