There are two borders here in Encino. One is Ventura Blvd and the other is the 101 freeway. If you live South of the Boulevard, you are probably rich but it depends exactly where South you live. In the hills, yes you have arrived. Up to the boulevard? Well...not so much. Now North of the boulevard and South of the freeway is a very unusual area. A hodgepodge of sorts, mostly wealthy. Where I live is no question, you are not rich but wouldn't mind it if it came along.
When I was just sprouting hairs around my dick, I had a paper route. It was the Mirror I delivered. At that time there were two main papers in Los Angeles and one was the Mirror, then when they folded it was the Times-Mirror. I lived where I do now, in the first set of track homes in the valley. Every fourth house is identical, they were sold at first like this, "D-2 has a picture window". What a picture window meant was that the front window had a stucco looking frame around the window. That was it. They sold for seven thousand in 1949 and my parents bought this house in 56 at ten thousand. the original owners had converted the garage and built a two car garage in the alley and sold the house of three thousand more than they paid for it to my mom and dad.
What it is worth now is incredible. To think my mom made payments of twenty-nine dollars a month for twenty years to buy it is incredible.
A footbridge goes over the freeway. To a neighborhood I played in before the Ventura Freeway, the 101 cut into it like a chasm. When I rode my bicycle through the neighborhood, before and after the freeway, It was mostly small ranch homes. Even my neighborhood was a ranch at one time. Some of the acreage was large. Others, maybe a half or one acre lots. Chickens, produce, citrus, walnuts.
One old farm house stood for a very long time with plowed empty fields surrounding it. It was a small Victorian house, wood siding and it stayed even after the condos were being built but not a soul did I ever see leave or enter the old house. The other ranches were, over time, torn down and in their place went up apartments and condos. That was West of White Oak. East of White Oak until Balboa, where a few old ranch houses are still left, is the homes of the rich that didn't buy or build in the foothills. They had the money but opted for one reason or another to stay with the flat-landers.
You walk over the footbridge and feel the rush of freeway traffic, the wind it creates and the roar it makes. It is tornado walking. Fast, furious and it can make you dizzy. On the other side is lush gardens with old oak trees. Moss and ferns that thrive, houses so far back you can only see their roofs and chimneys and the private road that takes you to them.
At the end of the road, Encino, which means, the oaks, in Spanish, is the Coral Tree cafe. You can sit there all day and do your computer wi-fi thing with a latte and a little something to munch on while writing screenplays.
One house has stayed the same since I was a kid. Well, not the same actually. The original house, which is unchanged and the gardens surrounding it are the same. It sits in a hallow, all wood with large oaks that shade it. The garden rises from the house as it comes to the street, giving it a cool, cottage by a brook look. That is all still there except the new owners put a wooden bear that holds the address near the street. There is some really stupid art work in the yard. Something from swap meets, like the bear. And there is an American flag hanging from one of the old oak trees by being fastened with screws that are sunk deep into its bark.
And that's the trouble in paradise. The new owners of these properties are brash, they have the taste of a jackal. They are the new-rich and I despise them for having money and not a notion on how to use it properly. It's all around where once stood orange groves and walnut groves, there are mansions of stucco, a Mediterranean there, a Greek classic here and a Tudor over there. All in chicken wire and stucco in every imaginable color and shape. Temples to the Tasteless but that's Encino for you. Where the Jews call the old country--Beverly Hills.
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