Life With Iron Giants IV: Land Ho!

Yes, that's me - and yes I am wearing my daughter's swim goggles.  That is an industrial strength staple gun I'm holding and I managed to install several rooms of insulation without nailing my finger once.  By the time this photo was taken we were pretty much on our own in the renovation process.

But I digress.

For three years we were so focused on the transformation of our faded salt-box into a livable home, I paid little attention to the goings-on at the Port.  Ports, actually.  The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach have morphed together geographically to form the largest of its kind in North America.  It is a powerhouse of industry and commerce, bringing in over a half-billion dollars in goods each day just on the Los Angeles side (more on the larger Long Beach side ).  That adds up to a lot of containers (millions) trucks (16,000 per day) ships (spewing bunker fuel which is one step away from crude oil) and lots and lots of cars (parking lots the size of Manhattan).  The sheer tonnage of metal, acres of giant cranes like so many Star War's monsters and ships the size of three football fields is overwhelming if you drive along side the twin ports on the Vincent Thomas and Gerald Desmond bridges. Humbling. Seeing all the stuff coming in here on a daily basis has in no small part focused my increasing desire to downsize, recycle what we consume and reduce the family carbon footprint to a mere cat's paw.

But as our home construction neared its end and we contemplated moving in we had to think more about this new relationship we were about to enter, both with the town of San Pedro, and the steel heart where so many of its inhabitants go every day to earn their living.  It was inevitable the Port gradually made its presence known, though for quite a while I kept it in the periphery, knowing there were things about it that would gradually and inevitably have their pull on me but it was too much to consider then.

My energy was elsewhere: Construction on our house, after being knocked down to its bones and refashioned along more elegant lines (photos below), stalled after the contractor had deserted us, work unfinished and funds depleted.  Because most of the house was left as open two-by-fours, we hired someone to wrap the structure in sheets of Tyvek (a breathable plastic undercoating for stucco) and nailed a piece of plywood to the front door opening.  But it didn't stop neighborhood kids from partying in the new addition and we often found beer bottles and evidence of lots of good times littering the floor. Our neighbors would have been a lot more annoyed with us if it weren't for the fact that the tenants we'd kicked out had been so much worse and we cruised on this passive goodwill for a very long time.  They waited patiently as we picked up our britches and started back into work with an assortment of handymen-slash-faux contractors who were cheap but required lots of supervision and a growing (mine) knowledge of construction, plumbing, electrical wiring and masonry.  

It was during these daily trips down the 110 from our Los Feliz neighborhood that I started to really understand what San Pedro had that no other city in the Los Angeles basin had: honest-to-god character forged from generations who came here and never left. Never wanted to leave. In all the years I'd lived in the upper suburbs I'd never felt like a newcomer.  Everyone else I knew was just as transient, whether we were moving on up to better and better neighborhoods or simply moving on.  Here, people actually stared at me as if I were in a small town in the midwest someplace, and many of them struck up a friendly conversation (just curious, you understand), something that had never happened to me before.  And in response I became suitably chatty in public places, very much out of character.  I was charmed by the restaurant and bookstore regulars who's parents and grandparents had been regulars. And every place seemed to have their own collection of photographs of the local landscape - from arial vantage points of the ship-laden port to the rocky cliffs and white lighthouse of Point Fermin, the blue-green of the Pacific everywhere, surrounding us.

It was soon time to move in, ready or not.  The Port began to take on more of a presence in my visits, and I looked over to the iron landmarks and the silently passing cargo ships with more awareness every day.  I saw the air, dusty brown in the distance, saw it spreading north and east, heard the distant an never-ending rumble of steel coupling and uncoupling.  I lifted up my head  like the groundhog in our front yard and sniffed at the air, coveted the open ocean to the south of us, marveled at the giant and mysterious fog bank rolling in from Catalina way and almost suddenly became passionately attached to the ever changing natural vista I saw there.  

I had become rooted.  And I was about to take up a pitchfork and fight to protect our little plot and all the little plots around us.  Our neighborhood, for better or worse, we were in it now.