Christmas Ghost Town
This year for the first time ever I didn't spend Christmas with my family. We went to Mr. Bir Toujour's hometown and had our Christmas there, with his good and kind family. I was looking forward to seeing Christmas from the perspective of another family's traditions, and even though the drive down can be a killer (6 hours in the hazy stink of the Cnetral Valley in I-5) I was excited to take a trip and take in new surroundings.
I've been to see Mr. Bir Toujour's family a few times before. They live in the high desert town of Lancaster, about an hour northeast of LA. It's a strange plass with an unsellting abutting of the open sameness of liberating desert horizons and the soul-crushing sameness of sloppy faceless suburbia. The place consists of nothing but big box stores and strip malls in various states of decay--they build one stip mall, which fails, so they build a bigger strip mall in another part of town and porn DVD outlets and 99-cent stores move in to the vacated strip mall. "This town is the king of 99-cent stores," Mr. Bir Toujour noted.
All of the buildings are covered in dirty stucco with peach trim and Spanish tile roofs. Hardly any little stores are freestanding--even the bars are in strip malls. All of the streets look alike to me and I never got my bearings about what part of town we were in. I don't understnad how anyone can live there and not go crazy.
Actually, most of them have gone crazy. All they do is shop for junky disposable crap all of the time. We saw some record-breaking tacky Christmas lawn decorations, lots of inflatable snowmen, wire-frame reindeer and twinkling electric-light sleighs. All of this in the desert--where, though it does snow occasionally in the winter, it's not the snow of sled rides and snowballs.
Christmas itself was...well, it was the same, really. Too much food, too many presents, too much restlessness. You can be 3,000 miles away with an completely different family, and Christmas won't change much. Every year I get all excited for Christmas, and then when it comes you find out how stale and stuffy it makes you feel. So I guess the excitement is the important part. I did have fun the last few days, though the majority of it had less to do with stockings and turkey dinner than just hanging out with family. Now all of us will go back into the regular workday world--a desert full of strip malls or an overcrowded urban libral enclave or a Midwestern hick town on the river--and let time decorate our holiday memories.
I've been to see Mr. Bir Toujour's family a few times before. They live in the high desert town of Lancaster, about an hour northeast of LA. It's a strange plass with an unsellting abutting of the open sameness of liberating desert horizons and the soul-crushing sameness of sloppy faceless suburbia. The place consists of nothing but big box stores and strip malls in various states of decay--they build one stip mall, which fails, so they build a bigger strip mall in another part of town and porn DVD outlets and 99-cent stores move in to the vacated strip mall. "This town is the king of 99-cent stores," Mr. Bir Toujour noted.
All of the buildings are covered in dirty stucco with peach trim and Spanish tile roofs. Hardly any little stores are freestanding--even the bars are in strip malls. All of the streets look alike to me and I never got my bearings about what part of town we were in. I don't understnad how anyone can live there and not go crazy.
Actually, most of them have gone crazy. All they do is shop for junky disposable crap all of the time. We saw some record-breaking tacky Christmas lawn decorations, lots of inflatable snowmen, wire-frame reindeer and twinkling electric-light sleighs. All of this in the desert--where, though it does snow occasionally in the winter, it's not the snow of sled rides and snowballs.
Christmas itself was...well, it was the same, really. Too much food, too many presents, too much restlessness. You can be 3,000 miles away with an completely different family, and Christmas won't change much. Every year I get all excited for Christmas, and then when it comes you find out how stale and stuffy it makes you feel. So I guess the excitement is the important part. I did have fun the last few days, though the majority of it had less to do with stockings and turkey dinner than just hanging out with family. Now all of us will go back into the regular workday world--a desert full of strip malls or an overcrowded urban libral enclave or a Midwestern hick town on the river--and let time decorate our holiday memories.
posted by Lefty at 9:54 AM
1 Comments:
EH! I was there with you, I am always there with you. Triple lindy Eh!
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