God Speed Pacific Palisades

(Editor’s note: Chaz Plager wrote for Circling the News for three years and in September penned a farewell as he started college in September. He asked if he could pen an eulogy and of course said, yes.)

By CHAZ PLAGER

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

When I wrote my article saying goodbye to the Palisades, I had meant it as a metaphor. I had hoped that someday, far in the future, I would bring my kids back to the Palisades, show them around, tell them about my life. I’d be able to marvel at how much it’s changed since I last saw it. Maybe they’d end up going to the same school as I did. Maybe we’d sit on the bluffs and watch the sunset together.

It wasn’t supposed to be goodbye forever.

The fire was, frankly, too fast to even process. I mean, I woke up, got a call from my dad saying they were evacuating, went to my classes, got a call from my dad that the fire was still spreading, went to sleep, and woke up to a call from my mother that our house was gone. No, not just that, our whole town was gone.

Less than 24 hours, and that’s it. I watch videos of people touring the hollowed out, ashy ruins, pictures of Palisades High School burnt out, the street I lived on being nothing but rubble, and none of it feels real. How do I process this? How do I grieve?

I guess you have to start from the beginning.

The Palisades starts as you turn up Temescal Canyon. Once you get past that obscenely long red light, you drive up a long road surrounded by canyon walls.

You’ll see people walking their dogs, beachgoers taking surfboards off their cars, construction workers on break by the food trucks, nestled between the wildlife.

As you reach the part where uphill ends, you’ll reach PaliHi; we’re imagining that this isn’t a weekday, otherwise you’d be so swamped in traffic the aforementioned process would take maybe thirty minutes.

You see kids milling about; maybe they’re the football team taking a break between drills, the marching band moving in lockstep to a metronome, or the swim team doing hundred meter sprints. I have many words to say on Pali, far too many to put into an article like this without derailing it, but when I gather all my memories and look through them like an overstuffed scrapbook, I think that the destruction of something so pivotal to the person I am today rings something like a denial of everything I went through to reach today. Frankly, it terrifies me.

Pressing on gets you to a cross intersection. If you go left, and drive along sleepy residential streets, you’ll reach a popular after school hangout spot “Ronnie’s,” which is just beyond Marquez Elementary, alma mater to many a Pali resident.

Continuing straight are the Temescal Canyon hiking trails, where you can enjoy beautiful walks with nature. Maybe you’ll take a short trip to the waterfall, or perhaps make a whole day of it to get to Skull Rock and back.

On the left is the meadow in which the YMCA hosts holiday events, but it’s a bit too late to have Christmas trees, and too early to have Halloween pumpkins.

Going right takes you closer to the heart of the Palisades, at another cross section. On either side of you are the Shell and Chevron gas stations, glaring across at one another, uselessly competing for business as everyone knows the car wash at Ralph’s had the cheapest prices, or the Chevron by Patrick’s Roadhouse on PCH.

Going left at this intersection will take you to the sprawling Alphabet Streets, where I stuffed my bag full of Halloween candy many a time, and biked through them to see friends even more times.

Go right, and you’ll be at Gelson’s, that overpriced store I couldn’t stop going to because their Salmon Soba Pack and poke bowls were just too good. We must have spent thousands of dollars at Viktor Benes’ bakery for their challah before Dad learned to make his own— and even then, we still loved their cookies.

Past is the dry cleaners. I’d often take my dad’s clothes there when I was out on other errands for him. I remember being annoyed that I had to pick it up, considering he was the only one who used the cleaners’, he should have to pick it up on his own. Then I remembered I was driving his car, and I felt stupid for being annoyed.

Across from the dry cleaners, is Toppings. I’ve been going to Toppings since they still had that iPad in the corner of the store you could take photos with, which is to say thirteen whole years. The atmosphere was just as good as its yogurt.

Zigzagging back to the other side of the street, next to several shops I sadly never had a reason to enter, is the Pali YMCA. The summer before I went to college, I spent nearly every day working out, watching anime on my phone and getting funny looks from other gymgoers, and running into acquaintances with a one-sided remembrance of our relationship. Pierce, Sasha, Evan, and Val, who were always willing to greet me with a smile, come to mind as well.

Next to the YMCA is the Methodist Church, which I never had a reason to enter (I’m Jewish), but always left a strong impression in my mind, as its spire could be seen on my way home in the evening, shining because it was underlit, looking so much like a castle.

Then across from the church would be Pali Elementary. To see that the place that raised me with such care and sincerity is now gone fills me with a sadness I find difficult to describe. I see fragments of memories in my mind: Tottering down the hallway with my mission project, getting absolutely juked out of my socks by Evan in basketball, reading quietly in the library when no one was around to chastise me for not socializing enough, planting in the garden. These images fill me with a sense of warmth, but also a heavy weight in my chest.

If you want straight down Sunset instead of turning onto Via de la Paz, at the next intersection you would see Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village (which I remember before it was Caruso’s). Younger me would often end up wandering around Puzzle Zoo while the adults shopped, staring at toys I couldn’t dream of owning unless I waited until my next birthday or Hanukkah. I missed Mayberry’s restaurant.

And, in the present, I miss McConnell’s Ice Cream and Blue Ribbon Sushi. I can only hope somewhere else in the world has crispy tuna rolls that good.

On the right of Rick Caruso’s is a small center with Bank of America, Starbucks, Cafe Vida, and Casa Nostra. Those four establishments seemed to be invincible; as long as I knew the revolving door of business in the Palisades, those four would remain.

I remember my mom being so excited to work at Bank of America, now that it was within walking distance AND right next to a Starbucks. Her enthusiasm diminished when she had to actually start working at the bank.

Turning right, you catch a glimpse of Kay and Dave’s out of your eye— no, it’s something else now, isn’t it? Its name eludes me, but I did not like that place anywhere near as much as Kay and Dave’s, no sir. My stomach gets tight at the thought of how many chips of theirs I ate before our meals came.

You drive onwards. You see Beech Street— a luxury Italian restaurant I had many a celebration at, always ordering their linguini with clams— The Yogurt Shoppe— at which I did not eat often but enjoyed when they catered to parties I attended— CVS— I don’t want to think about how many Arizona teas I bought from there.

You turn left and head down the hill. The Palisades Post Office passes by. I sent several packages from there to eccentrics who wanted to purchase my anime merchandise, making a cool cent along the way. I had planned to send some more packages from there when I returned in the spring, selling off more merchandise. Sadly, that merchandise no longer exists, as it has all gone to ash. It stings, to be honest— I had about $8,000 worth of rare collectibles I was planning to sell off to pay for my first apartment lease, or something similar.

It was, admittedly, a bit funny to see the reactions of some of my potential buyers. “Hey, I can’t send you this anymore, my house burned down and it was inside. Sorry.” Can you imagine receiving a message like that? I certainly can’t.

Almost rubbing shoulders with it is the Garden Cafe. Speaking of places I’ve sunk money into, the Garden Cafe surely holds thousands of my own bills, spent on chicken sandwiches and boba after middle school. I raced off the bus to be the first in line before the mean high schoolers got in and kicked us all out. I mean, in my head, they were kicking us out. In reality, the line was just too long and they wanted us lining up outside the door, which took me far too long to realize.

Food trucks Gracias Senor, Sunset Smashburger were where I started putting my money into after I got into high school. A silver lining is that these two trucks, being mobile trucks, will continue to operate. I still crave my Truffle Smashburger and Carnitas Fries, and hope I’ll see them operating near me one day. Maybe when they’ve expanded into statewide chains?

You turn right, passing by Ralph’s, which was where we went when my brother really, really wanted his 10-piece fried chicken for $5. I swear, it was just about all he ate for a period.

Formerly Norton’s, now Anawalt, stands as the one-stop-shop for all the Palisadian’s hardware needs; for my mom, that was looking at tile colors and rugs, imagining how it’d fit into our house. My dad had too many tools he didn’t use already to have much of an interest in the store. And I was about as handy as a fish. I mostly came in to talk to friends working there part-time.

Then there is the library. I am, personally, most devastated by the loss of this as far as the Palisades’ buildings go. I was a troubled kid, who never seemed to understand how other people worked. But books? Books I could understand. And I loved, loved books. Too many days I would spend in a sunbeam, a massive stack of books next to me, just reading and reading. Now the sun does not come through a window, instead it shines down on an ashen slurry of countless worlds put to paper. I will never read that copy of Percy Jackson again.

Beyond the library is the park. There isn’t an inch of the park I haven’t traveled, if I do say so myself. The swings, the Rec center, the strange dip next to the parking lot, the top of the shipping container, the swings, the baseball field, the area beyond the park (before and after it was reconstructed), and the tennis courts.

That is my childhood, my Sunday recreation, my objective for a dog walk, my elementary extracurriculars. Where I would go to think, to observe, to write, to kill time. My muse, in a sense. It, too, is gone.

You drive past the park, in as straight of a line as you can, into the Huntington Palisades, where I did my driving lessons. I did well for my first time driving, but not perfectly. I’d rather not remember that part, to be honest.

You keep driving. You wind and wind onto Chautauqua. You descend the sharp slope. You wait, patiently, at the stoplight. You go right, and reach the beginning of Temescal Canyon. You’ve completed the loop, but this time, you take a right just before the first cross intersection, past Theater Palisades, where I spent much of my youth.

You keep going straight. There is my house, on the right, with the great redwood, hundreds of years old, peeking out just behind it. In my house are photos, plates, food, bikes, books, beds, showers, memories. Unfortunately, all I have left is the latter.

You keep going straight. You go right, up a steep hill.

On your right is a perfect, unobstructed stretch of land that oversees what almost looks like the whole of California, staring down at the ocean bordered by PCH which zigzags and curves out of sight. The cars look just like ladybugs running across a stone-grey plant.

You keep going straight.

Here, there is a sign that forbids further driving, and you get out. You walk to the edge, where only a run-down white fence is the border between you and a sheer drop. Here, what must be the whole world spreads out before you. The sun is setting to the west, casting everything in an orange glow, burning the blue sky pink.

The Santa Monica Pier’s Ferris wheel lights and spins, undulating, pulsing with the rainbow. An infinite line of red and white lights soar down the highway. A parasailer is flying down into the ocean.

If you are lucky, and there is not too much wind, someone may be flying their model airplane next to you, watching it dip and soar beneath the cliff face, little children squealing as it twists and turns.

I am five years old. My parents are talking to other adults about complicated topics I can’t understand, drinking something I can’t drink. I climb to the top of a nearby tree and stare out at the ocean. This must be all I will ever see, I think to myself. I cannot comprehend a world larger than this.

I am twelve years old. I am walking my new dog to the bluffs. His first reaction to this new, unfamiliar place is to rub his face in the dirt, creating a storm of filth that spreads to me as well. I am upset but cannot stop a smile from coming to my face. He grins back at me guilelessly.

I am sixteen years old. My friends and I are leaning against the rails, staring out at the horizon. They are smoking. I do not smoke. I crane my head away from them so what flows from the ends of their cigarettes won’t get in the way of the view. They laugh at me.

I am eighteen years old. I am looking out at the sunset just a few days before I leave for college. My dog is on my lap. He is old enough now to know not to make a mess. He sits, impatiently, while I watch the world turn orange. I do not know that it is the last sunset I will ever see from these bluffs. Of course, neither does he, but I find it hard to imagine he was thinking about anything at all. I stay until the last sliver of orange fades into the black sea.

I am nineteen years old. The Palisades are gone.

And then one day you find

Ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run

You missed the starting gun

I loved the Palisades. I loved my home.

I am still struggling to process that it is gone, that one hundred miles away from me, what was once my whole world is gone. Perhaps I will be able to understand when I walk onto my street to find my vision of the ocean unobscured, those once-towering houses reduced to a few inches of ash and ember.

Now, there is a blank canvas, and we hold the paints. I look forward to seeing what is painted atop the rubble.