Arteries of Memory: The Ghosts of Jefferson... Boulevard, Part Two

The wall of neon

Part Two: End of the Line

Next to 11111 Jefferson Boulevard, Culver City

Did you blink? Right there next to the Culver City Main post office? That street called Machado Lane, named after one of the original Mexican settlers, that was the exit to the Studio Drive-In. A beacon in the night, the backside of it's screen was a wall of vertical neon lines so bright they could probably be seen from space. A quaint holdover from the days when Americans believed so much in their cars that they couldn't bear to leave them even for a night's entertainment. No one misses them, not even the adults who were hauled by the carload as children to watch double features of Disney's Robin Hood with Million Dollar Duck. The clunky speaker boxes that hung on the car windows, the obstructed views from the back seat where the claustrophobia mixed with sibling proximity, where human exhaust clouded windows with condensation, none of it missed. The playground which consisted of a rusted swing set, a splintery teeter-totter, and a sandbox frequented by local cats, also not missed, and more importantly not frequented even when it was there. But it was there, once, a testament to another time, and an optimism about our marriage of autos and family entertainment.

"For Mountainous Appetites"

Technically 5529 Sepulveda Boulevard, Culver City

On the last day of school the sixth graders of El Marino Elemenatry School would dress nice for their end-of-the-year field trip and party. After a morning of formalities that seemed to take forever the sixth graders would line up in pairs and proceed to the service entrance near the lunch patio. Three classes worth of students then made the processional down Berryman Street to where it met Sepulveda Boulevard and the home of Woody's Smorgasburger.

Woody's was the sort of pastiche restaurant that seemed the providence of people who lived to build their businesses around themes. Woody's a-frame décor and Alpine mountaineer mascot would suggest something more in keeping with Germanic food, while a smorgasbord speaks to Scandinavia, but what Woody's served up was nothing less than an American classic charbroiled burger. Overdressed, sitting on the enclosed dining patio, frantically scrawling our farewells in handmade autograph books given to us courtesy of the PTA, we sixth graders sat and inhaled soft-serve sundaes and devoured burgers that became the bar all future burgers would be measured against. In truth the burgers may not have been that special, but the thing about memory is that when and where they were formed has as much to do with the emotions the memories conjure. Those memories are born of a moment in time and place but are held in reserve in a private memory vault. The memories are as much ghosts as the events and places that created them.

About that Sepulveda address above...

That stretch of Jefferson from where it first meets Sepulveda to where it branches off at Playa and continues west a few blocks later isn't technically Jefferson. Like a stream rerouted beneath the streets in culverts, Jefferson simply disappears while Sepulveda takes over. When it picks back up again Jefferson takes a shift and makes a b-line for the Pacific, one final mad dash out of town.

Home of the Spruce Goose, Jefferson borders on the right

Starting from 12100 Jefferson Boulevard

Past the Westfield Mall (formerly the Fox Hills Mall, formerly the Fox Hills Country Club), past the 405 and 90 interchange (does anyone still call the Marina Freeway the Nixon Freeway? Did anyone ever?), Jefferson becomes West Jefferson and travels almost two miles alongside the largest ghost of them all, the former Hughes Aircraft plant. Subdivided, it's airstrip torn up and streets laid in place for the new Playa Vista development of condos and light industrial, you'd hardly guess a good deal of aviation history was made on the site. Howard Hughes built his Spruce Goose here, and his avionics division developed a number of military crafts including the Apache helicopter. But the last aircraft left the airfield in 1985 and slowly the plant was reduced to a ghost town of empty hangars and unused asphalt. In time this large expanse of open land will fill in, and West Jefferson will claim another orphan of time.

Where Mr. Jefferson meets Mr. Culver

End of the line

Finally, crossing Lincoln, West Jefferson enters the protected Ballona Wetlands and succumbs to a merger with Culver Boulevard. Like a weary pack mule forced to carry its burden far too long,  Jefferson/West Jefferson, comes within sight of the Pacific and is content to buckle at the gates of heaven. At the point where Jefferson ends – or begins, depending on your point of view – there is no one alive who can claim to remember the surrounding landscape differently. Driving that stretch of road today looks no different than it did when I last drove it in 2000, or when I drove it in 1980, or when I was sitting on the bench seats of our family's '57 Ford Ranch Wagon and heading to the beach in the mid 1960s.

Roads, memories, dreams and development, all settle into the golden embers of a western sunset.

-- David Elzey

(Studio Drive-In: Bob Richardson, http://culvercity.patch.com/articles/looking-back-the-studio-drive-in)

(Woody's image http://www.culverhighalumni.org/)

(Hughes Aircraft: http://www.aviatorhowardhughes.com/images/aircraft-largestrip.jpg)

(Ballona Wetlands: http://www.cnsm.csulb.edu/departments/geology/people/bperry/AerialPhotosSoCal/NorthBayCoastalCities.htm)