How the Bright Knight saved LA

Once upon a time, when I was young, which was in an era far far away, I wanted to live anywhere except in a little no-account town in Montana where nothing happened, so when I had the chance to live and work in the Los Angeles area for a summer I grabbed it.

It was one of the best choices I made as a just-hit-drinking-age adult. It was like stepping into an alternate universe, or hell. Yeah, maybe it was hell. Like I made a conscious decision to walk through a doorway into the first level of hell because it seemed warm and inviting. But I learned a good life lesson, and this week I got to learn the flip side of that lesson.

It was hot, smoggy, somehow both arid and humid with its desert-like landscape and humid air rolling up from the Pacific Ocean. The barest hints of nature eked out a living in insignificant openings between vast portions of cement and asphalt. And there were people everywhere, all the time. I can’t stress that last part enough.

Even now, about six lifetimes later, I get that little panic attack over the people and the traffic and the constant frenetic energy of human movement in close conditions. Not that I was always rubbing elbows in a crush of humanity, it was just that for months I never went anywhere that didn’t have other people within sight and sound and spitting distance.

I rented a bedroom from a couple who were from Montana and occasionally went on a walk taking their dog with me. He was a large red and tan doberman pincher with amber eyes. He was intimidating to strangers. He was a sweetheart and a pansy and had no loyalty to me. I kept his leash firmly wrapped around my wrist because I figured if it came down to a rumble with some ne’er-do-wells, he’d bolt for home and thereby drag me to safety.

My hope was that he wouldn’t drag me out into the traffic, which was constant, bumper to bumper and aggressive. Drivers would not be intimidated by a yellow-eyed, red doberman dragging a screaming blond.

My life in Southern California was about work and home. Absolutely, the area had more things to do, but internet wasn’t a thing then so I couldn’t Google anything about the area. People talked about activities but they always talked about the things that cost money and involved lots of people, which other people didn’t seem to mind, but I did, having too little of the first thing and too much of the other.

No one seemed happy, just busy.

I left Southern California firm in the knowledge that I, in fact, had no need or desire to go back to that particular level of hell and that I, in another fact, was a Montanan, happily, and I never needed to leave again.

In all these years, I have retained my impression of the area as an inhospitable, hot, over-peopled hell.

Then actor Adam West died.

The first Batman — the “bright” knight whose fake punches landed with a “kapow” and whose sidekick Robin said “wowie zowie” — died June 9 and six days later the mayor of LA, Eric Garcetti, and the city council held a party at city hall. They lit up the side of the building with the bat signal. And people came and said hopeful things, and even more people came, some in costume and some with their kids, to stand in a big people-y mass of humans and said nice things and cheered for the bat signal.

How cool is that?

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I could’ve wandered among that crowd and felt that happy, Batman-y vibe at [email protected].