I just made a return visit to Thousand Oaks, California, where Lorna and I did most of the raising of our two daughters, Meagan and Gillian (we often refer to it now as a former job site). As is my wont (or will, which seems more like it), I did a lot of reflecting on how we ended up in Thousand Oaks. I find the stories of how people come to settle in certain places not only illustrative about the degree of randomness in ordinary lives, but revealing of how shaky is our belief in the permanency of place and property. Follow this bouncing ball, for instance:
- In summer of 1976 we ventured from New Hampshire to California so I could give my snowbound writing career a bit of sunshine.
- By October I was going Jack Torrance of The Shining-level crazy cooped up in a small Van Nuys apartment with a TYPEWRITER!!!!
- Before driving Meagan over to visit a new school friend, I packed up my baseball glove, hoping to find a softball game somewhere, which I did…right across the street from Meagan’s friend.
- As happened, many of the people who let me play with them that day soon became long-lasting friends.
- Two years later, after we had returned to New Hampshire to take care of unfinished business, one of those new friends offered us the use of his house to help us resettle in California.
- The house was in Thousand Oaks, a town we didn’t know from Sherman Oaks…or Twenty-nine Pines for that matter…but it would become our home for a pretty significant 16 years of our lives.
That’s just the bare bones of the story, of course, and doesn’t even take into account all the other random events it took to lead us there, like descending from four different family trees rooted in at least four foreign countries and then all getting re-rooted in the same small corner of the vast North American continent. As I wrote in a previous blog post in drawing from one of the core precepts of Norman O. Brown: Be at home nowhere.
The truly striking thing about Thousand Oaks — was so when we lived there and seems more so now — is that it’s the kind of place where most people would, if given the opportunity, choose to live. I know that’s a preposterous thing to say because when discussing most people that must include masses happily and willingly living in big cities, small villages, wide-open spaces…countryside, mountainside, seaside, down by the riverside. That’s a lot of dissenting opinion to account for. Nonetheless I’d maintain that Thousand Oaks does a rather remarkable job of manifesting the American ideal of suburban life that Hollywood has been successfully selling throughout the world for almost a century now. Thousand Oaks could easily be the locale for one of those pre-Schindler’s List Spielberg films, like his beloved illegal immigrant tale, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. T.O. (as the natives call it) boasts of quiet, tree-lined streets; neat, comfortable homes; a stylish, high-end mall that’s home to nearly every retailer of any consumer’s heart’s desire; a vibrant, modern civic center that recently celebrated its LGBT community; a biotech giant and an array of other stable, white-collar industries to anchor the local economy; rising property values, a well-maintained network of public parks, trails for horseback riding, and of course a golf course. T.O. has shown up consistently on the FBI’s list of America’s safest cities.
Thousand Oaks actually has been the location for many Hollywood films over the years…but few of Spielberg’s suburban dream variety. Mostly T.O. has provided Hollywood with settings for films requiring a rural, rustic or Western setting conveniently located just 40 miles north of LA. So, though in reality Thousand Oaks projects the post World War II myth of cleanliness, order, safety and affluence, its use to the Hollywood mythmakers has been as a setting for the prevailing pre-WWII myth of rugged individualism, golden opportunity, and open territory.
Like many parts of the country, what is now Thousand Oaks was once home to American Indians — the Chumash, who left evidence of their dominance and existence going as far back as 10,000 years. And like other parts of the country, T.O. (the geographic boundaries of it) was once part of another country…Mexico. The streets in The Brady Bunchneighborhood we lived in had such names as Yucca, Mandarinas, Manzanas, Flores, Pecos.
living in an 80.3% white and 1.3% black town goes shopping
Walking through The Oaks Mall these days with a critical eye out for diversity, one sees a sprinkling of black and brown faces. With Thousand Oaks propensity for picture perfection, the racial diversity seems just enough to deflect any accusations of being a white bread town, but not so much as to induce white flight. When we lived there in the 80s, it was a desirable relocation destination for racial minorities of means trying to escape the gangs of LA.
In 2008, voter registration in Thousand Oaks was 60% Republican. It was truly Reagan Country, being home to his favorite butcher and lying between his ranch in Santa Barbara and his final resting place in Simi Valley. Now voter registration is 36% Republican and 34% Democrat (25% no preference).
Last November, Thousand Oaks was the scene of a mass shooting at a dance bar where 13 people were killed. One of the victims had survived the mass shooting in Las Vegas the year before.
Thousand Oaks is regarded as one of the most successful planned communities in the United States….yet slowly but surely stands as a living testament to the fleeting power of that grand illusion.
