My wife and I drive the 134 here in LA to visit her mother and sister who live about an hour from us. Near Burbank, the freeway passes over the public works heretically referred to as the LA River (John Muir is rolling over), and I find myself taking my eyes off the road to see how much, if any, water is in it. On occasion, there are openings large enough to stand up in releasing huge amounts of water, and the concrete channel - as wide as the freeway itself - appears deep enough to float an inner tube down. Most times thought, the pipes are closed, the actual "river" portion of the channel is narrow enough to step across, a pathetic thing that's probably mostly run-off from the lawns getting watered all over the Valley.
On one trip, we listened to a story on the radio out of Orange County about a homeless encampment in a dry river bed which had mushroomed into something large enough to warrant its own zip code. And two weeks prior to this trip on the 134 and the story on the radio, we had watched Chinatown, perhaps the only movie in which an irrigation system is a main character. I love the moment where Jake is bumbling around in the dark near an orange grove, and out of the darkness comes a great torrent flooding the canals. Somewhere off stage, a great spigot had opened. Combine these three and you have the dam break in Chapter 11. Easter egg...VDL comes straight out of Chinatown. Email me with the answer for a Gone To Ground tee shirt.
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