Thoughts of Cross County Shopping Mall

I was driving home tonight from a friend's apartment. Maybe because it was a New York Transplant friend I happened suddenly, at the corner of Fairfax and Fountain in Los Angeles think of a Saturday sometime in 1980. I was 25, and still living at home, home being a nice two bedroom on the edge of Riverdale, but not in Riverdale, near the Jerome Avenue Reservoir. Fort Independence Hall the small complex was known as, on Giles Place. I had just graduated law school, and gotten my license. But not a job. And I was restless. A little embarrassed to be living at home, without a job, supported still by my father, truth be known, and realizing that if I were overprotected, it was my own darn fault! I had only recently learned to drive, and the opportunities to test my nominal skills were few. I got into a bit of a snit, and announced to my father, always concerned about the evils cast about by the fates, that I was taking a "drive". Big stuff. Djinn takes a drive. Into the car, a red Plymouth Volare, and off I went to directions as yet unknown. I couldn't think. I got on the Deegan, North, I think. I actually don't know the highways in New York, and did not then, because I never drove; I took trains or busses, or relied on the kindness of my friends' who did drive, and I found myself at the place pictured here (except without the construction vehicles), Cross County. I think that Macy's was then John Wanamaker's, but I can't be sure. What I do remember for certain was parking the car facing outward, toward the highway, and trying to decide, "What's next in my life". I was already well into a thought of moving to California, but was afraid of such a big change. I was not one for adventures, having lived and attended school in spitting distance of the Grand Concourse, or Pelham Parkway, with a wild foray to Queens for Law School. I remember thinking I was trapped, that I was a coward and I'd be driving back and forth from Giles Place to Cross County for the rest of my uneventful life.

I was so certain of my doom as I sat in that parking lot.

The years may not have brought wisdom, but they have brought perspective. And as I made my left from Fountain to Fairfax I thought, I really had come a longer way than I could have imagined on that Saturday long ago.