We made our way over the bridge to the 710 North; a bridge which she always tells me to slow down on. We’d just received our first major rainfall of the year, the beginning of what was to be a week-long drench. Was that possible? I wondered if this was a blessing, or yet another symptom of global warming.
I thought of the possibilities and wandered in the grey area, as grey as the sky around us. Then suddenly, up ahead, a bright rainbow sliced the sky.
I smiled and remembered Maui, where we saw a similar sight. But we were here in L.A…specifically on the line between Bell and Bell Gardens, two places whose names I used to interchange without thought when I first met her. Then one day a friend made it clear…
“So where’s she from?”
“I dunno…Bell? Bell Gardens? Whatever.”
“Whatever? No…it’s either Bell, or Bell Gardens. Big difference.”
“Really? I thought they were the same thing.”
“What??! Oh hayell no man…there’s a huge difference between Bell and Bell Garbage dood!”
But there we were, in the midst of a beauty band whose pot of gold was right smack in the middle of the so-called garbage heap. Indeed, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
