Blue Line to LA
by Steven Hunley
I feel like subjecting myself to the variety pack. Remember Kellogg's variety pack ? Little packages of cereal of all sorts? Corn Pops and Rice Crispies, Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes too. That’s what the Blue Line is like. All kinds of flakes. It’s the good the bad and the ugly of the LA Metro scene. It runs between Long Beach and L.A. where it digs like a mole underground near 7th.
In Watts, on steps a very black and ring-tailed fellow.
Handsome and fresh-faced, corn rows neatly arranged on his black cranium. Pants crotch down between his knees. Butt-ugly shorts showing. Black Chuck Taylors with thick red shoelaces grace his phalanges. Thick imitation gold chain you know where.
Attitude to spare
If you like it,
As you like it.
His opinion? Shakespeare’s got nothing on rappers.
He’s saving money riding the Blue Line. He points his chin to the roof of the car and closes his eyes and mumbles something under his breath. He’s calculating like mad.
No Problem.
An old wrinkled Mexican woman with a bandaged arm sells candy and water for a dollar.
Two kids fight over a red balloon. A young mother wearing skinny jeans burps her baby on her shoulder. An idiot discards a candy wrapper nonchalantly when he thinks nobody is looking or scoping him out.
Humanity, you gotta love 'it.
In Florence on steps a Mexican gangster.
Old gangster, Original Gangster. O.G. Dickie Shorts with white socks up to his calves. Tennies. Tattooed neck and arms, web belt with shiny metal buckle, Old English letter carved out. Baseball cap turned *ss-backwards. Lots of Machimo to spare. He takes a seat and writes notes on a yellow legal pad. He’s saving money by riding the Blue Line. Probably has five or six drive-bys to his name and a heater in his pocket.
In all probability a most violent fellow.
No Problemo.
Various people tap and scroll on their phones, oblivious to the world around them. Ears stuffed with ear-buds, blocking out sounds, peering down at electronic displays in their hands. King Kong could lift up the car and they wouldn’t know until the song was over or the game was finished. A T-Rex could eat us, and they’d think the crunch of his teeth was the sh*tty reception of their cell phones, until it bit their legs, but by then it would be too late.
That’s OK. It makes my job easier.
Downtown on Pico Chick Hern Station-
On steps a straight white-cracker-fellow.
Tan pants with creases. Ancient wing-tipped loafers. Dinosaurian footwear.
Lame solid color suit, you name it. Different colored tie. No taste. No design nor pattern.
Neither has this guy.
He’s adding something up on a Texas Instruments calculator. Good with figures kind a fellow.
Probably saving up for a trip to Tahiti on the old Somerset Maugham trail. Real exotic and rugged. Full of Romance and Adventure too. He takes off his wire-rimmed glasses and cleans them with soft circling motions, in an off-hand manner, as if he was caressing Aphrodite’s cold marble breast in all her Greek splendor. Trying to warm her up and all. One of his favorite fantasies.
Probably trying to figure the price of a country home in Nevada.
Millions of palm trees whip by followed by miles of walls covered by tagging crews in colorful graffiti. A skater wearing black and white Vans like Sean Penn holds his board by it’s tale. Fat people mill about on the platform going nowhere. Skinny people thread their way between them like an unplanned Olympic event. All colors, all sorts, all sizes. Various human-walking patterns.
America the Beautiful.
Eventually, they get off. We really can’t say what happened to them. But maybe we can.
Like Magic.
The black fellow walks into his house. A calendar from the ninety-nine cents store hangs on the wall with pictures of Greece. The brown eyes of his wife brighten.
“You know what, Honey? I’ve saved quite a bit riding the blue line. Looks like it’s vacation time in Santorini!”
No problem.
The moment the Mexican guy steps in the door he’s rushed by his children. They hug him and surround him with smiles and warm feelings. There’s soccer trophies in the display cabinet on the other side of the room, glittering through the glass. As he tosses the legal pad in the corner he shouts towards the warm-tamale smelling kitchen,
“Hey Honey, guess what? I just passed the bar!”
No problem.
The white-cracker fella picks letters out of his mail box and runs upstairs to his woman. On the stairs he makes it a point to kick the cat.
“Hey,” he shouts, “I’ve saved a few cents riding the Blue Line. Call Willy and order some purple Kush. We can roll up a blunt and drink a Budweiser forty-boy."
“But drinking and smoking always makes you so angry,” muses his wife who sports a black eye under her Gucci sunglasses.
“It’s OK,” he figures.“She’s got room for another.”
No problem?
©Steven Hunley2011
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Originally Posted by Steven Hunley
