I can really smell it in front of my house tonight – the funky odor of hot cinders blown in by the Santa Anas. It happens almost every year. Sometimes houses go up, sometimes they don’t. One I lived in in Malibu burned to the ground the year after we sold it.
You all know who described this best – the poet laureate of Los Angeles…
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”
* “Red Wind” (short story, 1938)
So far I haven’t got the hose out. Just the old Chandler short stories.
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10 Comments
1. Lew Clark:If you are close enough to smell the smoke, then there should be a senior FEMA official caamped in you living room ready to render aid, if needed. If there is not, then why not, and when did Bush know about this failure.
Sep 29, 2005 - 9:53 pm 2. Patrick Tyson:Roger—
Ever since I first read it, I always think of…
I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.
—Joan Didion, “Santa Ana” from Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Driving north on the 405 at about 10:00 this morning one couldn’t help but be awed. The stopped traffic made sense for a change. That you smell it where you are is probably a good sign. Probably.
Sep 29, 2005 - 10:19 pm 3. Impacted Wisdom Truth:Hey Roger,
Simi Valley here. I just went to the store at about 11:30pm tonight. Outside it smelled that funky smell like a campfire that had just been put out–a musty, wet ash kind of smell.
The sun today cast a strange beige color on everything, obviously due to the smoke. I could see the fires from my bedroom window last night; flames to the east of me on the hills in the pass above the 118, and a glow in the sky to the South. But tonight I do not see anything.
Sep 30, 2005 - 12:37 am 4. syn:Bring the firefighter home NOW. We don’t want any parents to lose a single child forced to risk their lives saving America!
Bring the Firefighters Home NOW!
*paid for by ANSWER (lies) and United for (Genocidal) Peace and Justice (for dictators)
Sep 30, 2005 - 3:48 am 5. John Digweed:If you are close enough to smell the smoke, then there should be a senior FEMA official caamped in you living room ready to render aid, if needed. If there is not, then why not, and when did Bush know about this failure.
Sep 30, 2005 - 5:47 am 6. RJT:Roger,
seriously man, only a writer would get romantic when the place is burning down.
Sep 30, 2005 - 7:55 am 7. Bostonian:I love Raymond Chandler.
Did his Southern California ever really exist? I don’t know and I hardly care.
I was so sad the day I realized I’d read all his books.
Sep 30, 2005 - 8:50 am 8. rastajenk:I think I’d rather take my chances with a hurricane. Honestly.
Sep 30, 2005 - 12:11 pm 9. Doug S.:Every time the Santa Anas blow up, I think of that passage from “Red Wind,” a great short story by a great writer.
I’ve lived in the Los Angeles Area for most of my 42 years, and it always irritates me a bit when news coverage of our annual brushfires makes the rest of the country think we’re burning like Nero’s Rome or Pepys’ London. Yes, it really sucks for some people who live out on the fringes of the greater metro area. But the rest of us who can’t afford to live in the canyons are safe enough, thank you very much.
Sep 30, 2005 - 12:14 pm 10. Patrick Tyson:Bostonian—
My father recommended I read Farewell, My Lovely when I was 15 or 16. After I’d done so, I asked him if Santa Monica (obviously Bay City) had really been the pit Chandler made it out to be back then. He told me I could count on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Santa_Monica%2C_California#1930s
Sep 30, 2005 - 2:13 pm