Best and Worsts / Valley Reader Write : Tributes Tell Why Valley Is Home

Couched as it was with reminders of the earthquake, the wildfires and the sagging economy, our question to readers was simple: Why do you stay in the San Fernando Valley?

In dozens of poems, essays and even a limerick, written on manual typewriters, computers or scrawled on note cards, you responded, defiantly defending your neighborhood, your strip mall, your Valley.

For some, it is the memories that keep you here: of orange groves, farmlands or the deer that once roamed the Valley floor. For others, it is as simple as the convenience of nearby malls or the endlessly sunny days. Others point to something less tangible, a collective spirit that rises in the face of each new disaster.

But we asked for your words, so we’ll let you explain. Here are some of our favorite remarks, illustrated with photographs by Brian Vander Brug about why there’s no place quite like the Valley to call home.

Seeing the Valley Through Native’s Eye

Do you remember “The Third Eye?” For a kid of 6 or 7, born and growing up in Encino in the early 1960s, this curious place, located where the Laemmle Plaza now flourishes, is my first and most lasting memory of life then on “the Boulevard,” in the Valley. In that time of “Leave It to Beaver,” I wondered what was going on in that strange place with the huge eerie green eye staring out from in front.

Of course, I soon came to understand a bit more of my surroundings and my world, but I cherish the seeds of my social consciousness as I continue to make the Valley my home today.

I read, amused, how the residents of Encino gather to make plans for creative community growth, including expansion of area parkland. I recall the family picnics (with a wonderful emphasis on family) we held at little Encino Park, possibly because Balboa Park wasn’t completed yet. I remember down the street from “The Third Eye” was “The Beat”--the only record store around.

I’ve seen my oldest, closest friends flee the Valley for a more sedate life in Oregon, a more stylish one in San Francisco; family members migrated for a more “sophisticated” one “over the hill.” And, of course, the tens of thousands who have emigrated to our Valley, and helped it create what it is today. And me? At 36, and a true native, I’m still here. And yeah, I remember “The Third Eye.” Sometimes I feel like I still have that third eye, that gives me a very special way of seeing life in our world, our Valley. What do I like about the Valley? It’s home.

BRADLEY A. BROTHERS

North Hollywood