Apocalypse When? If Jersey Beats Irvine, It Must Be Now

Pack the suitcases, round up the kids, load everything into the Suburban and leave.

Nevada. New Mexico. Utah. It doesn’t matter where you go. Just get out. There’s no future here.

Not to upset you, friends, but it’s all over for Orange County.

In bygone barbaric eras, you knew the end was nigh when the invading hordes burned your village to the ground, or, dammit, when they took your horses.

In today’s world, though, it’s sometimes harder to tell. It’s easy to overlook a mega-trend or a tic in the economy that foreshadows doom.

Seldom does the sign of the apocalypse arrive as unmistakably as it has for Orange County. It even came with a date attached: Aug. 22, 1995.

Yes, just last Tuesday. I was afraid you might have missed it.

That was the day Century 21, a real estate company owned by a company in Parsippany, N.J., but headquartered in Irvine, announced it was moving to New Jersey.

You did not read that sentence backward. The company is actually leaving Orange County for New Jersey. And it’s not just leaving Orange County, but Irvine . I didn’t even know it was legally permissible, once you’d moved in, to leave Irvine. Does Donald Bren know about this?

This is nuts. Nobody leaves California for New Jersey. Had Century 21 moved to Las Vegas, I could see it. Or Hong Kong or Singapore. Texas. Oklahoma, even. But Joisey? As a friend of mine (a New Yorker) says, New Jersey is the only state whose name doubles as a punch line. You can almost hear Woody Allen saying: “All is lost; I’ve moved to New Jersey.”

Leaving the Golden State for the Garden State. Some garden.

That’s the state where being corrupt used to get you into politics, not out. When one of its U.S. senators was convicted during the federal Abscam sting operation some years ago, the reaction was, “So?”

I drove past New Jersey chemical plants in 1972, and I’ve smelled funny ever since. In most states, you drive a stretch of highway and notice different colors. In Jersey, it’s different odors. Horace Greeley had New Jersey in mind when he said, “Go west, young man.”

In Orange County, we’ve got wildflowers beside the highway. In Jersey, they’ve got corpses. Jersey is the place where they built the Meadowlands sports complex over a swamp. Everybody knows Jimmy Hoffa is resting comfortably somewhere between the 30-yard lines. No, make that under the 30-yard lines.

This is the state that sort of claims Donald Trump. Or at least his casinos in Atlantic City. This is Las Vegas without Bugsy Siegel. Just bugs.

Here’s the real killer for Orange County: It’s not just any company that’s leaving, but a real estate company. Hey, Orange County invented real estate companies, for cryin’ out loud. Century 21 was born and reared here. If Jersey wants one of our companies, how about a nice flour mill or a solid-waste disposal plant? But a real estate company? What are they trying to do, rub our noses in it?

There’s no use crying about it. Indeed, we need to look at this in historic context. Maybe Orange County is just a 20th-Century kind of place, and Century 21 sees the future in New Jersey. Let’s face it, when you compare Orange County and Parsippany, only one of them is bankrupt.

The move even carries a certain amount of poetic justice. It was Bruce Springsteen who released “My Hometown” in 1984, in which he lamented the changing times:

“Now Main Street’s white-washed windows and vacant stores/

Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more.

They’re closing down the textile mills ‘cross the railroad tracks/

Foreman says these jobs are goin’, boys, and they ain’t comin’ back.”

Yes, Springsteen is from New Jersey. And, yes, Century 21 headquarters is on Main Street in Irvine.

I think the expression is, the worm has turned. But, who knows, maybe Orange County could commission Springsteen to write an elegy for us.

The whole point of this isn’t to bum you out--merely to point out that Orange County life as we know it is rapidly drawing to an end and that we’re all doomed.

On the bright side, we’ve had a good run here in Orange County. But nothing lasts forever. At this point, there’s nothing left to say except to repeat the new Century 21 slogan: “Go east, young man.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.