Open Ground

September 4, 2011 Sue Martin

September 4, 2011

I’m writing as I ride the train from San Diego to Santa Barbara for the weekend. The train trip is not new to me. I take Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner four or five times a year. This trip, however, is different. Instead of the backyards, train yards, office buildings, bridges and industrial sprawl that stream by in rhythm with the train, it is the open spaces I see. They flash by unexpectedly in a kind of visual syncopation. My eyes lock, if only for an instant, on the open ground that exists right in the city, so near to where people live and work.

The open spaces take all shapes. Some are lots left inexplicably vacant, surrounded by the sameness of industrial parks or housing tracts. Others are strips of land, apparently abandoned or deemed unusable, perhaps because of proximity to the railroad tracks. A few of the open spaces seem hopelessly surrendered to weeds, trash and the scrawl of wayward youth.

I see possibilities. I think of the New Roots Community Farm in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. I think too of the possibilities that my great-grandparents saw when they left Carnegie, Pennsylvania and moved to downtown Los Angeles around 1905. I can imagine the contrast their nine children must have noticed as they played on open ground in the sunshine and fresh air of The City of the Angels. There was hope and a future.

As the train approaches Union Station, we pass under ornate bridges from the 1920’s. Above the train, East 4^th Street crosses the Los Angeles River. My father traveled across this bridge. Now my son, Tim does. He resides nearby in a live-work loft building in the arts district, adjacent to the rail yards. He works in a design start-up business. This is his neighborhood and he too sees possibilities. I see five generations of my family connected to this place and drawn here by opportunity.

Tim and I speak by cell phone as the train pulls into Union Station. In his entrepreneurial way, he tells me of an abandoned parking lot next to the building where he lives. It’s up for lease. He can envision a community garden and food trucks. I think of garden art.

It starts with open ground, a vision and hard work. It becomes friendship and community, homegrown food, a sense of well-being and progress. The yield of open ground may be more than vegetables. My great-grandparents sought open ground and opportunity for their family. In 1939, they saw their grandson, my father, graduate from UCLA in physics. Los Angeles is a place of opportunity. Today, I see my son seek opportunity for beauty and community in the middle of the city.

Consider the possibilities of open ground near you.

Warm thanks to my friend Betsy Marro for her encouragement and editorial assistance with the Open Ground essay.

Photo Credit: 4th Street Bridge, Craig Oakford

Vacant lot images taken from my seat on Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner using my iPhone. See more images of the open ground I saw on my train trip in a short slideshow here.