by Denise Waxman
A photo in the newspaper of MacArthur Park in downtown Los Angeles caught my eye. The familiar lake, the tall palm trees, the classic 1920s streetlamps. I can tell the sun is shining because the lake is reflecting the trees, the buildings, and the puffy clouds in the blue sky. There are a few low buildings on the far side of the lake, but I can’t tell which one is the boathouse, and I can’t see any boats.
On sunny days like that in the 1950s and 60s, my dad would take me to MacArthur Park on our kick-around Saturdays. Kick-around Saturdays were a tradition and the best part of the week. My mom would get a day to herself, and my dad and I would get each other. We might do anything on those days; go to the amusement park on Beverly Boulevard, with its miniature ferris wheel, bumper cars, and scary mad house; go shoe shopping in Beverly Hills, where dad would get a manicure and then we would eat out at Hamburger Hamlet. We could do anything, and it wouldn’t really matter much what it was, because it was so glorious just to be with him.
One of the very best things we did on those long Saturdays was to visit MacArthur Park. Each time it would be the same. We went to the boat house, which was dingy and dark with dirty floors dotted with blackened wads of chewing gum. There we found the man who took care of the rental boats. My dad gave me the money to pay, and I would have to make sure that I got the right change. We bought a large brown paper bag filled with bird seed and sealed at the top with staples and took it with us to the dock. Then we climbed inside a small motor boat with its two seats, my dad’s long legs cramped a bit so his knees stuck up, and my own sunburned ones stretched out underneath. Then we headed out onto the lake and tooled around watching the people in the other boats doing the same thing and feeling the strong cool breeze on our cheeks as the hot sun warmed them.
Meanwhile we had to avoid crashing into the other boats. It was a bit like the bumper cars in the amusement park. There were no rules and no lanes—just delicious chaos. No one wanted an accident, and we probably weren’t going that fast, but it was terribly exciting, nonetheless, especially when I got my turn at the controls. We only had a half hour to be on the water, though, and so after not too long, we got the main event going. We poured the whole bag of bird seed on the large triangular prow of the boat until it was totally covered. Then the show would begin, for one by one, and then faster and faster as the word spread, every pigeon in that park would come to our boat to eat our seed. They would land on the front of the boat and start pecking away. Before long you couldn’t see anything but the pigeons scrambling on the slick surface and flapping their wings to keep their spots. Meanwhile other pigeons would be trying to land or even to eat from the edge of the boat while flying. It was a crazy scene, and everyone else on the lake would look over to watch the spectacle we had created. We were the big attraction. The birds liked us best! We would throw more seed into the fray to keep things going, and we would laugh and laugh.
Of course, it didn’t take long before the seed was eaten up. Then the birds, a little drunk with their good fortune, would hesitate a moment before realizing it was all over and then fly off en masse into the sky above. We’d be left behind like the hosts of a great party. While it lasted it was fantastic.
The wonder of a day like that is that it is both perfectly ordinary and, as preserved in memory, a precious pearl, smoothed and enlarged by time.