Perils plague Placentia Avenue

Submitted by Nicky Fleming

Years ago, whizzing through the light just in front of Hoag to avoid an elderly man in an oversized Cadillac, I caught sight of the Placentia sign and my first thought was, ‘it gave me life, it’s going to darn well take it away again!”

Now I drive up and down Placentia every day to and from work. I find myself always looking at the little homes opposite the elementary school between Victoria and Wilson and think how precarious they are. Endless lines of mothers pushing strollers almost as big as they are from Wilson Elementary, babies in the strollers, hanging off the strollers and dawdling behind. In the mornings there is a very brave traffic guard controlling the cars and the masses but in the evening, when people are in a rush to get home, that intersection and the apartments that border it, stand courageously, enveloping the families that live within their walls.

It would only take one car skidding off the road to do untold damage. I remember looking at a house for sale on Irvine Blvd a few years back. While I was becoming quite enthused about the house, my realtor told me that a truck had crashed into the house and it had been rebuilt. She reminded me of this and veered me in a different direction.

I remember that when now, with the time change it is dark when I go home and I can look into the apartments more easily as I wait for the light to change. Last night there were 5 people hovering in the tiny kitchen around the stove, while at the dining table of the same apartment, three men were sitting down eating. In that apartment of no more than 560 square feet, there were 8 people evident to me. 8 people who could be wiped out by one out of control car.

In that same area you are best to avoid driving in the right hand lane. Cars needing to turn off to get to the parking that pertain to those apartments stop abruptly and it is only by sheer luck I haven’t rear ended someone or them me. No wonder there is a fire station just a few yards further north!

Placentia is a varied street starting at the hospital then traveling through the industrial area of Costa Mesa and past the famed Wahoos. Later it takes you through the mainly Hispanic portion of Costa Mesa, where it crosses 19th (and where you can get the most delicious tortas at Alejandro’s), on to the intersection I speak of. Finally it winds openly passed Fairview Park where earnest police lie in wait to catch any speeding drivers. Be sure to keep your speed to 40 mph. Finally it drops us off in Mesa Verde.

I drive through the fog most mornings traveling south. We watch teenagers walking to Estancia. My children and I recognize our favorite people, critiquing their clothing and wondering where they are when they don’t appear. Their lives cross ours every day at the same time, them unaware of us, but they are a part of ours.

Coming home children play out on the side walk while we whizz by. Often there are dogs wandering freely. Cars reversing out of the driveways. Pregnant women at the edge of the road sucking on a cigarette. It is the high light of my journey home, wondering what I will see at this intersection today, leaving me thinking about the lives so publically displayed by such a busy road and wondering how I would sleep at night knowing my child’s bed borders the wall that borders the road.

The other day a friend who lives on Pomona St woke up to find someone had driven into 3 or 4 cars parked at the curb, essentially using them as a crash barrier. An incident like that would have a totally different outcome around ‘my’ intersection where there are no parked cars they could bounce off.

As I lay myself down to sleep in my house protected by a yard and a fence set back from the side walk by 5’, listening to the quiet hum of the pool cleaner, where 3 of us live in a 2600sq ft home, I think back to those happy families content in their small apartments next to a super highway and wonder if they worry about the speed of someone’s car or whether a particular driver has just left El Ranchito a little worse for wear. Maybe I worry needlessly for them, and shouldn’t be so nosey looking in their windows and pondering their lives. Maybe I should be thinking of the risks of living where I do. The neighbor who complained because a limb fell off one of my trees after a freak wind. The door to door solicitors who hold you hostage, while you feel vulnerable alone in your home, and the cost of the electric bill rendering it impossible for me to run my air conditioning and causing me to rush around switching off lights; or the one particular night I was woken up by an aggressive banging on the door at 3am. Four men stood outside. We asked what they wanted thinking at first it was a home invasion robbery. It turns out they came to repossess the car of the previous owner of my house. A terrifying incident I found too incredible to believe, wondering how many people might have grabbed a gun before answering the door.

I will shortly be leaving and heading home again. I look forward to Placentia and Wilson and what I might witness today.