Appalling

Even after nine and a half long years, it is truly astounding that decent legal access remains out of reach for this tiny neighborhood. All we in this community want is the legal right to drive to our homes over our traditional, historical route—a little over a mile of dirt road—that we and our predecessors had been continually using for close to a century.

That’s all we want: to drive on a road that had been in common, constant use since before any of us were born, to our own houses. I need to state that over and over again, because the fact is so basic and we do not want it buried under a lot of verbiage.

The consequences to us of this injustice are dire, and the spoils to those who block us may be enormous, but I want to review just the appalling nature of our predicament in this post.

It is appalling that our route home is almost indistinguishable from that of several other communities along Soledad Canyon, but only ours is blocked.

It is appalling that the organizations blocking our route home are public agencies that should properly have no interest in bedeviling us or depressing our property values.

It is appalling that a deputy of Supervisor Michael Antonovich of the County of Los Angeles will tell contradictory stories according to what suits his office at the time, and continue to pretend to be truthful.

It is appalling that Los Angeles County would place a property in the hands of an aggressive player in this drama, a player that would then withhold legal access at our only other point of entry, albeit an astonishingly rough and difficult drive of five and more miles—a drive that has already killed one of us. (His car was found aflame down a short ravine. Maybe he died of a heart attack and not the crash or the fire. His body was too charred to tell—but struggling on that bad road did not help.)

It is appalling that a public official—again Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich—who represents more than two million people in the most populous county in the United States of America cannot find a way to allow us across a legal obstacle created in large part by a commuter rail line, Metrolink, on whose board he sits with his fellow supervisors.

Whoa! Read that again!

Michael Antonovich sits on the board, he has power only a handful of people can even imagine, the unfairness of the blockage is obvious to everyone to whom any of us has spoken, and in almost a decade he has produced zero results. We cannot legally cross those tracks, though our crossing is just like all the others. That’s a zero. All that power, all that posturing, all that time, and all Michael Antonovich and his deputy Norm Hickling can accomplish is zero.

Appalling.

I hear it all the time, and I heard the accusation again just the other day, that Mr. Antonovich just wants to see his name on a sign. We really struggle to be more decent about it, but it is very difficult for us to quell suspicions that Mr. Hickling’s and Mr. Antonovich’s motives are far more nefarious. But hoping that fame will please the gentlemen, we are proud to offer the following:

This blog, and hence the names of Michael D. Antonovich and Norm Hickling, have been viewed well over 3000 times, and you know how they say that any publicity is good publicity. We expect our numbers will continue to grow faster and faster, and are looking forward to 10,000 page views soon. You can erect signs all over our properties after we have been squeezed out, but they cannot compete with these numbers in such a short time.

Furthermore, only people who drive by the signs with Michael Antonovich’s name will see them. This blog, on the other hand, is viewed worldwide! True, the thousands of page views come mostly from local citizens of Los Angeles County, but hundreds of others come from other countries. Think of it! If Mr. Antonovich wants fame, his name is now being seen and read by hundreds in

France

Malaysia

Indonesia

Canada

Australia

United Kingdom

Czech Republic

Germany

Belgium

Netherlands

Isn’t that cool?!

You’re welcome.