Life in Van Nuys

This San Fernando Valley suburb is where we have now been parked for a month. Our plans are to remain here for yet another month and then we will start heading east. Some recreational vehicle parks which we have been in are primarily populated with older citizens like John and I. This place has a variety of people including families with small children. The owner told us he has traveling nurses staying here, actors, construction workers as well as people living here while under-going cancer therapy. Our neighbor is a Los Angeles water works employee. He has his young daughter and a teen age son living with him. Except for a couple of motorcycles in the park and a small airport nearby, things are generally fairly quiet around us. While walking the streets in the neighborhoods around here I have been fascinated with the plethora of shopping carts hanging around. This is just one of those places in the Los Angeles area where certain people reside who are apt to readily use them, primarily I am speaking of the homeless. Oh, there is also the older person who uses them to take their groceries home or the young mother who loads her kids in them. But for the homeless a Food for Less or Home Depot cart is a necessary part of their existence. They need a cart to carry their blankets or sleeping bags or just all the stuff they daily accumulate. At least I thought those items would be important until I saw the cart pictured below. Someone felt it necessary to leave it behind. The first day it was over-flowing with stuff: a technical school graduation diploma, an unopened single serving box of cereal, a bar of soap (still in its wrapping), towels, underwear and many plastic bags. No, I did not rummage in the cart, I am only mentioning the items I saw sitting at the top. In the following days I watched as the cart slowly got relieved of its burden until only a few junky items remained. The cart still sits by its lonesome self  at the side of the road. It seems that it does not qualify for the cart retrieval service. Yes, only Los Angeles would probably need a company like that. We watched one day as a truck came by and loaded up shopping carts around the perimeter of a shopping plaza. Leave it to John to ask him what he was doing! He thought the carts were going in for repair.

I can't leave you with the impression that we live in a questionable neighborhood. Check out this picture of a wall covered with bougainvillea. It is located at a trailer park next to us. Some of the homes around here are pretty run down, but there is usually beautiful foliage in the front yard.