How I learned to be a good neighbor in California in the 1980s



Although California is a very big place, I tend to think of it as Los Angeles. And even back in the 1980s, it was a very crowded place. The freeways were crowded, the streets were crowded, the stores were crowded.

Before I moved to California, I had spent seven years in Arizona, which wasn't crowded, and still isn't nowadays. And before that I was just a kid in Minneapolis, where it was crowded, but I never noticed it. But I remember the wide-open spaces of Phoenix, which I first saw in 1977, and I met people who were used to those wide-open spaces, and had never really lived where it was crowded.

I liked the space, and I still do. When I was going to ASU I spent a lot of time with my neighbor's dogs, wandering around places in Tempe which are now industrial parks and apartment complexes. It never even occurred to me to put the dogs on a leash, or be concerned that they, uh, "did their doodie" anywhere. There was plenty of space! The car I owned then was missing part of its pollution control parts, but I never knew that, as Arizona was pretty casual about that kind of stuff. The spaces were gigantic, and a few cars without pollution controls weren't any kind of a problem. I don't recall seeing smog, although the skies weren't quite as blue as from where I'd come from, the "Land of Sky Blue Waters".

Then in Los Angeles I saw the price paid for this type of casual attitude. The sky was disgustingly brown, and everything was dirty. And that's when I realized that being a good neighbor meant more than minding your own business. I became a fresh-air freak, and I'm still that way.

A lot of new laws were put in place in LA county, but ultimately it came down to whether people cared abut their city, the people around them, and their neighbors. And I was pleased to see that a lot of people really didn't need to be told what to do, and became good neighbors on their own. For people who see it all as simply "rule following", it makes no sense. But I understand.

Nowadays when I go back to LA I'm astonished at how clear the air is, how clean everything is. And yes, the new pollution control laws, both on cars and on buildings, have helped. But mostly it's an attitude of people sharing a crowded city. I saw what could happen when people become good neighbors for their city, and now I'm inspired that people can do the same for the world.

I like to say that I grew to my full height in Minneapolis, went to college in Arizona, and I grew up in California. And now I've brought that California attitude back to Arizona.
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