To be published in Glassellland Lit Journal in Fall, 2026.

Just Another Hollywoodland Pilgrim’s Progress

When I was a boy the hills
told me things, set limits
and promised mysteries that surely
must exist on the other sides.
Two rows of hills shepherding
the Arroyo Seco to a distant sea.
The San Gabriels holding the smog
like a mother holding a child. Elysian Park
protecting Frog Town life from the Dodgers
and Clifton’s Cafeteria, with its tropical holy land.
 
But I want to tell you about my father
who attended UCLA when it was on Vermont
and then Westwood, who drove the only
long way from Hermon’s small valley to
the expanse of beanfields and Spanish colonial
suburbs that puffed up around Royce Hall.
Later, when Dad had a family, he drove me
periodically over that hill, the huge ice cream cone
announcing we were leaving childhood,
over the hill into the city of traffic,
of  The Akron with records of Jewish folksongs
and teak patio geegaws from no place ever heard of,
past the Vermont campus and Pilgrimage Theater,
through the movie palaces where Dad and I saw Ben Hur
and El Cid, past Westwood, to the other hills --
the Palisades before the coast. There Dad stopped. There
were no more hills, only the ocean. But I knew then and now
he wanted to keep driving. Out of the coat and tie
popping a Doublemint in his mouth to thoughtfully chew,
and the white t-shirt making a farmer’s tan on
his strong left arm. His car, capable of climbing hills
and starting pilgrimages, changed him. And
changed me.