The Smell of My Youth, by Jeffrey Veen

The Smell of My Youth

I grew up in the vast, faceless suburban spread of Los Angeles -- but at the edge of it. When I was young, the city of Chino was still largely populated by dairy farms, mostly owned by Dutch immigrants or their children. They had been pushed eastward from areas closer in to the city, such as Bellflower and Artesia. Where my family lived, it was a world of strip malls, big box retail, and tract homes. But just a mile away, the homes gave way abruptly to thousands and thousands of acres filled with cows. To this day, whenever I drive through dairyland, the pungent, earthy aroma of cow shit fills me with feelings of childhood nostalgia.

But that carries beyond my old neighborhood, of course. When the wind is just right, you can Chino as far away as Pasadena and Irvine. It's always been a running joke that the town stinks. In fact, the new Fox show "The O.C." has picked up on just that. A teenage boy moves from Chino to the beaches of Orange County for some typically dramatic reason, and when he tells his new friends where he is from, they respond "Chino -- Ewww!"

The city of Chino, as might be expected, is not too happy about this, and they've started a little public campaign to convince the world (or, more accurately, the world's white-collar job seekers) that Chino is a fine place to call home. This article from the local paper does a good job of defending my home town.

And here's a crazy "small world" connection: The city council member quoted in the piece, Tom Haughey, is the uncle of none other than Matt Haughey -- creator of MetaFilter, designer of the Creative Commons site, and a good friend of mine. When will the craziness stop?

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 15 August 2003 at 8:32 AM. It was filed under Personal. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 17 August 2003 at 2:05 AM Laura wrote:

Jeff, do you REALLY want an answer to how deep the madness goes?

Because I can tell you...

2. On 28 August 2003 at 8:17 PM Must be Anonymous wrote:

Ahhh, Chino. Perhaps 20 years ago, in the Flamingo Hilton casino in Las Vegas, I noticed a Pit Boss "evaluating my play", that is, trying to decide if I was counting cards while playing Blackjack [if so, a threat to the casino's income AND somebody to invite to leave the table]. I've found a good way to diffuse such situations is to strike up a conversation with the observer and to focus intently on him/her instead of looking at the cards at all, except when necessary to play my hand. This fellow's face was deeply wrinkled and set in a permanent scowl. It was apparent he'd seen it all and heard it all before. He could rationalize to himself that his paranoia was justifiable. All casino personnel wore name tags that included their city or country of origin. His said, "Chino, California." I said to him, "Chino.... Isn't that where they have a men's prison ...", at which point he began to nod his head, then I continued, "...where they feed the prisoners dog food?" He stopped nodding and asked, "What?" I said, "You know, they call it, 'Alpo Chino.'" [pronounced very much like an actor's name] The guy started to laugh, seemingly for the first time in years. I was afraid his face might break. I followed up with my standard Flamingo Hilton riddle: "If TUMS is SMUT backwards and DOG is GOD backwards, what is NISSAN backwards?" [The gifted sometimes reply, "NASSIN".] I gave him a moment to think, then shook my head to stop him thinking and said, "It's a Pink Flamingo. You see, flamingos ALL have their knees on backwards." At that point he sort of groaned, slapped me on the back in a friendly way, and walked away. I went back to making a living, counting cards.

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