She sweeps the flaxen hair

From across her eyes

While gazing out on the PCH

And remembers the night

The fire ate the wildflowers

On either side of her front door

She has decided to go Back East this autumn

Away, she hopes, from another dry, hot,

West Coast season

Full of flame;

And the keening of the Santa Ana winds.

She was a waitress once

Till some patron said, “you remind me of Lana Turner.”

She blinked back at him, saying, “Who’s that?

And he compounded his mistake

Saying, “the way you fill that sweater, I mean.”

She poured hot coffee in his lap

And got fired after that

But she made the 11 o’clock news.

She took up acting in Northwestern

On a whim, and someone else told her

She might make it in Hollywood

With those looks of hers

She smiled indulgently,

By then knowing a little about Lana Turner

And a lot about manipulating

Preening peacock males

She got aboard a plane to LAX

And the rest, as they say, is history.

She bought the ranch house on the bluffs

Between the Ocean and the Highway

Jogged with Tom, Julia and Melanie

On the golden mornings

Which at times make California

As close to heaven as you get

But then came El Nino, La Nina,

Mudslides, and a 5.1 on the Richter scale.

But nothing ever frightened like the Fires.

She wonders how she will fare

Back home on Michigan Avenue

Knowing how blasé they can be in Chicago

So un-star struck, as it were

Some will remember her as waitress;

But most will call her star

And in those little moments no one knows

She wonders if the truth of her lies somewhere in between.

Still, someone’s bound to ask her for her autograph

And she brings along a few Bic pens

Prepared, as her agent says, for every eventuality

On a whim, perhaps, she will drop in on the patrons in

The Diner

Hard by the Dan Ryan

And knowing the value of good publicity

Tell the Tribune that she worked

Here once

And poured coffee in the lap

Of some hapless soul

Whose name she never got

But to whom

She apologizes now

And at night, in her hotel room

She will call home

Just to hear the answering machine

And only then exhale, knowing

It is a sure sign the Fires

Haven’t gotten to her door.

GLOSSARY

PCH – Pacific Coast Highway

LAX- FAA acronym for Los Angeles International Airport

Dan Ryan – shorthand for the Dan Ryan Expressway, which is a key highway artery in and out of Chicago.

Lana Turner – the Sweater girl; an actress allegedly discovered at Schwab’s Deli, in Hollywood, in 1937, by an agent who noticed how she filled a sweater she had deliberately chosen to wear that day.

08/03/2001

Author's Note: I wrote this nearly two years ago..and now El Nino's waves pound California's coast again....some times life imitates art...and makes art timely once more

Posted on 12/23/2002
Copyright © 2025 Ken Harnisch