Orangethorpe Ave

Take a small town girl from Maine and transplant her to Orange County, California. It took me 4 months to hightail it back home.

Cheap Monthly rentals drive-up Motels converted into efficiencies still renting rooms by the hour, smells of urine and cheap perfume masked by Patchouli incense. Slumber is always disturbed by the flickering neon lights from the Open Air Laundry Mat across the street,sandwhiched between the busy Pakistani convenient store and even busier low-rate funeral home. Amazing Grace can be heard all hours of the day.

Voices from the Islands echo from the alleyways,
marijuana growing on the rooftops. LA County's finest circle every night in their Million Dollar helicopters and still haven't found this harvest.
Illegal Mexicans keep their heads down low,
12 to a room, pissing on the bogunvelia outside their door,drunken yelps of pain when one stumbling into its thorny branches "Joder!" I hear as I deadbolt my door at night. What a way to learn Spanish.

Ramona, the 7 foot tall Transsexual struts her stuff in plethora and leopard skin, her 1979 Buick Riviera is open for business six nights a week. On Saturday nights you'll find her at the Karaoke Bar at the corner of 17th Street murdering ABBA songs in her skretching falsetto.

Mind-altered aging hippies, waiting for their pension checks sunbathe around the micro pool, vacant expressions haunt their faces as their skin transforms into mahogany leather under the relentless sun of Southern California.

Single moms quit their jobs at the International House of Pancakes so they can turn tricks for more money to feed their unwanted babies. Pimps and Hoes battle it out over their cuts of the nights take, the one bleeding the least wins.

My time here was short, thank the merciful lord, but Orangethorpe Avenue opened my eyes to a slice of Americana that haunts me to this day.