In the Ruins of Palisades Fire, Confronting My Elusive Malibu Life

So many stories have been published in the last few weeks about the Palisades Fire, the wildfire burning in Los Angeles County that has destroyed entire neighborhoods and large areas across Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Topanga. There are in-depth pieces on the climate crisis and California’s perennial wildfire season; analyses of the future of the film industry; profiles of workers, like housekeepers and landscapers, who have lost all sources of income; and much more. It’s impossible to recommend and rank any of these pieces as a “top” pick to read. All of them are important, capturing what’s happening and creating a full picture of this devastation.

Among these reads, James Rainey’s short, lovely, and sad piece in the Los Angeles Times is especially moving. Rainey describes returning to Malibu, where he grew up in the ’70s, to see that his parents’ house has burned down. I love his memories of an older Malibu—a laid-back town along the Pacific during a more “modest” time. “I recall young women riding their horses, bareback, to pick up snacks at Market Basket,” writes Rainey. “Surfers wandered the grocery aisles barefoot, sometimes shirtless. PCH felt like Main Street, not the driving death trap it would become.”

Rainey also comments on Malibu’s untamable nature, and includes a poignant quote from Bill Stange, a longtime resident: “[N]o matter what, [Malibu] goes back to its wildness. They can build those big ol’ houses and do whatever they want. But they’ll never be able to tame Malibu. It turns out we are all just renters here.”

In a time before most local traffic lights, Malibu had more of a frontier feel. Landslides would close PCH fairly regularly, and, indeed, last week, the immolation of ground cover sent rocks onto parts of PCH. In the old days, landslides would cut us off from “town” (read: Santa Monica) and the luxuries it provided. Like clothing stores, movie theaters and a laundromat.

Yes, a laundromat. Mom would drive into Santa Monica to wash and fold mountains of towels, socks and underwear at a coin-operated laundry on Montana Avenue. (Unthinkable today along tres-chic Montana.) It wasn’t until the 1980s that my brother insisted Mom and Dad buy a washer and dryer.

Made of wood, our Carbon Canyon house was light and airy, to a fault. The wind would whistle through and chill us to the core, but Dad thought the radiant electric heating cost too much. We never turned it on.

Instead, we built fires in two fireplaces and a wood-burning stove. When the winds got especially fierce, like they did last week, smoke would billow back down the chimney and fill the living room.