City of Angels
No matter where you go, there you are...
I’ve got a week under my belt out here, and I’ve had a great time in Los Angeles, both with work and for fun—
It’s hard to remember that far back, but I started my DEA agent career here in the mid Nineties. The city was not quite as sprawling and massive and overwhelming as it seems to me now, but I also only had a Thomas Guide to navigate my way around and quarters for payphones. So much hasn’t changed though, and I was even able to walk right back to my very first apartment here in Playa Del Rey—
Those first few years as an brand new agent here were truly incredible. I had a mullet, a shoulder holster, and although I imagined my first undercover car would be a Ferrari or something equally as cool, it was actually a Ford Aerostar van.
Still, I was doing surveillance in Malibu, buying dope (undercover) off Rodeo Drive, and I was living on the beach.
It was just like the movies.
Anyway, I have another week here and I’ll try to get out and do some more exploring, but if I continue to work on shows or a series, I’ll need to be out here a lot more, so I’ve started to look at longer term solutions. As much as I enjoy Los Angeles, I have little desire to move back here again permanently. I moved 10x as a federal agent, have lived on both ends of the country and several places in between; even lived on the border and beyond, when I spent two years in Port Au Prince, Haiti. Although I never imagined I’d end up back home in Kentucky after all those miles, now that I have, I’m reluctant to pull up stakes. The house I’m in now feels like a forever home—I know, never say never—but that’s truly saying something after almost 30 years on the move. I’ve actually had the same dentist for three years running now, something I never had before that.
Our home in Kentucky isn’t perfect, but it damn near feels close to it, and that might be close enough…
As always, feel free to share—
Are you ready for the most random comment you'll get this month? If so, here goes. A few minutes ago, I was browsing Notes on Substack (in order to procrastinate about vacuuming the stairs, as one does), and your post randomly popped up in my feed. So I clicked on your post (so as to delay vacuuming the stairs a little longer) but when I came to the end, my jaw dropped. I'm about 90% sure I used to live in that exact house in Kentucky from 2010-2014. Any chance that house in located on Pin Oak Drive? If not, pretend this conversation never happened. 🤣