Dear Me,
Being a died-in-the-cottonfields Arkie, I normally wouldn’t admit I’ve lived in L.A two years short of the years I lived in Arkansas. But sometimes shallow secrets should surface.
And like everyone else here, I thrust myself through its streets to get where I’m going. It’s the only city I’ve lived in where you need a map book called Thomas to guide you around. I never use maps much. I depend on gas stations if I get lost, which prickles the heck out of some practical folks. But one can be practical and not use maps. Chalk it up to sense of adventure or no sense at all.
Anyway, when you leave a town in Arkansas to get to the next one, you’ll drive past farmland and Burma Shave signs then you see the welcome signs of the next town. But L.A.’s so big for its britches that it has to be divided into pockets so a person knows where he’s putting himself. Each pocket has a name and its territory is marked by a sign shoved in gray concrete with no green grass or Burma Shave signs in between. It’s like someone just took some giant scissors and clipped all that out and shoved a bunch of little towns together.
Living in all this bulky gray matter one gets into its rhythms. And once you’re in it and moving in tune with its motion, it can be a fight to hoist your eyes above its cogs and wheels to see what’s really there.
Well, today, two weeks before Thanksgiving I was driving through Beverly Hills in my robotic mode, eyes dug into the car-studded black street, ears cuddled into music on the radio, when I noticed the street’s Christmas decorations were already up. This perked me a little out of the gray but when I saw a decoration that had a street sign as part of it that said “Beverly Hills,” it hit me. I have never seen a hill in Beverly Hills. But I don’t get over in that neck of the concrete much so I could be out in left field. And who’s Beverly anyway? A wild hair told me the Beverly Hills library might have an answer so I whipped on over there.
Miss Chalmers in the reference section turned out to be very helpful. But at first, when I said I was looking for the history of Beverly Hills and drew a blank in the card index, her face flushed. For a long minute she sat with her eyes aimed at a spot on the desk, apparently watching some thoughts fight. A small sense of adventure came over me when she slipped on a starched attitude that said, “What I have to do in the name of duty!” and motioned me to follow her.
She stopped at a door marked “Private” in a discreet corner in the shadows near the shelves marked “Mystery.” With key in lock she turned to me and in a brisk bandsaw whisper said, “I’ve been here since the library opened its doors and you’re the first person I know who’s asked about the history of Beverly Hills.”
Once inside behind the closed door she walked over to a small oak rolltop desk charmed with age, unrolled the top, unlocked the right-hand drawer under the pigeon holes and with a slight hesitation lifted from it a small plain wooden box. She placed it on the desk and invited me to sit down. As I reached to open it she handed me a pair of thin white cotton gloves produced from the center drawer. She stated in a low librarian voice tinted with a touch of school teacher, “Wear these to protect the book from skin oil and acid. And please handle it with great care. It’s as old as Beverly Hills.” I thought, “What hills?” Then added, “And may I also suggest you be discreet about what you read in these pages.
She asked me to lock the door when I finished and to stop by her desk. I wondered if this degree of security protects Fort Knox.
As she closed the door her glance left me with the uncomfortable sensation that I was an uninvited outsider who was about to rudely intrude into a book sealed with family secrets.
The box was apparently Ponderosa pine and except for its fine finish could be thought to have held small cigars. Branded inside a circle on the top was a small “b” and a capital “S.” Tarnished brass hinges creaked slight resentment at my invasion and a musky odor only owned by old leather pounced its pungence in the air. The gold filigree-like border seemed out of place on the book’s scuffed cowhide cover. The one small heart-shaped scar on its face, off center to the right, somehow seemed intentional.
I gently lifted the thin leather tongue folded across the top meant to pull the book from the snug fit of the box.
Opposite the cover page was written in brown ink with eloquent hand: “Sedgwick Bitt, Entrepreneur of Stature, English borne and bred, I enter these pages a Midget and exit a Giant in the end. April 1, 1888.”
Mr. Bitt “dated” his entries by event rather than by month, day and year. The first one was entitled “Voyage To” on the upper right of the page.
Up to now there was no hint of the contents. The filigreed cover was untitled except for the heart scar. The cover page also bare of words but bore a small hole in the shape of a heart the same size and in the same spot as on the cover. Perhaps a symbolic peek into Mr. Bitt’s heart.
The next words would have prevented me from going on had its age been younger. But I figured secrets of the dead are past embarrassment.
“Dear Bitt,” (Odd that one would write to oneself but makes more sense than “Dear Diary,” whoever that is.)
“I shall forever be true to England. Had her tall people been true to her smallest, I would not be enpassage to the Colonies aboard this grand ship, The Queen’s Quest. But for the good fortune of the heritance from my beloved father, the late Lord Bitt, Duke of Sedgewick, would I be bound to roam Britain’s countryside as a freak of nature in a circus.
“This is a voyage to my dreams. Foremost, the hope to discover amongst mankind the truth about the distinction between body, mind and spirit. Another hope is to find a good wife.
“While alone for lengths of time in places free from other people or mirrors, I was never intruded upon by the thought that I have a three-foot, three-inch high body. And alike, whilst reading the Classics, studying the languages and mathematics, did I ever consider I have a mind lesser than my most prominant and learned acquaintances. And upon careful reflection, perhaps greater than some. The part of my mind containing unexpressed emotions and reactions I bear as I have observed others must also do. I hope one day to be rid of those impediments. They weigh too cumbersome on a soul.
“The most elusive to comprehesion, particularly to some of those entrapped by wealth and position, is realization of the spiritual nature of man. I myself was startled into this realm of thought while gazing upon my father who died in his sleep in the prime of his life. I gazed upon his dead body and thought, ‘That is not my father. He left his body. It is he who animated it. If he left the body, could he go to another and live another life? But if he could, why would he? Life can be a hell enough well out of balance with its heavens.’ I left it at that. How could such be proven anyhow? Perhaps one could if one dared look beyond one’s trappings. But that seemed quite impossible.”
I was relieved to find the subsequent entries lighter, less tedious and philosophical.
The next one, entitled, “Family Tree of Offshoots” spoke of Shrood Bitt, a cousin who as an artist rebelled against “the restrictions of wealth and position by denying our family name and heritance thereof,” assumed the name of Shrood Witt and moved to a small cottage in Northern England which he dubbed Witt’s Inn. He married a young lady by the name of Nettie who, to help expenses, opened a small knitting shoppe dubbed Nett Witt’s Knits.”
I was becoming suspicious as I went on as to how much of these entries were truth and how much a fertile imagination. The puns were a bit pungent. But then one expects a certain dry wit from the English. Possibly their way of sopping up some of their dreary moist climate. And how would this very personal log tell me the history of Beverly Hills? I impatiently but delicately flipped the pages and stopped when the word Beverly bounced at me. This entry’s title: Beverly’s Hills.
Gold fever hadn’t cooled much since the Rush of 1849. But gold wasn’t Mr. Bitt’s interest. Having made profitable investments in the East, he was attracted to California by “the vast land” and “a wife who fits me like a glove.”
In a few paragraphs I had my answer, told better by Mr. Bitt:
“Well into the eighth month of my journey from the East, the last month spent roaming California in search of my dreams, my body not yet acclimated to the heat, I sought a comfortable resting place with water for my pony and me. I was relieved to see a sign posted ahead. Having the affliction of nearsightedness and having had the misfortune of losing my spectacles, I had to place my nose nearly against the sign to read it. ‘Bar-B Ranch Ahead’ it said.
“A short distance up the road I arrived at a substantially large ranch house. As I dismounted to water my pony at the trough, the only thing moving was a very light, very hot breeze. I would have thought the entire establishment deserted but for the distinct feeling of a live presence and, oddly, faint snort sounds like pigs.
“I softly walked up the porch steps, startled to hear an abrupt short snort then a longer one to my right. In the dusk it was difficult to see the source. I stepped quietly toward the sounds hardly knowing what I would discover. Certainly pigs would not be inhabiting a porch corner, but this country is chock full with unexpectances. I stopped short at eye level with what appeared to be three hills slightly undulating. Only after turning my head slowly to the right then the left did I realize I was looking straight on to the horizon of a very large stomach. I peered past the two hills to the left to discover the proprietor of this portly bulk was a woman enjoying a nap. I was attempting to fathom her vastness, as I had never seen such in all my extensive travels, when a gust of dust blew up, causing me to sneeze with such violence that my head was thrust into the side of her belly. The floor quaked from the jerk of her startled body awakening. Yet for an instant she lay stunned stiffly still, her eyeballs slamming around in their sockets like billiard balls searching for their pockets.
“My instinct told me to remain alert and stay hidden from her sight by crouching beneath her two mammoth hills above her belly. The next moment, fear apparently loosening its grip, her bulk jackknifed upright in stiff rigormortis fashion, her legs still outstretched flat ahead on the couch. She caught sight of me from the corner of her eye, shrieked, jumped up on her two feet, her arms flailing like giant tree limbs in a storm in attempt to whip her body into a stable stance. As she lost her balance and started to fall toward me, it appeared my doom was imminent. My entire life flashed before me as her huge torso enveloped my body as if it were a sausage in a dumpling. Before I was smothered to my death she managed to thrash and throttle her body off of mine, shrieking all the while as if I were some obnoxious rodent who had found its way upon her person.
“When I had regained my breath and put my wits back in place, all I could think to say was, “May I kindly have a cup of water?’
“Obviously mortified at coming a gnat’s hair from crushing my last breath from me, compounded by the likelihood she had never set eyes upon a midget, she not only brought me water but cooked the most delectable supper I’d eaten in months.
“Well, one bite led to another, as did the following days. I learned she’d been searching for a husband as I had been searching for a wife. Persons of our exaggerated sizes find it hard put to find a mate who fits each other like a glove in important respects. But we have the cornerstone to build our years together: respect and admiration combined with a mutual aim to flourish and prosper.
“And as I make this entry on this our first anniversary, our aim has come to be. It is our good fortune to have acquired the canyons and hills to the rear of our vast flatland. Tomorrow the new sign befitting its grand size will be raised dubbing our ranch a more appropriate name and one I am proud to have authored: Beverly’s Hills.
“Now as her six-foot, three-inch frame sleepily sinks into our featherbed, the most cherished moment of the day is upon me when Beverly beckons me as ‘Mr. Big Bitt, my giant of a man' to nestle amongst her hills.”
In the back of the book was a small loose document officially changing the name of the ranch. For some unknown reason the Recorder omitted the apostrophe “s” and so erased forever any conjecture that might arise to embarrass the image of Beverly. (Unless this account becomes published which may be highly unlikely.)
After putting the book away exactly as it had been and tucking the gloves in their place, I locked the door as Miss Chalmers had instructed and stopped by her desk. With acidic warning in her eye, tempered with a knowing smile, she reemphasized: “Now you see why utmost discretion is vital to this privileged information.” Then for some reason - maybe it was my attentive interest that did it - she shed some of her rigidity and relaxed into explanation:
“Some years ago we acquired this book as a donation from the son of Mr. Bitt who had the unusual philosophy that invasion of his family’s privacy fell secondary to exposing the truth of the founding of Beverly Hills. Further, he felt that his father would have been proud to have his contribution to history made public. Of course this philosophy isn’t held by everyone. (I didn’t ask who “everyone” was.) Therefore, we have decided to treat the matter delicately to avoid bitter tastes.”
I thanked her for her help and drove home through Beverly Hills’ new and very refreshing light.
Once home, happy as a hog wallowing in fresh mud after a drought, I verified on a map that north of Sunset are in fact the hills as Mr. Bitt had entered.
Daddy told me more than once that I go off half-cocked. He would’ve said, “If you’d looked at a map in the first place you wouldn’t have had to go to all of that trouble to find those hills.” But in the other half of the cock is adventure. And today added the flavor of intrigue as well as endowing myself with the honor of being one of the few privileged to discover the truth behind Beverly('s) Hills.
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