Commentary: My Technicolor memories of Disneyland

I was born in L.A. at the hospital with the most beautiful name in the city, Queen of the Angels. I grew up in L.A. I lived in Studio City and Hollywood. I went to Bob’s Big Boy in Toluca Lake on Friday nights, ate breakfast at the International House of Pancakes before it was IHOP.

As a teen I remember the rumors that Disneyland was to be built in our neighborhood, situated across the L.A. riverbed from Disney studios on Buena Vista. We were disappointed when the land went instead to an expansion of Forest Lawn, but we shared in the excitement when the land of dreams, that magical kingdom Disneyland, finally opened 60 years ago in that far off place called Anaheim.

It was an hour’s drive for us, but worth it. I still have unused tickets from the early years that I didn’t cash in when they phased them out. My oldest ticket, a D adult admission, is worth 60 cents. My partially used ticket book, which cost $5.35 for admission and 11 rides is newer, as the D ticket is 70 cents.

As I got older, I didn’t have as much time to visit, but I went back with my first son, then my second. Every time it was beautiful, clean, perfect. So what if some pooh poohed it? It was as big as rockets to the moon and as small as dirt paths on Tom Sawyer Island. It was a dream Fantasyland, it was my fantasy.

As L.A. started deteriorating around me, as the graffiti appeared, as the public spaces began to get dirty, I could go to Disneyland and pretend the whole city was just as clean and bright, the way it seems to be in occasional exterior glimpses in ‘40s movies.

Then about the time I got my teaching credential at Cal State Los Angeles, the city became not just dirty and ugly, but dangerous. I’d think twice about walking to my car at night after class. But I could still got to Disneyland and walk and feel safe under trees full of twinkling lights.

I always thought, or a small part of me thought, that Disneyland should run for mayor, take over the city, make it shiny and new. No cigarette butts on the sidewalks, no junk in the streets, no peeling paint on the windows of aging apartment buildings.

This is all to explain why I find myself uneasy to find that in the ensuing years more has changed than just the cost of the tickets. I remember the 1997 case of the fellow selling LSD at the bottom of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and the times people were intimidated by scary looking teen-agers. The kids were not bad, just not real attractive to look at, but that’s no crime.

And who knows, maybe someone will tell me that the LSD guy had as much right to his trade as someone else had to sell Mickey’s taffy next to Sleeping Beauty’s castle. I don’t know.

We all have our reasons nowadays, and that’s why we can do just about anything we want, in or out of Disneyland. Even Disney has found a way to import goods and outsource jobs — fast as Jiminy Cricket .

So that’s not the Magic Kingdom I remember. Still, who am I to single them out? Queen of the Angels long ago turned into nothing more than a movie set, and as idiotic as it sounds, Disneyland once let me hold the world as beautiful and safe and fair even when it wasn’t. That should count for something.

That’s right. In spite of it all, I want to believe it’s how you hold the world in your mind, and in your heart, that makes the difference. In Technicolor. When you wish upon a star and all that

I hate to think of Disneyland turning ill with the sicknesses of the world we are all sadly infected with, though I guess it already has. After all, it was an anachronistic fantasy set up by the doofuses of 60 years ago who didn’t know any better.

We have real issues now: starvation, racism and evil walking the earth with the assurance of the latest oligarch.

Where do I go now?

REBECCA ROBINS lives on Bainbridge Island, Wash.