Los Angeles native, Michael Garcia writes about his love and fear for the city he grew up in.
Like the sailor kissing a stranger at the V-J Day parade, Buzz Aldrin hop-scotching on the moon, or the Escapist punching Hitler in the face on the cover of the first issue of Amazing Midget Radio Comics, Mom’s kick steered our lives to an alternate chronology. The moment was important to us, the Garcia family, and to me. In the days and years that followed the undead continued to roam, as did the ghost of Adam Walsh. The bogeyman still lurked under stairways, one of many evils we refused to acknowledge. But on that day I stopped being scared.
Read the rest of his essay “El Dorado” over at The Carolina Quarterly.