It is the eve before the 4th of July; six pm, to be exact, and the Fair Oaks Ranch Community park in Santa Clarita, California, sits in the summer ambiance. The park includes a dirt walkway that circles around the entire park, several picnic tables with adjoining grills, and two different play structures; one apparatus being for smaller children (toddlers to about 3rd grade) painted with colors yellow and red and a couple plastic dinosaurs for the little children to pretend to climb. The other play structure is bigger with wood chips covering the foliage on the ground and painted red and green. With the swings being bigger, ladders, monkey bars, and slides being taller, as well as a mini zip-line, this particular playground structure seems to be for the older kids. To the left of the two play-structures is the bathrooms and water fountain, where a line quickly forms on hot summer days like these. In the front of the bathrooms is both a volleyball court and basketball court, where a couple neighborhood teenage boys play a game of shirts and skins. It is still daylight, and while the sky is clear as blue, the evening summer haze seems to emulate an orange glimmer from the summer sun. The trees and grass, while green despite a few brown patches, seem to reflect the same orange color that the sky has given it, the promise of a looming sunset. Summer heat is no stranger to this suburban Santa Clarita park, with dry heat and desert summers, the nature of the park seems alive and not dead or parched like last summer. Last summer was the worst year of the California drought; but the trees and grass seem to dance in the light of the sun, thanking the clouds for the plentiful amounts of rain from the past winter and spring, bringing the California drought closer to its end. Although it is hot, a slight breeze cools the air sporadically and the leaves rustle as if tickled by the flowing and soft air. It smells of dirt, hot air, and methane near the sewer yet is masked by the flowers the birds and bees have pollenated the spring before.
The park, while there are people, is not as busy as it usually is, probably due to the fact that it is still about 90 degrees even though it’s six pm, and families are probably busy with last minute preparations for the 4th of July festivities of the next day. An older man walks his brown Maltese, pulling him away from having his nose glued to sniffing the grass. As he walks two daughters on their bike ride by; their father tells them it’s too hot so it’s time to go, to which the daughter responds with a loud and angry “I don’t want to!” A similar tantrum-like situation occurs when two middle-aged parents stroll in with their daughter riding her bike, her father rolling behind her on roller blades, and a small toddler-boy waddling quickly behind them crying because he too wishes to be on something with wheels. His mother scolds him in Farsi. On the open grass-area behind the play structure is a father with a brown baseball glove teaching his son how to play catch. The son apologizes as he fumbles for the ball. “It’s ok,” encourages dad, “that’s what we’re here to work on.”
Different sounds come from everywhere in the park’s vicinity. On the sidewalk near the bushes is the growling hum of a gardener’s lawnmower, adjacent to him is a neighboring house with its garage door open allowing the music from the stereo to echo throughout the entire park. It is hard to make out specifically what kind of music it is, it sounds like horns playing the tune that belongs on a gameshow. But then suddenly, the melody becomes clearer, it’s the melody of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” In the orange summer scenery sounds the horns and wind instruments on the stereo that so clearly play the melody, “…somewhere over the rainbow, way up high….” a Ding interrupts the song sounded from the little girl’s bike as her father continues to roll after her and pass a boy doing laps on his scooter. “There’s a land that I’ve heard of once, in a lullaby…” vroom interrupts the lawnmower, ding responds the bike.
There is one area where the sun is not beating down on the glimmering orange ground, and that is the canopy that shades an area of coupled picnic tables and chairs. Sitting on one of the tables is a young adult male wearing Nike’s, long jeans, and a long-sleeve T-shirt; it’s a wonder how he’s not dying of heat. He pays no mind to the many sounds of the park, for he is listening to his own sound with his IPhone ear plugs sitting in his ears. His music is so loud that anyone within a quarter of a mile radius from him could hear it, easily able to hear the hard bass and drum beat and the sound of someone rapping. The beat goes 1, 2, 3, 4 and drops, 1, 2, 3, 4, drops once again, 1, 2, 3, 4, and a male rapper begins spitting poetry. Interestingly enough, unlike the average millennial glued to their phone, the young adult male just stares at the summer scene in front of him, the greenery, children playing on the apparatus, and birds flying in the midst of the orange, hazy sunset as he taps his foot and nods his head to the pounding beat. 1, 2, 3, 4. Is he sad? Bored? Melancholy? At peace? Alone? Or with someone? What is his story?
And again, the air sounds “somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high….” and a ding replies, followed by a bounce of the basketball at the court, and a laugh from a happy child. “If happy little bluebirds fly, beyond the rainbow, why then oh why can’t I?” This park’s orange-like haze during this summer evening, captures the scenery of suburban life and all of its joys and pedestrian banalities.
Xochitl Santos Hernández 