On a Sunday morning along Victory, east of Kester, the wide street is mostly empty.
It is also empty on Van Nuys Boulevard.
And the only person on Friar Street pushes a shopping cart with her belongings.
Under the dull fog, Van Nuys might be sleeping late.
Sleeping off Cervezas.
Many work on Sundays, but some do not.
Here are sidewalks without trees or humans.
Cars speed past the ghosts of late The Modern Era.
Where medical doctors practiced the most advanced medicine in 1960.
Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson were the Presidents.
And confident young builders hired talent young architects and erected thin paneled office buildings along thriving and newly widened Victory Boulevard.
Men worked at jobs back then. They wore suits.
Women smoked and wore high heels and lipstick and gloves and called themselves ladies.
And kids got in trouble, riding skateboards on the sidewalk or chewing gum in class.
It was a troubled time when blacks were called negroes.
And men were sent off to fight war in Vietnam.
But Van Nuys was still fine, still humming along: safe, secure and industrious.
We live in a rich nation. But all around us, people sleep on benches, and push their belongings in shopping carts.
People sleep on the sidewalk in front of the Chase Bank which has assets of $2.6 trillion and is the largest bank in the United States.
They are sleeping under the arches of the Marvin Braude Center, seat of the government of the City of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley.
Here in Van Nuys 
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