INDIAN HILL

                                     The brushed stainless steel sign in front of the press box in Dodger Stadium is laser cut with the name of the man for whom the media area is named. The signature of Vin Scully, backlit in Dodger blue, glows from behind the steel and is as elegant as the prose Scully uses to call a baseball game, something he’s done for over sixty years.      No one gets to the club level but fans who will sit inside the modern appointed suites, and media. At the entrance to the press box sits a man checking media credentials, wearing the blue polo shirt and khaki pants uniform of Dodger stadium operations staff.  The nods at writers and technicians he knows, smiles, acknowledges them in some simple way. With me, there is no familiarity yet. It’s my first time approaching the press box, the first night I’ll sit inside and watch a Dodger game. I flash my media badge, he nods.      The door has opened, and I am walking through it. A door to a sense of le

                      Railroad tracks crossed the highway and a diesel freight chugged along southbound. At the crossing was a grey cinder hut with a back-up generator for powering the signal, a tarmac pad to park a truck. Sand hills rolled out for miles, higher peaks hitched up further west and south. The long cross arms lowered. We stopped and stretched outside. Sweat broke out on my neck and back and forehead. Over a hundred degrees, maybe one-ten, one-twelve. Red lights flashed and the crossing bell clanged, the big diesel blasting its alto horn and the engine pounding behind its creased steel maw, all black and orange.  Diesel fumes and grease, I guess you could call that the smell of progress. A dusty coyote stood alone on the opposite side in the heat, black eyes locked on mine, hind legs lean and tense.  Groaning freight cars heaved up the slope grade of track, rusted train wheels singing steel on steel. We stood for five minutes drinking water, watching black tanker