Escape from Los Angeles

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

Yesterday afternoon, our family members evacuated from Los Angeles. The air quality was unacceptable for their one-year-old baby. We are grateful, and happy, to have our young family members close to us here in San Diego. “Who gives a heck about Ghana?” Life can change on a dime. One day, you’re building a life in southern California. The next day, one is fleeing down Interstate 5 to Auntie’s home. Welcome, family. You will always have a place to rest your head as long as family call San Diego home.

My wife, ever the astute observer of life, remarked that our family members had the resources to leave an uninhabitable city. Many are not so blessed.

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Once upon a time, black leaders were wise about the bricks and mortar of life. Someone asked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall what did he invest in? What were his stock holdings? Marshall replied that he did not waste time with various companies. He just invested in public utilities. Why? Utilities were never going out of business. People would always need clean water to drink and for fighting fires. Marshall’s son was my classmate at the University of Virginia. As I recall, he took a course on public utilities law at the law school which struck me as notable. Now, I get it.

Did you know that all of my Twyman uncles could build a red brick house? All of my uncles knew how to lay bricks one on top of the other so that a pile of bricks became a home. They understood sewage. They knew how to connect water systems. They understood fire protection. My cousin Rosa once complained about the loss of common sense over the generations. Perhaps ten years ago, the roof needed repair at our church. There was no church member who could get up on the roof and do the work. Fifty years ago, tens of men in the church knew how to install and renovate a roof.

My Twyman uncles did not know about social justice. They could fix a roof and build a home from scratch.

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When I was about to graduate from law school, my uncle James Scott Twyman took me aside one day. My Uncle Scott was a real estate entrepreneur and investor. He admired me from afar, I suppose. A scrappy nephew who ascended from Twyman Road to Harvard Law School. Uncle Scott invited me to join him in the real estate business. In his world, learning how real estate worked made sense for a bright family member with some smarts. Dear readers, I was 24 years old, young and full of myself. Why would I deign to work for my uncle and get my hands dirty in Richmond, Virginia properties when I could work on Park Avenue and live in a deluxe apartment in the sky? Man, I was moving on up in the world.

I declined my uncle’s generous offer.

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Windsor Farms is a beautiful residential neighborhood in Richmond. My great uncle developed it 100 years ago. The streets are laid out in the style of an English village and there are many stately Georgian homes with beautiful gardens. During the George Floyd “Summer of Love” antifa and Black Lives Matter marched through Windsor Farms, no doubt to protest against “nice stuff,” preferring everyone to live in graffiti ridden squalor as a measurement of social justice fairness. I wrote at the time that if any of these Georgian mansions were given to any of these neo-Marxist protestors, within 6 months all the windows in the house would be busted out, there would be broken glass and 3-foot-high grass in the front yard, and the mechanical systems would all be trashed. The same is true with a city. Give these types of people the keys to any city and in short order, the city, just like the free house, will be destroyed. They are incapable of taking care of anything. — Rob Smith, RealClearMarkets

I grew up on safe and well-maintained streets developed by black American developers. My uncles James Scott and Robert Daniel Twyman and Willie Ernest Twyman, Sr. developed Twyman Road. Never an out of control fire. Never a sewage problem. Always clean and drinkable water. During junior and senior high school, I lived on Jean Drive developed by James B. Friend, Sr. Friend probably developed 50 homes in our neck of the woods. Students never learn about black real estate developers in the South in the 1960s and 1970s. Why the ignorance of real history? Never an out of control fire and, Lord knows, there were oak trees and forests all around us in every imaginable direction. Never a sewage problem. Always clean and drinkable water.

Here in Richmond, we just went through nearly 3 days with no municipal water. Now, we have to go through 2-3 days of not being allowed to drink the water coming from our taps. Several hundred thousand people in a major metropolitan area with hospitals, manufacturing plants, universities, nursing homes, and millions of square feet of office space had no water. It’s third world. Our race hustling, low IQ Marxist mayor hired a DEI candidate to run the Department of Utilities, the first time ever a non-engineer held that post. Her major initiative was hiring other DEI candidates to work Public Utilities. Incompetent boobs, hire other incompetent boobs and before you know it, there are more boobs than the runaway at the Bada-Bing. — Rob Smith, RealClearMarkets

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I was curious, a curious man I am.

Who heads up the Department of Public Utilities in the City of Richmond? A Twyman uncle kind of guy who has “crawled under a house to fix a leaky pipe, changed the oil in a car, operated earth moving equipment…started a business from the ground up and hired and fired…?” A James B. Friend, Sr. type who in the 1950s and 1960s read plans, knew “how sanitary and storm sewer systems worked, where the run off went, how it was tested, where the water came from, fire hydrants, water pressure, gas pipe lines, underground power, soil compaction, emergency contingencies and a host of other real world matters…?”

Guess again.

The head of the Public Utilities Department is a black female, a non-engineer with a degree from the august University of Phoenix. 27% graduation rate. Did the press celebrate April N. Bingham’s stellar competency to keep the water clean for Richmond residents? That she was the absolute best candidate to safeguard the water supply for Richmond families and hospitals and schools? Nope. Guess again. the first woman to serve in this critically important role first woman to lead City Department of Public Utilities the first woman the first woman the first woman to serve in this role

Conclusion: Escape from Los Angeles is a cringeworthy title for this essay. Our family members with us in San Diego are not escaping a maximum security prison, a crime-ridden city in a dystopian future. Escape from New York Our family members are escaping something more insidious, the loss of memory in black leadership about the real world. How to keep the lights on, clean water flowing, the simple wisdom of our southern uncles and neighbors.

Los Angeles is burning this morning.