The truck’s engine sounded like a distant island drum as it cut through the blue-gray morning on Hyperion Avenue. A heavy, familiar scent rode the air: sawdust sweet from a renovation in Echo Park, the metallic tang of old fencing from an apartment in Burbank, and the sun-warmed perfume of citrus from a backyard prune in Pasadena. I watched a roll-off dumpster clank into place beneath an overhang of jacaranda, and for a moment the street, normally cluttered with honking and hurry, stilled around this small, loudly honest heap of other people’s lives.
A Rumble at Dawn
