Artist Harry Gamboa, Jr. said when he was a boy in East Los Angeles, all the streets were filled with beautiful trees, but in the 1960’s they were cut down to accommodate the Los Angeles Police’s helicopter surveillance program.  Remnants of what the trees may have looked like still exist on Cesar E. Chavez boulevard, on a strip between Evergreen and Indiana, which by the way, is flanked by a jogging path and the oldest cemetery in Los Angeles (see the first picture above).  These non-native Ficus Trees, a distant relative to Fig Trees, provide a great source of nutritional support to the wildlife in the area, cool fresh air during the hot summers and somewhat of a sound barrier from the traffic, to us residents.  I have lived here for a few years now, and have noticed the diligent pruning of the trees on my corner, several times a year.  On further investigation, it appears that the City of Los Angeles maintains the Ficus Trees on my corner excessively stubby year long, to give traffic visibility to a privately owned billboard situated between four trees (see the second picture above).  When the whole nation is looking at ways to keep our country “green”, I wonder why the community of Boyle Heights has to relinquish nature to corporate commercialism.
