Mike Virgilio

Danlo Duran fell in love with the AK-47 assault rifle on New Year's Eve, when he borrowed a buddy's and fired off bullet after bullet in celebration of 1989. What a perfect gift for dad, Duran thought, as he blazed away at midnight. Duran found his father's present this week at Boulevard Auto, a gun shop in Compton, where he paid $351 and walked out with a new AK-47, with bayonet.

Danlo Duran fell in love with the AK-47 assault rifle on New Year's Eve, when he borrowed a buddy's and fired off bullet after bullet in celebration of 1989. What a perfect gift for dad, Duran thought, as he blazed away at midnight. Duran found his father's present this week at Boulevard Auto, a gun shop in Compton, where he paid $351 and walked out with a new AK-47, with bayonet.

I live outside Chicago, where I moved from Southern California four years ago for financial reasons. On that count it was a good move, but being able to get back seems like a huge hurdle. Reading "The Middle-Class Housing Squeeze" by Alison B. Cohen, March 7, confirmed what I've been thinking. I want to get back to Orange County, but to buy a home close to what we have now would probably cost us over $500,000. It is truly absurd. I wonder how long this can last. I'm thinking that the only reason people can afford such ridiculous prices for homes is because interest rates are so low. This drives up demand for a product of limited supply -- especially in California -- and the prices skyrocket.

Life's ebb and flow has always tended toward the languid here. But still, these past three months of isolation have seemed interminable. Residents of this remote valley 60 miles northeast of Ojai have suffered an unnatural quiet since a winter storm sent hundreds of tons of rock plummeting onto California 33, blocking the area's main link to the rest of Ventura County. "It's been rough on the whole community," said Mike Virgilio, who owns an 1,800-acre ranch.

Declaring that residents are tired of waiting for the Legislature to pass stricter gun laws, the City Council unanimously adopted an ordinance this week that bans the possession and sale of AK-47s and other semiautomatic weapons. "We have suffered more because we have had more gang activity from those weapons and we've had more murders from those weapons," Councilman Maxcy Filer said after the Tuesday vote.

Hand-lettered signs and bumper stickers proclaiming "Stop the Trucks!" are cropping up around the Ojai Valley, and that can only mean one thing. The little town that shooed away a landfill and sent Caltrans packing is zeroing in on another Goliath-size target: gravel trucks that rumble up and down state Highway 33 nearly every day.

Even in the Lockwood Valley, where life's ebb and flow has always tended toward the languid, the past three months have been interminable. Residents of the remote area, 60 miles northeast of Ojai, say that since a winter storm sent hundreds of tons of rock plummeting onto California 33--blocking the area's main link to the towns and cities to the south--the pastoral valley has taken on an unnatural quiet.

A bull's-eye painted on the building is only one indication that there is more to Mike Virgilio's Boulevard Auto store than just carburetors. Ever since he added a line of firearms seven years ago, the inside has become more like an armory, with the car parts relegated to a room on the side. An array of guns hangs from the walls, alongside targets of a terrorist and a Soviet soldier.

Even in the Lockwood Valley, where life's ebb and flow has always tended toward the languid, the past three months have been interminable. Residents of the remote area, situated 60 miles northeast of Ojai, say that since a winter storm sent hundreds of tons of rock plummeting onto California 33--blocking the area's main link to the towns and cities to the south--the pastoral valley has taken on an unnatural quiet.