Liberty Canyon July 4th neighborhood parade preserves old-fashioned patriotic spirit in Agoura Hills – Daily News

Liberty Canyon is a modest, middle-class neighborhood developed in the early 1970s in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains at the western end of the San Fernando Valley — a stone’s throw from the wildlife corridor soon to start construction over the 101 Ventura Freeway.

It’s an enclave of 1950s patriotism and hospitality on streets named especially with Independence Day in mind — Patrick Henry Place, Jim Bowie Road, Yankee and Defender drives — streets where mothers feel safe letting their kids play outside until dark, and families, young and old , look out for one another because that’s what neighbors do.

It’s a throwback to the days when the San Fernando Valley had hundreds of neighborhoods like this. Days of potlucks and cul-de-sac parties where original owners who bought their homes for $30,000 offered some local history to young couples who paid twenty times that for the same home today.

They had been looking for months to find this kind of neighborhood to raise their children in, and they wanted all the details. How did Liberty Canyon survive and thrive when so many other neighborhoods just succumbed to the changing times?

Liberty Canyon went back to its roots. It was built to honor Independence Day and that’s exactly what they were going to do every 4th of July. The neighborhood didn’t have a parade. The neighborhood was the parade.

Everybody was invited—kids, cats, dogs, chickens. Dads dusted off their old Mustangs and Corvettes in the garage to caravan in, and the fire department brought over one of its big rigs for the kids to sit in and hit the siren.

There’s a free ice cream truck, and boom boxes galore blaring out Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America.” At 10 am sharp, everyone sings the “Star Spangled Banner” and, en masse, several hundred neighbors — many of them in costume — begin to walk slowly down Liberty Canyon Road waving their flags.

Past the park at the corner, onto Patrick Henry Place by the retired sheriff’s home with the Trump flag flying in his front yard, across the street from the retired nurse with the Biden placards.

There’s plenty of room for both in Liberty Canyon.

I’ve been living here since 1990. I came for the schools and stayed for the parade. I’ve watched young couples stretch their budgets to the extreme because this was the kind of neighborhood they wanted to raise their children in.

I’ve watched them cry when the 2008 housing bubble burst and they lost their homes. Some rented for a few years just to stay in the neighborhood, hoping maybe they could buy back in. They couldn’t afford it. Reluctantly, they moved away.

I’ve watched neighbors sell high and move to states where they could buy a mansion for the price they were getting here for their home. A year or two later, they’d be back, ostensibly visiting, checking out what the new owners have done with their old place — wishing they had never moved.

I wouldn’t call it greed, but it’s real close when money becomes more important than the quality of your life.

It’s going to be interesting to see if the wildlife corridor will have any affect on the neighborhood. Some of the neighbors are afraid of waking up and having a mountain lion drop by for breakfast one morning.

I’ve already had a few bobcats and one mountain lion foraging in my backyard for food and water during an extended heat spell. I figure they were here first, so I can live with it.

If you’re looking for a great 4th of July parade to march in with the kids on Monday morning, just take the Liberty Canyon off-ramp on the 101 Freeway and turn left if you’re coming from the San Fernando Valley.

Just keep going straight until you run into 1950.

Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at [email protected].