door knob, originally uploaded by visualkaos.

So, Sunday afternoon Linda and I were driving around town, nursing hangovers from a holiday dinner and cocktail celebration hosted by her boss at Flemming’s in Woodland Hills the night before and doing some grocery shopping and Christmas shopping.
We decided that we should make our first stop of the season at the Green Thumb nursery out in Newhall.
Green Thumb, as anyone in California knows, transforms itself every year around Christmastime from a gardeners paradise where you can get anything from houseplants to orange trees to picnic tables, to Christmas nirvana.
Passing through Newhall on the way there we passed by William S. Hart Park, as we have so many times before, except for some reason this time, we didn’t pass by, we pulled in.
I’ve lived in this valley for 10 years now and I never knew that William S. Hart park is the former home and ranch of the silent film cowboy star and director and sits on 265 acres of beautiful, hilly countryside.
When the old man died in 1946, he willed the property, the mansion he built there and all the western and indian artifacts he collected to the County of Los Angeles.
I did know that a small herd of buffalo live there.
OK, technically they’re bison but every cowboy movie I ever saw had indians worshiping and living off the massive herds of buffalo that once packed themselves on the the plains where interstate highways now pollute, defile and otherwise mess up.
I photographed the buffalo, some chickens, goats and other barnyard dwellers and I took this photo of the entryway to one of the old structures on the grounds.
I swear the first thing I thought of when I walked by was, “I wonder how many people have passed through that doorway? How many hands have grabbed that door knob?”
I know, I can be pretty pedestrian sometimes.