Doctor who walked L.A.’s perimeter has a prescription: Escape your own neighborhood

Longtime hand surgeon Dr. Roy Meals likes to move his feet. He has climbed mountains and run three marathons.

But when he shared his latest project with his wife a few years ago, she quickly caught on.

“You are crazy,” she said.

Maybe. He was approaching 80, and his plan was to grab his hiking poles and hike solo along the 342-mile perimeter of Los Angeles. His wife found the idea less crazy, a little, after Meals agreed to meet hiking companions here and there.

Dr. Roy Meals with his book “Walking the Line: Discoveries Along the Los Angeles City Limits.”

But you may be wondering what’s obvious:

Why would anyone hike in a huge metropolis of about 500 square miles, crowded with cars and hostile to pedestrians?

The meals had their reasons. Curiosity and concern, to begin with. There’s also the belief that you can’t really know a city through a windshield, and the belief that staying fit, physically and mentally, is the best way to block the work of Father Time.

One more thing: Meals’ patients have come over the years from all corners of the city, and the Kansas City native considered it a personal flaw that he didn’t know much of Los Angeles, despite having lived there for half his life.

To chart his route, Meals unfolded an accordion map for an overview, then drove to navigatela.lacity.org draw the precise outline of the city limits. The border frames an oddly shaped expanse that resembles a jagged kite, with San Pedro and Wilmington hanging from a rope at the southern ends.

Dr. Roy Meals pauses in his walk to chat with Louis Lee, owner of the JD Hobbies store along West 6th Street in downtown San Pedro.

Meals divided his journey into 10-mile segments, 34 in total, and set out to hike two segments each week for four months, traveling counterclockwise from the 5,075-foot summit of Mt. Lukens, in the northern part of the city.

The first day started with a bang, so to speak.

Meals slid down rocks near the top of Mt. Lukens and fell, scraping his elbows and knees and breaking the aluminum handle of one of his walking canes.

But Meals isn’t one to wave a white flag or call for a helicopter evacuation.

“Later, at home, I used my orthopedic skills to repair the broken pole,” Meals writes in “Walk the line: Discoveries Along the Los Angeles City Limits,” his just-published book about his travels.

Dr. Roy Meals walks along West 6th Street in San Pedro.

Meals, now numbering 80 and still seeing patients once a week at a UCLA clinic, remained standing most of the rest of the way, adhering to his self-imposed rule of not venturing more than a mile from the city limits. To get back to his starting point each day, he often took buses and found that although the journey was slow, the passengers often exited with a thank you to the driver, which seemed to him to be “wonderful thank you notes.”

The doctor was walking with his two hiking poles, a cross-country skier on a vast ocean of cobblestones. He wore a small backpack, a “Los Angeles” cap and a shirt with the city limits on the front, and handed out business cards with a link to his book project.

Those who clicked on the link were advised to escape their own neighborhood and follow Meals’ prescription for life: “Venture on foot and make interesting, life-enriching discoveries. Wherever you live, be neighborly, curious, fit and engaged!”

Meals were all of those things, and as his last name suggests, he never shied away from sampling Los Angeles’ bountiful offerings.

He tried pork intestine skewers at Big Mouth Pinoy in Wilmington, went for tongue and lip offerings at the Tacos y Birria taco truck in Boyle Heights, enjoyed a cheeseburger and peach cobbler at Hawkins House of Burgers in Watts and ventured to Ranch Side Cafe in Sylmar, curious about the sign advertising American, Mexican and Ethiopian food.

Meals included trying hang gliding at Dockweiler Beach, border fencing in Santa Monica, rock climbing in Chatsworth, boxing and go-kart racing in Sylmar, weightlifting at Muscle Beach in Venice.

Dr. Roy Meals stops to admire the U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial Wall of Honor while hiking one of the many trails he wrote about in his book.

In each area, Meals searched for statues and plaques and explored points of history dating back to the Gabrielinos and Chumash, as well as the era of Mexican and Spanish rule. He also examined the history of these particular twists and turns on the city’s perimeter, delving into Los Angeles’ long-running stew of land grabs, water policy and annexation plans.

What remains of Campo de Cahuenga’s founding in Studio City was one of many places that “stirred my emotions,” Meals writes in “Walking the Line.” There, in 1847, Andres Pico and John C. Frémont signed the treaty that ceded part of Mexico to the United States, thereby changing the shape of both countries.

In Venice, Meals was equally moved when he accidentally came upon an obelisk marking the spot where, in April 1942, more than a thousand Japanese Americans boarded buses to Manzanar.

“May this monument… remind us to always be vigilant in defending our constitutional rights,” it reads. “Public authorities must never again commit injustice against a group based solely on their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, race or religion. »

At fire station museums, Meals learned of times when “black firefighters faced extreme hostility in mixed fire stations, including being forced to eat separately. … I had no idea that visiting fire museums would be a lesson in the history of racism in Los Angeles,” he writes.

Dr. Roy Meals walks past an armor-piercing projectile display in San Pedro.

Although Meals has visited well-known destinations such as the Watts Towers and the Getty Villa, some of his most enjoyable experiences have been what he calls “passing by” discoveries that weren’t on his initial list of points of interest, like the Venice Obelisk.

“Among those I stumbled upon,” writes Meals, “were the Platinum Prop House, the Sims House of Poetry, and warehouses filled with spices, buttons, candy, Christmas decorations, or coffins. These owners, along with museum guides and those who care for underprivileged children, bees, rescued guinea pigs, and marine mammals injured, really love what they do; and their level of engagement is inspiring and contagious.

His book is also infectious. In a city with miles of crumbling sidewalks and countless tent cities, among other obvious flaws, we can all find a thousand things to complain about. But Meals put his stethoscope to the beat of the heart of Los Angeles and found a thousand things to cheer about.

When I asked the good doctor if he would be willing to repeat part of his journey with me, he suggested that we meet in the region to which he awarded his gold medal for its many points of interest: San Pedro and Wilmington. There he had visited the Banning Mansion, the Drum Barracks, the Point Fermin Lighthouse, the Friendship Bell given to Los Angeles by Korea, the varied architecture of Vinegar Hill, the World War II bunker, the sunken city, the Maritime Museum, etc., etc., etc.

Meals was full when we met at 6th and Gaffey in San Pedro. The hiking poles, the T-shirt with the puzzle map of Los Angeles, the modest “Los Angeles” hat.

“Let’s go,” he said, and we headed toward the waterfront, but we didn’t get far.

Dr. Roy Meals takes a break from his walk to visit famous San Pedro resident John Papadakis, 75, former owner of the now-closed Greek Tavern in the neighborhood.

A man was coming out of an office and we exchanged “hellos”. He identified himself as John Papadakis, owner of the now-closed Greek Taverna restaurant, a longtime local institution. He invited us back into his office, a museum of photos, Greek statues and sports memorabilia (he and his son Petros, the popular radio talk show host, were gridiron grinders at USC).

San Pedro “is the seaside soul of the city,” Papadakis proclaimed.

And we were on our way, eyes wide open to the wonders of a limitless city that reveals itself more every time you turn a corner, say hello and hear the first line of a never-ending story.

Down the street, we took a look at the renovations at the art deco Warner Grand Theater, which is nearing its 100th anniversary. We looked at vintage copies of Life magazine at Louis Lee’s JD Hobbies, chatted with Adrian Garcia about the “senior dog specialty” aspect of his “Dog Groomer” store, and took stock of 50 private schools whose uniforms came from Norman’s Clothing, circa 1937.

At the post office, we checked out the 1938 Fletcher Martin mural depicting mail delivery. Back outside, with a view of the harbor and the sunny sea, we meet a merchant sailor, relaxed on a bench, who tells us that his son works for the New York Times. Later, I discovered a moving story from this journalist about his long search for the man we had just met.

“Traveling on foot allowed me to reflect and grow with respect for Los Angeles like never before,” Meals wrote in his book.

During our walk, while discussing what’s next, Meals said he plans to explore San Francisco in the same way.

We were approaching Point Fermin, where Meals pointed out to us the serene magnificence of a Moreton Bay fig tree which cast an acre of shade and cooled a refreshing breeze of salt air.

Dr. Roy Meals walks along the LA Harbor West Path, one of the many trails he wrote about in his book, in San Pedro.

“On the contrary,” Meals told me, “I’m quicker to look at the little things. You know, stopping and appreciating a flower, or even just an interesting shadow pattern on the street.”

The message of his book, he says, is simple.

“Basically, slow down and watch.”

steve.lopez@latimes.com