You could sail this banana split to Hong Kong if necessary. (photo courtesy of Fair Oaks Pharmacy)

A little about me: I’m a velvet Elvis. I’m a metaphor for metaphors.

I walk aimlessly through the suburbs, like Keats and Wordsworth, seeking beauty and sunlight through the oaks. Plus any sign of rain. Already anticipating that first sweet rain of fall.

“Let the rain kiss you,” Langston Hughes once wrote. “Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

So, yeah, that kind of rain. Kissy. Melodic.

I write often of quotidian suburban life – mundane and d’elegant all at once, d’elegant being a word I hijacked from Europe, a higher form of elegance, I suppose.

D’elegance.

See, language can be playful, language can be fun, though not the way I use it. I prefer to use it functionally, like a pocketful of brass screws. Like garden twine.

And I wrap it around our little town every chance I get.

FYI, I love our town.

Our American suburb has a rhythm, a bossa nova beat. Like when the trash trucks come roaring down the cul-de-sac on Thursdays, one after another … metal mastodons. I also like when the Budweiser trucks pull up to the 7-Eleven each morning, with their pallets of hope.

If you don’t find a certain d’elegance to a 7-Eleven, do you even have a soul?

Lucky me, to be born when the suburbs were especially vibrant. I could’ve been born in the age of burning dirigibles – the 1930s, an era of economic misery and world war.

Instead, I was born in the 1950s. They call us Boomers. If I were a house, I’d be a mid-century modern, with long clean lines and vaulted ceilings.

One thing you can say for the Boomers: No world wars. Yet.

I’m pretty sure my own father was miserable in the suburbs. He found them to be horribly isolating, without enough human interaction.

The Scout meetings and Little League drafts didn’t really appeal to him. Dad never embraced suburban joys the way I have, never slapped the batters’ helmets and yelled: “Let’s go, Caitlin! Let’s go!”

Back then, as now, mothers ran the suburbs. Which is probably why they’re such a resounding success. Seriously, you want something done, call a PTA mom. She’ll enlist her pals, Debbie and Donna. Then stand back.

“Hey PTA moms, the polar ice caps are melting, could you maybe…?”

“Done,” they’d say. “We’re already on it.”

Donut shops? Dry cleaners? Nail salons? Name your pleasure, our little suburb has it. Sure, the phone booths have disappeared, as have the news racks. You can’t buy a daily paper anymore, except at the too-big grocery store, where they have three or four in a sad little stack by the door, right where shoppers lean the wet umbrellas when it pours.

Another thing that’s disappearing from the suburbs:  the ma-and-pa diners. Instead, you have franchises, and I would argue that our nation’s spiritual collapse began when the franchises began to take over, pushing the pawn shops and ma-and-pa diners aside.

Bye-bye, Miss American Pie …

Where do you find Americana anymore? What if you want an old canoe oar to hang in your den? Or a tattered flag from Vermont? What then? What if you need a vintage typewriter? Or some old mason jars … a cigar box full of duck calls?

Once in a while, I like to let the past sing me a lullaby.

So, I went to Fair Oaks Pharmacy the other day in South Pasadena, one of the greatest American suburbs of all, if only because it still supports places like Fair Oaks Pharmacy, with the old soda fountain serving the sort of banana split you could sail to Hong Kong in if you had to. Stem to stern, about 52 feet.

Honestly, this thing should come with a mast.

Some day I hope to open a shop that only offers the stuff that has gone completely out of style … vinyl records, spats, juke boxes, egg creams and those little candy dots that come on long ribbons of paper.

In this shop, no one would ever buy anything. They’d just walk around and gawk. Grandmas would bring the grandkids (Zoe and Munch) and explain, “That’s an Easy Bake Oven” or “That’s a popcorn machine, everyone used to have them.”

I’d look up from my book to answer questions. “Do you have any Greenie Stickum Caps? Where would I find the fondue forks?”

And in the back, through a door with beads, would be a replica bedroom from the 1970s, with shag carpet, black lights and a Farrah Fawcett poster. Pink Floyd would be playing from giant speakers, tall as Jabbar.

When you cranked it, the windowpanes would crack and the walls would crumble.

“Those were the days,” Grandma would say. “That was my happy place…”

The Gin & Tonic Society of Los Angeles is proud to report that the Aug. 24 cocktail gig near the Rose Bowl is almost sold out. A few places remain for the free event. To RSVP, please go to Letters@ChrisErskineLA.com.