Going the Extra Miles : Orange County is still ‘home’ for one L.A. woman, so she’s here often. An Irvine man won’t miss his Arcadia basketball games. Many Southlanders are similarly driven to maintain old ties.

Millicent Morris bought a car just last fall and so far has put 20,000 miles on it.

For while Morris, 29, loves her Hollywood Hills apartment and her advertising job, she misses her family and friends in Orange County.

“I have a good job and L.A.’s fun, but it’s not home. So I’m on the road. Instead of bi-coastal, I’m bi-county.”

Her solution is a common one for Southern Californians. They drive. And drive and drive and drive and think nothing of it.

Last weekend it was to El Toro for a godchild’s birthday party, then to San Diego to see her brother at a convention. Once it was to Northern California overnight for a friend’s Halloween party.

“Not going is not an alternative. These people are part of my life.”

*

There isn’t a freeway system that can keep Doug Van Kirk and his friends from their regular Saturday morning basketball game in Arcadia, where they grew up. Team members come from as far as Irvine (72 miles round trip), but Van Kirk, 26, an accountant who now lives on Los Angeles’ Westside, says it’s a strictly observed ritual--a way of keeping in touch with his buddies, older brother and parents.

“Some of the faces may have changed over the years, but there’s a core group that’s been together since high school,” Van Kirk says. “We’ve grown up playing together.”

*

Last year Rose Marie Ruiz suffered a devastating blow: Her dry cleaner retired.

It didn’t matter that she no longer lived near Queen’s Cleaners on 4th and Evergreen in East Los Angeles. Ruiz still drove the 19 miles round trip from Santa Fe Springs to the shop that her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother all trusted.

“The owner called me Ruth’s daughter and called my daughter Rosie’s daughter,” says Ruiz, personnel manager of a Century City law firm. “If we couldn’t get to her shop by 6 p.m., she would stay open and wait for us.”

*

Old ties are difficult to break. It’s not so much the place itself that drives us but the need to maintain social and emotional bonds.

Southern California encourages this sort of over-drive behavior because of its sprawl, scarcity of old-fashioned neighborhoods and abundance of autos. We hop into our cars to go to the corner store, so why not the extra 15 miles to get a pedicure?

“Though it isn’t economically rational, we carry an attachment to a place all our lives and cling to certain kinds of activities,” says Curtis Roseman, USC professor of geography. “And the older one gets, the more one identifies with one’s past. A lot of people cash in on nostalgia by going back to their old neighborhoods.”

*

Moving to Newport Beach didn’t stop Millie Timmons from seeing her Santa Monica dentist of 30 years. But a few years ago, the 85-mile round trip became too difficult and she wrote this letter:

“Dear Dr. Bleiberg:

“A few tears were shed when I could not make it to see you, but I guess at 89 I will give up a few more pleasures. The tooth next to the one my bridge fastens to began hurting, so I went to the dentist just two blocks from where we live. . . . His assistant is a registered dentist and I like them both fine, but they are not a Dr. Bleiberg! If I am ever over that way will stop in to see you. Love to you and the girls in the office.”

As did Timmons, many of David Bleiberg’s patients go the distance--from as far away as Lake Hughes, Thousand Oaks and Lancaster. Bleiberg, who is known for injecting a pain-numbing dose of corny jokes, offers this explanation for the fact that people may move away but stay with their dentists: “There’s an emotional bond--usually fear.”

*

Three years ago, tax lawyer Tim Scott got the bug to play volleyball. In lieu of lunch, he’d hop over to the Beverly Hills YMCA, just minutes from his Century City office.

But when Scott moved to a downtown law firm last year, his volleyball digs remained in Beverly Hills. “I’ve taken to playing night games,” says Scott, a father of two. “I leave downtown at 5:45 p.m. and get to the Y by 6:30.”

Scuttlebutt is that the more convenient downtown games are not as good. “One thing that differentiates our games from downtown is a kind of self-ranking,” Scott says. “The Monday/Wednesday people know they are not supposed to come on Tuesday/Thursday. I played on Monday/Wednesday for a long time, and they finally let me slide into the more advanced game.”

What’s the real reason Scott drives 45 minutes to hit a ball over a net? “There’s a comfort level. I know them, and they know me. It’s a lot harder to break into a whole new group.”

*

When Gaion Herring needed lamb for a recent dinner party, she journeyed from Culver City to her butcher downtown. As usual, Herring, a nursery-school teacher, was not disappointed. “Since I didn’t know what size or cut I wanted, the owner led me to the back of the shop and let me choose.”

The relationship began 30 years ago when Herring’s family moved to Los Angeles from Atlanta and her mother started shopping at Hickory Sweets. “The owner called me by my mother’s name, Ernestine, but I wasn’t insulted,” she says.

Since she was a teen-ager, Herring has also been traveling an hour each way to get her hair done in the San Fernando Valley by Lisa. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, there weren’t as many black beauticians around, she says.

Despite a full schedule teaching and also studying nursing, Herring isn’t bothered by the commute. “Lisa is more than a beautician, she’s like a mother figure. She has seen me grow up, came to my high school graduation, knows my family and everything about me.”

Once in a while, Herring tries a local poultry shop or a stylist closer to home. But it’s just not the same.

“I don’t like change much,” she says. “When I try places closer to home, it feels different. I lose the familiarity.”

*

Since last year, Rose Marie Ruiz has been in search of a shop to succeed Queen’s Cleaners. “I’ve got clothes in my car that need cleaning.”

But when she gets the urge for Mexican bread on the way to work, she still takes a 20-minute detour to the bakery just yards from where she was born. Along with pan dulce and tamales, La Mascota on Whittier and Mott in East Los Angeles delivers childhood memories. “It’s been there ever since I can remember,” she says.

Ruiz, 52, reared her own family in Montebello, and although seven years have passed since her move to Santa Fe Springs, she has yet to find a grocer that compares to Food City in Monterey Park. “They have all the newfangled markets, but it’s not the same,” she says. “When you press the button, the butcher comes out and looks at you like, ‘What do you want, lady?’ ”

Not at Food City, where the staff grinds up a rump roast or cuts a top sirloin to order and where the fruit always looks as if it has just been picked. And Ruiz wouldn’t dream of altering her Montebello seamstress of 20 years, Sonja.

“She’s always trying to find me a man,” Ruiz, a widow, says with a laugh. “She fits me with a cigarette sticking out of her mouth, and she’s constantly blinking because the smoke goes in her eyes.”

And going cross-town to a La Mirada gynecologist and a Montebello dentist doesn’t make much sense these days either, she admits.

“They say the dentist here in Century City is very good, and several women in the office go to the doctor across the street. I don’t have time to do all this driving anymore, but I’ve been saying that for a while.”

Times Staff Writer Steve Emmons contributed to this story.