I JUST WANTED to get to Cinderella's Castle. Not even to go inside, just to get there.

The Castle was out of sight now, but I had seen it before and even now it was a big, if invisible, presence on an early summer afternoon. If only I could reach out...

In the Los Angeles suburb of Anaheim, the sun was shining but a dense low cloud cover kept plunging the southern California landscape--and even the Castle, wherever it was--into a dark half-light.

I was walking over a low bridge spanning the freeway running below me. The bridge was stark and concrete, bracketed by deserted gas stations and a cylindrical fuel storage tank.

Behind me was the stadium, where along with 35,000 others I had just watched an afternoon ballgame. The rest of the crowd, good Californians all, had cars. I was left to my feet.

The strange light was affecting my trek across Anaheim to my hotel room, leading me down blind alleys as I made my desperate bid across the industrial wasteland. After an hour, I had lost sight of the stadium and the Castle.

THE CASTLE is the fairyland-like zenith of Disneyland. Since my Anaheim Hilton was in the Castle's shadow, I was using it as a cue to sanctuary.

Finally, I burst out of the hodge-podge of bricked up warehouses and auto-body shops onto a street that promised homes. Eager to escape death in the shadow of a "Lube Job $29.99" sign, I dived down the road. A quick left and I was deep in a sea of California ranch houses.

The housing tract was uniform--the houses were all slight variations on the same design and the plots and lawns similar. Ten minutes and I was lost.

I wasn't lost in the regular sense. Normally, a lost person confuses some landmarks or exchanges a right for a left. I had completely lost my orientation. With the sun diving in and out of the clouds, I even lost my geographic bearing as I pounded the pavement of the identical streets of Suburb, USA.

At least twice I tried to ask the men tranquilly mowing their lawns for directions. Each time I was left with a string of useless directions, rights, lefts, ups, downs and a string of identical floral names masquerading as streets.

The overwhelming expanse of the Suburb cut off any further horizons. I was trapped.

THIS RAT-IN-A-MAZE ordeal went on and on. Finally, pulling my wits back together, I made a beeline in one direction. I twisted and turned with the inane little streets but eventually reached the edge.

There was a tall dirt mound bordering the backyard of the final row of houses. Ducking into a finely manicured lawn, I scrambled up the heap.

I expected to see more burnt-out gas stations.