California

From as far back as I can remember, I viewed California as the coolest place on earth. It was heaven. Every friend, relative, neighbor and kid on the playgrounds of Northeast Kansas City thought the same thing. I know, because everyone talked about California a lot. My grandpa moved to California right before World War II. He abandoned his family to move there; that’s how magical it was. My parents went to visit him in the San Gabriel mountains before I was born. Pictures from that trip were the first color photos we had in the house. We went back to see him when I was 13. He lived in a different area, right on the banks of the Colorado River outside Blythe. I had never seen water so blue. It didn’t even look real! Well of course - it was California! It wasn’t the muddy Missouri or the mud bottomed Lake of the Ozarks! My grandpa, who I didn’t really know, took me to see the Intaglios petroglyphs carved in the solid bedrock a million years ago, on the road across from his trailer park. He told me we were going to see an old man and his dog.

Every good thing except the English bands came from California. It came pouring out of my little AM transistor radio that I got at one of my mom’s employee Christmas parties when she worked for Coast to Coast Stores. If we could all just be California girls! California dreaming in the murky air from the factories at the bottom of the cliff. Dreams of seeing the ocean in person and wading in the waves. “Will you take me as I am, strung out on another man, California I'm coming home!”

California was offered up to us like a prize. It was our goal in life - to move to California. So many of us hitchhiked there at 16, hoping to catch the tail ends of the Summer of Love. The Haight was still the Haight, and we were free to camp along most of the coastline. Even Led Zeppelin wanted to go to California, all the way from England - which also sounded like a way cooler place than the Midwest! Now, to visit England truly sounded like a fairy tale, but California seemed possible.

We all had our particular visions of that magical place, and talked about those preferences regularly. San Francisco versus LA. Movie stars or rock stars or hippies. The Doors or Jefferson Airplane. Living on the beach or crashing in the Canyon or passing out in Golden Gate Park. Definitely drugs, regardless. Cocaine had yet to arrive, but LSD and Mescaline was available and cheap. Of course they came from California! San Francisco produced the best! The best pot in the world was grown in Humboldt County, and the pot from every other place on earth was inferior. We were used to smoking brown ditch weed mixed with PCP here, on the bluff above the refineries.

For me, I now see that I felt the same way about California that Islamic terrorists feel about getting 20 virgins. They are a dream, a hope, a prayer, and a goal you will sell your soul for. It wasn’t just me, though. It was everyone I knew growing up, kids and adults alike. We were waiting to reach heaven, and heaven was California. Didn’t Jed and Ellie Mae assure us of that, if we hit the jackpot and struck oil? If we could just have the life of the curvaceous sisters in Petticoat Junction! It was truly a bummer when I found out that Pixley was based on the town of Eldon, Missouri. Naw. That was fake news. Bogus. There were no crop-dusting planes in Northeast!

I lived in the central valley of California for a little over 20 years. My kids grew up as Californians, through and through. Without having moved to California, they would not be the people they are today. Even though much of life in the central valley bears no resemblance to the California of my childhood dreams - even though I know the hard realities of struggling to make a living and not dying of heat exhaustion - even though I know that “other” California was only a dream, as are all American dreams, I can’t seem to let it go. It’s the coolness factor, to some extent. People back here still see the California of the 60’s and 70’s and can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would voluntarily leave it. In all fairness, I never got a single tick on me out there. I didn’t get a disabling case of poison ivy once.

The California of my teenage fantasies was gone, but what took it’s place was a cosmopolitan-ness I never imagined. There were people from all over the world, and they actually became friends and socialized with people from other cultures - even me! It expanded my understanding of humanity like nowhere else on earth. And even with it’s numerous faults, it still has a siren call that I find very hard to turn away from. I know it’s not real - that rock and roll heaven I craved, with the free-flowing tie dyed hippie dresses and long haired dudes with guitars. I’m homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. It was the carrot placed in front of our noses from birth, and we never required the stick because of it’s beauty.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

This is something I can really relate to. Growing up in Arkansas, I had the same kind of ideas about California as you. Eventually being stationed in the central valley and other parts of the state, (Navy) I came to love the reality and not just the dream. Of course it's not a garden of Eden--no place is--but there's still a whole lot to like about it. Change has come to every place, I'm afraid, which may or may not be a good thing.

[Siobhan Welch]

I came to love the Central Valley so much! It benefited me as a person to live there. It exposed a Midwesterner to one of the most diverse populations in the country. The heat was unbearable, but that big drop once the sun went down was such a reward. Thanks for reading, and reviewing my piece.

[Julie McCarthy (juliesp..]

I live in Sydney suburbs a long way away !

But for as long as I can recall after hearing Beach Boys music as a teen California has a pull on me also Neil Young and Mamas and Papas sang good ones on it as you would already know.

I loved your write really enjoyed it !
Well done 👍

There’s just something about California I don’t know as I’ll never get there but it has a pull on me.

Also there’s a great Led Zeppelin one I love too about it.

Well done on your write ✍️

[Siobhan Welch]

Thank you so much for reading my piece. It's totally weird, but I was just thinking about that Led Zeppelin song, California. I recently read that Robert Plant was inspired to write that song by his friendship with Joni Mitchell. I can totally see that! Again, thanks for your review!

[Julie McCarthy (juliespenhere)]

Yes I love that song