The state of California
Brian Wilson’s recent death has called forth a great many tributes, but the fact that the Beach Boys were the quintessential California group has also conjured up a huge wave of nostalgia for the California that used to be and is no more.
I know plenty of people who left the East or the Midwest and pulled up stakes in the 1950s and early 1960s and made a very good life in California. “Go West, young man!” was still operating, and California was the place to be. Now it seems it’s the place to leave.
But not entirely. California still has its natural beauty, and that draws people who love the outdoors. I know plenty of Boomers in New England whose children settled in California and, now middle-aged, have no intention of leaving, although I know some who have left.
And of my four California-born nieces and nephews, only one lives elsewhere at this point. I think they all plan to stay in California, for various assorted reasons but mostly because, if you’re doing well enough financially, it’s still possible to enjoy a very very good life there.
I’ve been going to California regularly for the past 55 years, to visit family and friends. My stays have often been long. So I’ve seen the changes, which are profound. But the state is my second home. Gerard – a native Californian, by the way – moved back there for the last ten years of his life, and so I spent even more time there in the last decade, in a beautiful area with which I’d previously been unfamiliar. We often went on drives, and they all were scenic and almost entirely unpopulated by other people. He lived within reasonable striking distance of the Feather River, Mount Shasta, and Fort Bragg. Gerard knew I loved Shasta, so there were many trips there. Here’s a typical photo from just one:
I recall wanting to go to college in California, but my parents were against it. Too far, they said. But my fate seemed to be to spend a great deal of time there anyway, and to come to love it even though I see all its flaws. And that’s the way I still feel.
See the book Failed State by Christopher Moritz. I have not read the book yet, but I’ve heard the author interviewed. Here’s a link to the book on Amazon. Pls provide instructions on how to buy it through Neo’s Amazon link.
https://www.amazon.com/Failed-State-Portrait-California-Twilight/dp/1510784470/
Brian Wilson grew up in a booming California, but I don’t know if you can see him as a true emblem of “the California that used to be.” He didn’t actually like surfing or swimming in the ocean — the fact that he made beach life sound so enticing was more due to his songwriting genius, and the encouragement of his brothers, than a genuine interest. (I think it’s fair to say that “In My Room,” a beautiful song about sitting inside your house all day, was much more personal to him than “Surfin’ USA.”) When he got a little older, he became a symbol of the destructive aspects of what we think of as the California dream — drugs and hedonism and cult-like therapy.
I’ve lived in California for a long time, and like you, I still love it, despite its faults. But I think many people who haven’t spent time here tend to exaggerate both positive and negative aspects of being here (and underestimate the differences between parts of this enormous state). I try not to idealize its past, any more than I ignore the problems in its present.
There’s a deal of ruin in a state as blessed as California. I’m not looking forward to one day being run out of my home state either (usually 5 -10 years behind California).
It is worthwhile to read, or reread, Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Dana, which took place during the days when California was the Siberia of Mexico and as sparsely populated. In the afterword he describes his post-Gold Rush visit, when San Francisco had 100K people. He had known it in the days when there was one adobe house there. Those days could potentially return.
Other than the cost it’s really not bad. And if you live a simple, frugal life the costs are manageable for a retired working class person like myself. I’m a liberal conservative living in a Republican district in San Diego County (Rep. D. Issa). You have to know where to go. But I tell all my adult children ( all working class/service industry) living in LA to get out of the state if they want to buy a house.
A great-great grandfather of mine shipped around Cape Horn to California (like Two Years Before the Mast), saw California, and went back overland. He and his descendants, down to my parents, are buried in a pioneer cemetery in San Gabriel. It was so beautiful! Some of my relatives there now talk about leaving, but I know they won’t.
This is my story exactly. Close family friends left for So Cal in 1961. We visited them in the summer of ’63, and in December of that year the moving vans arrived, and we packed up the Plymouth and made the long winter drive to La Habra.
I lived the California Dream. Surfing, hiking the hills, hitchiking up and down the coast, dropping pharmaceutical LSD up in the Haight, and grooving with the hippies. Later it was cruising Whittier boulevard, motorcycles, going into Hollywood Saturday nights.
I had the good fortune to realize how fortunate we were. Even in my wayward youth I never took it for granted.
Rampant development has been the single greatest destroyer, and now political corruption, and the insane push for high density development is driving the final stake through the heart of So Cal.
I don’t have to idolize the past, only remember it, and for all its faults it was Good. We rode the crest of the wave of Western Civilization but that wave has broken, and washed up on the burned wreckage of Malibu. It is heartbeaking to see what has come to pass, and what will surely continue into the future.
I have, for the last seven years now, been working to preseve the legacy of my late friend, artist Pete Hampton. Pete was a crazy man, but his artwork is unsurpassed in capturing the beauty of the Puente Hills in Whittier and La Habra. Gerard saw Pete’s work, agreed with me on its value, and gave me much advice on the project. I sent him a copy of the Photo essay book, The Lost Era Transcripts. It was after the fire, so there is a chance you may have seen it. The latest installation in my effort is a short film, The Lost Era Film. TLE is the very esence of the California story, beautiful, strange, and heartbreaking. It is posted on Vimeo, and can be viewed at the link on my nic.
JWM
@TD: Brian Wilson grew up in a booming California, but I don’t know if you can see him as a true emblem of “the California that used to be.” He didn’t actually like surfing or swimming in the ocean…
Quite true.
In 1976 Lorne Michaels produced an NBC special intended to revive The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson in the public mind.
It contained a wonderful, yet bizarre, video, in which Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, dressed as the Highway Patrol Surf Squad, show up at Brian’s home, charge him with violating the “Catch a Wave” statute, roust him out of bed, drive him to the beach and force him to go surfing in his bathrobe.
You can tell Wilson is not comfortable. He was still in bad shape, obese, depressed, semi-homebound, yet he plays along, spoofing himself. Even Wilson must have known the skeg of the surfboard goes in back, not in front.
–“John Belushi & Dan Aykroyd take Brian Wilson Surfing” (1976)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RW8PFJTJJY
California is a land of a Mediterranean climate, a high range of peaks with a granite core, marvelous harbors, plenty of arable land, desert, beautiful rivers, and much, much more. A geography and climate unmatched any place else in the U.S. I was stationed there in the Navy (North Island, Alameda, P.G. School), domiciled in LA, and San Francisco during my airline days, and intended to retire there.
We had decided on Carlsbad, north of San Diego, and were living there while I was flying out of SFO.
However, we saw the problem with illegals (this was 1990), increasing taxes, and increasing regulation. It did not look to get any better. We looked around and chose Washington. It has many of the geographic features of California – minus the Mediterranean climate. And it was a purple state when we moved here in 1993. Now it’s become Californicated, and will stay that way until they decide to change the voting system. (All mail in ballots, motor voter registration, register on election day, and “signature verification” for ballots.)
My wife and I visited Mount Lassen in 1967. The rear wheel bearing on our Chevy Corvair went bad. We got stuck in Mineral (A town near the park) for three days. It turned out to be a good time. A family that owned most of the town in those days had a son and daughter-in-law who had graduated from C.U. Boulder. When they found out I was a C.U. grad, we got a loaner car and were able to spend more quality time on the mountain. They took us in like next of kin. I wonder if they still own most of the town. Anyway, your Mount Lassen picture triggered that memory.
Like so many Boomers, I dropped out of college and went to California for the surfing and hotrodding. I dropped that early on and became a mountaineer and skier. I climbed to the 14,179-foot summit of Mt. Shasta seven times. My one winter attempt failed because of ominous weather that resulted in big avalanches after our retreat. I named my rescue sled dog Shasta.
Now, I am dismayed by the one-party rule, especially the sanctuary state and enabling of dysfunction. But, at age 79 I am happy on the Central Coast enjoying mountainbiking in year-round pleasant weather.
My paternal grandparents were from Iowa. They went to California on their honeymoon and decided to stay (Grandpa hated shoveling snow). My Grandfather was a heavy construction equipment operator, and was part of crews that took US-50 over Eagle Summit and he later helped build the runway expansions at SFO.
My parents grew up in the Bay Area in the 1950s. They both went to SJSU, and my dad got a job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. So I grew up in an oddly conservative corner of Alameda County (the county seat is Oakland, and Berkeley is part of the county as well.)
I moved away when I joined the Army in 1996. I love the climate, and the scenery, especially the north coast – Mendocino County and points north of there. But there’s no way I would ever move back (I’ve lived in Texas since I retired from the Army.) The cost is ridiculous – my parents paid $36k for their house in 1972, and it was appraised after my dad passed two months ago at $1.25 million. But there’s also the problem that half of my gun collection is illegal in the People’s Republic of Kalifornistan.
But I will always have my love for the sports teams that I grew up with – the Giants and Forty-Niners.
I have two nephews who reside in LA in areas foreign to the rioting. When my son was young and into surfing we spent a number of Christmas vacations hitting all of the surf spots from San Diego to Santa Barbara. As a long time wine lover, I have made frequent visits to the major wine regions beginning in 1968 when a sister of mine, residing in San Francisco, first exposed me to Napa. The first time I took my wife there she remarked that she could retire there. As others have mentioned the climate and natural beauty are unmatched. It is a shame their politics are so screwed up.
I grew up in California – in a fringe suburb of Los Angeles, backed up against the San Gabriels. My family – sister and brothers, and Mom still live there, and probably will never leave. We visited briefly last year, to see Mom, who lives with my sister and her family in Pasadena/Altadena. I walked with my toddler grandson in the pleasant old neighborhood where my sister lives, admiring the well-kept mid and early 20th century houses and the beautiful gardens. I can see why people don’t want to leave — but I can also see that outside of that lovely neighborhood – things are getting worse. Like the mismanagement that let a huge wildfire sweep down from Eaton Canyon and torch half of Altadena earlier this year.
I moved from the east coast to CA in 1980. I left with no regrets in 2016. In the intervening 36 years, I saw CA be transformed from a place I where I thought I’d always live to one in which I could no longer stay. Yes, it still has great weather, mountains, beaches, the redwoods, and the lure, for me at least, of the ocean.
Sadly, however, the governance during that period of time has turned the once Golden State into a over regulated, over taxed, virtue signaling entity that often seems to exhibit a stunning lack of common sense.
JJ said:
“They took us in like next of kin. I wonder if they still own most of the town.”
The Beresfords?
I don’t know how much the family still owns but Husky’s girl Joann stayed up there in the summer. She would be in her 90’s now. The place hasn’t really changed much since you were there. Mineral barely escaped being destroyed last summer from the Park Fire which started in Chico, many miles to the south. The headquarters of Lassen Park is located there which accounts for most of its permanent residents. The other 150 or so own summer cabins. At 5,000′ in the Sierra it stays nice and cool from spring to fall.
I live maybe 15-20 miles as the crow flies down slope from there near the S. Fork of Battle Creek which runs through it.
And yes, at my age and long, long family history here, I won’t be leaving California.
JJ: Lots of good memories of Mineral. In the 1950’s my parents would take us up there mid winter to “ski” on toboggans at the lift the Beresfords had set up on the hill next to the Lodge. We always had a car full. And as you say they were very hospitable.