You’ve either experienced the California dream, or you haven’t. I have; big time.
And although I eventually left because I woke up to certain changing realities that compelled me pursue a new dream elsewhere, it was not without considerable pangs; I had fallen hard for the California dream. Unfortunately, the issues that were making the dream more challenging have mostly only gotten worse in the ensuing 25 years. But there are moments when the dream still flickers. And stumbling into this time capsule ’65 Beetle in Half Moon Bay triggered a wave of California dreamin’ memories that crashed over me like the famous Maverick breakers just offshore from here.
Is it a coincidence that California Dreamin’ by the Mamas & the Papas was also released in 1965? And how many hundreds of thousands, or even millions of kids came to California because of that song? Count me in on those numbers, even if it took a few years. That song made an indelible impression on me from the first time I heard it, and it still triggers certain deeply-formed neural connections made that winter of 1965-1966.
That song came from the heart, like all good songs. John Phillips wrote it on a cold winter night in New York City, pining for the warm California sunshine. He woke up Michelle in the middle of the night to dictate the lyrics to her. It was the their first hit and sparked a short but intense career for the Mamas & the Papas, never mind the madly intense interpersonal issues among the four.
John Phillip, a former folk singer, created a new California-oriented musical genre that bridged the folk era and the psychedelic era to come. It was pop, but it was well done. And their short time at the top ended on a high note that ushered in the new era: John Phillips (and Lou Adler) created the Montery Pop Festival in 1967, the seminal event of its kind that spawned so many others.
When I first heard the story of how Stephanie’s whole family went to Monterey Pop ’67 as a family (she was 13 at the time), it only brings back the painful memory of how our friends from across the street in Iowa City moved to California (UC Santa Barbara) the same year we moved to Baltimore (in 1965). Instead of getting closer, we were now further away than ever.
not me, but my doppelganger
I did get there eventually, in 1972. And no, it wasn’t in a stolen Ford van. I hitchhiked there and slowly worked my way up the coast, on an epic three-month long adventure that started out on a miserable gray winter day. Oh yes, I had California Dreamin’ on my mind, as I made my way west on Route 66/I40 . Just experiencing the Southwest and desert for the first time ever on the way there was itself a revelation. It’s sunny! It’s warm! The air is dry and it smells so differently.
And as we approached the LA basin in I-15, I couldn’t believe how many imports and especially VWs there were on the road; it seemed like every fourth car was one. And so many Datsun pickups; both seemed to be the cool cars for kids.
I knew that my older brother’s high school friend from Towson was now a student at Cal Tech. So on my first day in LA I hitched to Pasadena, walked into the campus and looked for the Seismology Lab where I knew he studied, and I ran into him on the sidewalk before I even got to it. A lucky start. He said I could crash with him for a few days. And what did he drive me in to his house in? A Corvair Lakewood. And the whole way there he extolled its virtues, especially the Lakewood’s unique twin cargo areas in back and front, as only a hardcore nerd can. He was preaching to the choir; only a year later I’d be driving a Corvair.
I couldn’t believe the place when we got there. It was a veritable mansion in the old part of Pasadena. He lived there with a bunch of other students; it was a beautiful old Craftsman house, not very much different than this Greene & Greene gem. It’s of course worth many millions now, but then it was just a big old rambling house that made cheap digs for a bunch of kids. That represents a key element of the California Dream that has turned into a bit of a nightmare. Yet until 1973 ore so, California real estate was on average cheaper than the US average. Now it’s out of sight, for way too many.
The house sat on a huge lot, and in the large carriage house in back, he showed me two other Corvair Lakewoods he had; one as a parts car and the other as a backup. Wow; he was living the California Lakewood Dream.
I won’t bore you with all the details of my meanderings up the coast on Hwy 1 starting right where the I-10 ends at the beach in Santa Monica. But let’s just say that one of my abodes was decidedly different from that house in Pasadena. It was the hollowed-out trunk of a giant redwood tree in Big Sur. And this is the very tree, which I managed to find again a few years back. It made for a very comfy and cozy place to sleep. Can one homestead a tree?
The next destination was San Francisco, which took me through Half Moon Bay, riding in the back of a late-50s 3/4 ton Chevy panel van. We stopped at a farm stand in Salinas, and I couldn’t believe all the fresh and cheap produce. Although I didn’t see these buildings right on the water in Half Moon Bay, I saw plenty of other similar ones on the coast. Not surprisingly, these are right around the corner from where the featured VW was parked. I suspect there might well be a connection.
I don’t know what they were originally built to be, but they’re some kind of retreat center now, overlooking the ocean. And when we’re in Half Moon Bay each year, we walk by them almost every day, as they’re just a mile or so north along the walk/bike trail that runs each direction for some miles. They make us smile every time.
This is classic California eclectic/hippie architecture from the late 60s or early 70s; and although it may not be your thing, it sure beats all the cookie-cutter houses and hotels that have surrounded it since.
And just like those exuberant buildings represent California of that time, so does this VW. Why? They were the used car of choice for a generation, as by this time they could be picked up for cheap, and everyone knew how to keep them running, or knew someone who did, having absorbed the spiritual VW ministrations from John Muir’s “How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive”.
Just like kids picked up Model Ts for cheap during the 30s and into the 40s, so did they now with VWs. And there were plenty to be had; California was of course the early adopter for all things imported with wheels, and especially so the VW. Of course by this time (1972) Californians were buying Toyotas and Datsuns for new cars. But the VW reigned supreme as the cheap wheels-mobile for a long time to come. And this ’65 looks just like so many did back then: a bit used, but still very solid.
Yes, there’s a bit of a California tan to be seen, but I can assure you the undersides of this Beetle are rock-solid, except perhaps for where the battery sits (under the rear seat), as spilled acid is corrosive. I know more than one person who lost their battery after hitting a hard bump or pothole.
And parts were easy to come by. Yes, genuine VW parts weren’t exactly dirt cheap, but the aftermarket was exploding, mostly stuff made in Brazil, where the VW was of course the dominant car for years there. And if one wanted a bit more power from the 40 (gross) hp 1192cc mill, Empi was the place to go. By 1972, a healthy percentage of Beetles were sporting an aftermarket “extractor” exhaust.
Speaking of, I didn’t get a good shot of what’s exhausting the spent gases of this one. It’s not stock, so presumably there’s an extractor, although usually they hung so low as to be visible from this angle. My bad. And who knows just what exactly is under the hood. Not a lot of 1200s survived the long haul, unless it led a particularly sheltered life.
1965 was the last year for the 1200 in the US; in ’66 the 1300 arrived, which gave a mighty big 25% boost in hp.
It makes the ’65 a bit of an odd-ball, given that it has new body with the much bigger windows all-round, but still the old mechanicals underneath, including the last year for the king-pin front suspension.
This one has the obligatory roof carrier. It may well be the factory version, or a facsimile. I bought a new one from the VW dealer for my ’63, as it was essentially my mobile home, as I tended to be on the go a lot. And the amount of stuff I could strap to it was remarkable.
One of my favorite VW stories involves two of the sisters that I’ve written about here quite a few times here. They were headed to University of Indiana for school at the end of summer. The original plan was that their mom Elinor would drive her Corolla and I would drive my VW, and we’d split the load between the two cars. Elinor had sold the big ’69 Fury a year or two earlier, after they sold the farm and the horses, and moved into town.
A couple of days earlier, she had lent her Corolla to a friend, and wouldn’t you know, it got totaled in a (non-injury) crash. So plan B was this: I would somehow fit the two sisters and all their stuff for a year at school, including a cat and her litter box, and a couple of bicycles, in and on my VW.
I told the girls to bring all their stuff out on the front lawn next to my VW in the driveway. I strapped all the really big stuff on top, in an ever taller mound, and then topped that with the two bikes. And then I told them to empty the suitcases full of clothes, and then we stuffed the clothes under the front seats, and in every nook and cranny. As it was, the back seat was filled to the roof except for about one-third of it, where Becky sat, with the cat on her lap and the litter box on the floor. And Norma sat in front next to me, with stuff piled around her legs.
But there was no way Becky’s cello, in a big hard case, was going to fit, and she certainly wasn’t going to let me strap it to the roof rack. So Elinor bought a Greyhound bus ticket for her and the cello, and she rode back with me in the VW.
Yes, the stock 40hp mill got a good workout that day, as I pulled out into I-80 for the 365 mile drive from Iowa City. At least it was all flat.
So what reminded me of that? Not just the roof rack, but also how this one is stuffed to the gills with this owner’s things. A fishing pole, flippers, and a surf board, among others.
And tools too. Yes, this guy is living a lot like I did back in the day, and not when I was moving other’s stuff. Yes, there’s still folks living a semi-nomadic life-style in California, and not all because of necessity. For some, it’s just the California Dream; to live simply and lightly, and enjoy it that way. That is the trick, of course, and which separates the homeless living in their old RVs and cars, and between those that do it purposefully.
Of course I’m indulging in speculation, or projection. But along the coast there’s still a number of folks who are finding ways to live that way, despite the increasing challenges. The dream is not getting easier.
But as long as there’s cars like this old VW full of the signs of the California beach-bum lifestyle, the dream hasn’t totally died yet, under the weight of high housing prices, endless gridlock traffic and wall-to-wall cookie-cutter houses and cars.
Just looked up on Zillow the house parents bought in 1970 for $40k dollars. Z estimate $744k dollars for a 1948 2 bedroom 1200 sq ft home. It does have a one bedroom guest house in the back yard, it was built without permit so I guess that’s why it’s not mentioned in the listing.https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4131-Briggs-Ave-Montrose-CA-91020/20901527_zpid/
1972 I disassembled a 1962 Beetle with a broken crankshaft in the backyard, lifted the body off the pan to replace the gasket, replaced the crank with a junkyard unit, and installed a neat shag carpet headliner using carpet squares and getting high on the 3M contact cement to hold them up. I sold it to a guy who replaced his ’63 Corvair 2 door powerglide with this Beetle. The crank broke again after a few months, but for a 14 year old just getting it running again was a lot of fun, and kept me out of trouble (at least for a couple more years).
First car was a ’66 Beetle in 1972, black and yellow plates, WIR 950 still remember the number after all these years. Totaled it in less than a year (stop sign jumped out on front of me), replaced with a ’63 that I switched engines and interiors before the insurance took the ’66 to the junkyard. Indeed, VW’s and Datsun pickup’s were everywhere in SoCal at this time.
We moved back to Socal in ’67 shortly before my 12th birthday, moved from Woodland Hills to Portland Oregon when I was 5, I was born in Santa Maria.
My older brother bought a ’56 VW Bus around 1969, at age 12 he had me helping pull the engine, so I blame him for starting my life long VW obsession.
Moved to Vancouver Wa. in 1997, by this time SoCal had changed a lot and there was no way I would ever be able to afford a house there, bought my current house here in ’98 for 94k. Glad to see there are still a few still embracing old VW’s there, the climate allows cars to avoid terminal rust for many decades.
Can’t edit, actually was 1970 at age 14 when I had the project ’62 Beetle that I sold the same year, this was 2 years before I got my license. The ’66 Beetle was my first car I could actually (legally) drive, although I did sneak out the ’62 for a short drive a few times before I sold it.
The ’66 1300 heads were a one year (in the US) design, the valves were smaller along with the intake port diameter size and cylinder bore was smaller as well. You could use them on a 1500 or 1600 engine, but you needed to flycut them for the bigger cylinders and needed to use the smaller diameter 1300 intake manifold to make them work. I found this out the hard way, back in the day.
In 1968 I would ride my bicycle with a 4 track player strapped to the handle bars, Monday Monday and California Dreamin’ blasting out around the neighborhood. In-a-gadda-da-vida was another tune I pedaled to.
I live up here in Edmonton and watch KTLA everyday and sort of pretend I live down there especially when it’s -23C like today. Even looked into the green card lottery but Canadians aren’t eligible. Oh well. I like the beetle but never drove one.
67Conti- small world. I grew up in La Canada. Folks built the house in ’49 for the princely sum of $29,000. Last time I looked on Zillow it was valued well into the seven figures. Sigh. They moved down to Mission Viejo after I moved to Portland to finish college. I don’t even want to know what that house is worth today. Amazing what happened to prices there- although the Portland area isn’t exactly cheap either. It was a great place to grow up though, even though wild horses couldn’t drag me back.
We go down to San Diego every year, and I’m always surprised at the number of VW Beetles and Buses still on the road, especially in the coastal communities. Good memories of times gone by.
Small world indeed. It was a great place to grow up back in the day, though I too have no desire to go back now. I worked for the old Foothill VW in La Canada, once in the mid ’70’s and again in the late ’80’s. Got to Vancouver just in time to still be able to buy a 3 bedroom house in a decent neighborhood for under 100K.
I remember when they built that store. Caused quite a stir- a car dealership (gasp!) in la Canada. They were the only ones for many years.
Spoiler alert! (spotted from time to time around Seattle; photographed in an Office Despot parking lot)
For me, Paul, it was the pop music that wafted the C-Dream to Flyover me, beginning pre-Beatles with the whole “surf” thing. By then media like LIFE magazine had made me aware of creative trends originating in CA as well. I didn’t actually get to Cali until the early 1980s, but I had an odd feeling of being there before, having seen so much TV/film created there. When I watch some 1930s-40s “Manhattan streetscape” (backlot) film scene now, I can feel the early-morning California sunshine.
The 80s is when I finally appreciated how much TV–things like “Dukes of Hazzard”–purported to be set somewhere else, but was really shot within a couple hours of Hollywood & Vine. (I watch a rerun now, and the terrain is laughably un-Georgian.)
I’ve missed the whole VW experience, and never even helped a friend wrench one. But, two strongest memories of the ’70s campus bookstore were John Muir’s book and the “Whole Earth Catalogue.”
Paul, your essay was a delightful read after finishing with the snowblowing today—thanks for recapturing the era so tidily!
Little House on the “Prairie” was just as bad, set as it was in the saguaro-studded canyons of Minnesota. I think M*A*S*H used the same backlot with a side-order of too many M38s for the Korean War, many of which were AMC-era CJ-5s painted olive drab at the Earl Scheib off the 10…
Austin Powers had some fun with this, talking about how England looks nothing at all like Southern California after an opening number on “Carnaby Street in London” in which the Hollywood sign could be seen in the background.
I can remember riding in the cubbyhole under the back window in the VW’s, as a young kid. Now it would be painful trying to get in the backseat.
Whenever I go to my local Barnes & Noble in Peabody, MA, I always see a VW Beetle parked in a driveway nearby, looking a bit worse for wear, but a survivor, as I don’t see anymore of them around here.
I visited the LA area several times in the late 80s early 90s to visit friends who moved there from college to get into show biz. Although it was interesting, I was always happy to come back home. I wish I could have gone in the mid 60s, especially to the Monterey Pop Festival, which I prefer to Woodstock.
Finally, to cement the relationship between the Mamas and the Papas & CC, here’s a video for “I Saw Her Again Last Night”, which is chock full of CC goodness:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9zBMK5OAGyE
Sounds like you arrived at “peak California” which was likely the mid-60’s. Strong economy, excellent public schools, (pre prop13), a newly minted freeway system and a fraction of the population here now.
I came out on holiday in 2000 and never left; there is still something intoxicating about the place, though LA traffic is truly brutal.
Yep, in the 1960s California was The Place to be. Unfortunately today it resembles an insane asylum run by the inmates. These days you could not pay me enough to live there unless a time machine was part of the deal.
Great memories…especially as I sit here in Motown contemplating the three days in a row we have had of heavy overcast and snowfall.
I came close, Paul.
In 1982, at age 19 a friend of my parents offered me a job working a gift shop onboard the Queen Mary in Huntington Beach. Provided I got a visa to move from Canada.
Even though I had a job and a place to live, no dice.
As I sit here 36 years later, still suffering through another miserable Canadian winter ? I wonder whether I’d have stuck it out or decided to come back.
The weather was a big draw and at that time I was a mouthy teen at war with the old man so the thought of living in a different COUNTRY than him was great. A few years later I had grown up, made peace with the folks and was glad as I lost them both to illness by 32.
Guess in a way I’m still California dreaming, just wondering what might have been rather than what was coming.
Thanks for the trip Paul.
Really evocative piece of writing Paul. The California Sound is one of the mainstays of my music collection. I never had the travelling urge, but this piece reminds me of the first half of Barney Hoskyn’s ‘Hotel California’ with its travellers like yourself finding their way into Laurel and Topanga Canyons and the homes of the very musicians who were making these sublime sounds.
The past is a foreign country…
Nice Bug, I wonder how long the Cabbage Patch Kid has been riding around in the rear well.
We used to go to Half Moon Bay a lot when we lived in Belmont, it’s a great place to visit and just relax, whether for a walk down the main street or on the beach or for lunch or dinner or just for a change in weather/temperature. More than once we contemplated moving there…
Good story, funny how seeing something like that Bug brings a flood of memories rushing back.
I love your auto-biographies Paul. Your free-wheeling younger years are a delight to read about, especially because I’m such a boring pragmatist that there’s no overlap in experiences, really, between my 20s and your 20s.
One thought, for the people that didn’t grow up in California in the 60’s and 70’s. The experience in coastal Southern California was quite a bit different than in the coastal areas of Northern California. Musically, think The Beach Boys vs. Jefferson Airplane, and you’ve pretty much got the idea.
This whole thread made me think of this video- Randy Newman’s “I Love L A.”
I dislike being the skunk at the garden party, but I never got what anybody say about the Beetle. To me, they were cramped, noisy, under-powered and prone to rusting even more than the American stuff. The “fresh air heater” (hahahaha!) was completely inadequate for a Canadian winter and the gas heaters rarely ever worked. If you crashed one, poof, your’re dead.
I had a nice Toyota Corolla that never needed fixing and was warm in the winter.
Simple answer- in most of California the heater was something you used a handful of times during the year, and rust was a non-issue.
Great writing Paul, I was having a little California dream on this chilly night. We kids are providing 24 hour rotating care for my parents who both just got out of the hospital and I just did a double shift 🙁
Anyway, this beetle really reminds me of mine when I first got it. The patchy paint, the brittle and torn headliner. Although, I don’t think mine’s too nice to park in Half Moon Bay for a while…..
I thought of your car more than once.
Really well written piece, the kind of personal car/social story that makes this site a real gem.
“You’ve either experienced the California dream, or you haven’t. I have; big time.
And although I eventually left because I woke up to certain changing realities that compelled me pursue a new dream elsewhere, it was not without considerable pangs; I had fallen hard for the California dream. Unfortunately, the issues that were making the dream more challenging have mostly only gotten worse in the ensuing 25 years.”
Ah, California. Sigh.
The California Dream, a subset of the American Dream, has been good to my people. The folks came here in the ’30s, fleeing the Dust Bowl, worked as migrants picking crops all up and down the Central Valley, and my 8th grade drop out dad eventually owned a ranch, a large construction company, and a place up in the mountains at the lake.
All on one income. With no high school diploma. Ordinary, simple, hard working people came here with nothing and were richly rewarded.
As another commenter here noted, that was during “peak California”, the 40’s to the mid 70’s.
Some of my Okie family back then owned neat little beach houses in Cayucos and Pismo, people who dug goddamn ditches for a living were able to buy a small place over at the coast for a vacation home, with an ocean view, to go enjoy the cool breezes during our brutal Valley summers.
Well that’s all gone now. Gone with the wind.
Let’s just talk about the poverty. (but we could talk about so many things)
Highest poverty rate in the nation, 1 in 5 residents. We beat out places like Mississippi!
Homeless camps are scattered about my town, the homeless walk up and down my street during the day, they dig through my trash, they beg on the street corners, they panhandle you the minute you step out of your car in a parking lot.
And within a very short walk from my house there is an old home with a dirt floor. A dirt floor! In California! In 2018!
Many, perhaps most actually, of my students families are unable to afford heat in the winter and AC in the summer. The families freeze and bake, because unlike the coast it actually gets cold and hot here. I see the numbers for their incomes when they come to the school, a family with 8 people in the house, that includes working adults, elderly, and children, often have annual incomes below 20k a year.
I know of many homes where a different family rents each room of the house, with as many as 6 families living in one home. My wife and I go for walks in our neighborhood and see people living in tents in backyards, renting the space I presume. They are sometimes cooking over an open fire. In California! Laundry hangs drying on fences.
Chased a homeless man out of the boys bathroom at school one day, he was basically taking a bath in the sink. That’s a common thing you find in the public restrooms here.
Saw a young mom with her baby the other day in the parking lot at Wal-Mart, they were obviously living in the car. A guy lived in his car down the street for over a year, he’d put blankets over the windshield in the summer. It was an ’80 or so Olds Delta 88, his mom’s car he’d inherited when she died and it was all he had.
Would that we’d build some of those cookie-cutter houses so people could have affordable housing, but decades of NIMBY and a strangely bipolar political culture that wants as many people to move here as possible but doesn’t want to build places for them to live has created something new, what I now get to live in:
The California Nightmare.
I can retire in 8 years, I’m one of the lucky ones, and the plan is to do as many of my friends and family have done, and stake a for sale sign in the yard and go shopping for another state. Casual conversation often quickly turns to, “When are you leaving?’, “We are looking at leaving”, etc.
And it all breaks my heart. It was good here. No, it was great here!
Ah, California. Sigh.
That is a ghostly picture. Lots of half-life.
We have always had a very different social contract to America’s (and by US standards, less freedoms) which has avoided the worst of what you describe, but it is fraying fast. And I fear your words here are a vision of our future in many parts. The Lucky Country, the classless society is dividing high and low, dramatically.
I just buried an 86 y.o. uncle who fits your description of your relatives, albeit not as destitute at first. Little education, built a house, even a beach shack too eventually, to which he retired after many years of hard graft building roads. Could it be done now? Yes, just; smaller house a lot further out, and a permanent caravan site rather than a beach shack. But for the actual poor, who are being herded and shooed by property pricing into outer Forgetmeville, folk we once looked after basically but well, they are awfully close to the perils you described.
The climate here is very similar to lots of So Cal, and the Australian Dreaming was for the millions of fog and damp laden British. From the ’40’s to ’80’s, they made a new life here, for whom this was like a sunny, mild paradise. A Holden and a house instead of a rental terrace and a pushbike. They would no longer find it so.
Wow. You guys have said a mouthful. And well said, indeed.
I ask you to consider the following: the production and sales part of the American economy, the part that generates real wealth, is today almost entirely owned by corporate America. Steady “advances” in productivity have steadily eliminated the millions of jobs in production and sales that once enabled the less skilled to join the middle class. Most of this real wealth now accrues mainly to the owners and managers of corporate America. Given the shinking supply of real productive investments available over the past quarter century, much of this wealth in turn has been converted into real estate with the resultant proliferation of McMansions and gated communities in every preferred living area in the land. (We are talking here of about 10-15% of households in America).
On the other hand, higher education has equipped about 30% of households with sufficient credentialed clout to earn high incomes in health care, finance, insurance, public bureaucracies, professional services and the like, without, at the same time, creating any new wealth. Rather, all of these ‘post-industrial’ activities simply generate costs.
So . . . if you are among the 55-60% of households not among the corporate super rich or among the credentialed pretty rich, you are caught on both horns of this evolutionary dynamic. In other words, you are faced with declining prospects. (Mollified to some extent, of course, by the fattening foods whipped up by cheap Iowa corn and the planned obsolescence of cheap Chinese imports).
For these folks, staying inside this evolved economy is a guaranteed losing proposition.
The only escape is to jump ship and create your own economy, which, I suspect, is what Paul has done and so many others of us have done.
My knowledge of economics is, um, impoverished, but what you’ve written, Norm, sounds awfully sensible to me and applies greatly in Aus (minus gated communities, thank gawd). Glad to read that someone else thinks that a lot of things termed as “industries” are in reality costs, I always thought I was missing something.
I created my own economy: it failed, but that was the fault of the guy running it.
I hear you. The acute homeless problem is not unique to California; it’s severe in Oregon and Washington too, as well as other places, but in sheer numbers, you’ve got us beat, unfortunately.
My references to “cookie cutter houses” were not about affordable housing, but the to the expensive yet architectural dreary McMansions that are replacing the authentic little bungalows along the coast and other affluent areas.
I read quite a bit about what is driving the acute housing issues in California (and by extension, in Oregon and Washington too, to a lesser degree). And yes, Nimby is a serious issue. I’ve experienced it first hand here in Eugene, having been part of a citizen’s committee to review potential code changes. Everyone is in favor of greater density and infill, juts not in their particular neighborhood. The outcome was the opposite of what had been intended; instead of increasing density somewhat, they banned alley houses (like the ones I did), thus lowering density from what had been on the books for many decades. I could go on…
California is known for pioneering new trends in the country; unfortunately, some of them are not exactly desirable, but I fear they will spread nevertheless.
Los Angeles in particular is at the outer limits of sprawl and needs to get denser.
A lot of college towns all over the country experience the same problem on a smaller scale; after the consequences unforseen and otherwise of urban freeways and midcentury Urban Renewal came home to roost, America’s cities got very good at not building things and that legacy of NIMBYism is today preventing them from becoming *cities* again (or for the first time in the case of most of southern California apart from Downtown LA).
Really, the only exceptions I can think of are the Upper Midwest Rust Belt cities that shrunk so much starting in the ’60s/70s that they have a massive stock of fixer-uppers to house new arrivals, along with a handful of metros in deregulated Southern red states that are haphazardly stumbling into replicating 1970s SoCal because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”.
I hear you on this. Cali is a nice place to visit (except after game 7 of last year’s World Series if you are a Dodgers fan (Grrrr) ) but I would not want to live there. my Aunt and her family lives in Mission Viejo and it is a nice place to visit but I am glad to get home (and I live near Washington DC)
California Dreamin is a great song but it is a product of my mother’s and father’s teenage years and embodies the hopes of that generation.
As for me, I am a 1980’s child and grew up seeing the earthquakes(experienced the Northridge Earthquake in person on a school trip), the riots, OJ’s Bronco travels and poverty on TV. I have come to see the California dream as being like a rusty car with a new coat of paint. It is nice and shiny and looks great at 50 ft away but come up closer and you will see what it really is.
Perhaps all those 1980’s shoes like Knight Rider, ATeam and others gave a cynical bent to my thoughts on Cali. Perhaps the Dodgers not being able to actually win it all since the 1980’s even with all that money and star power has kinda of jaded me a bit.
Of course I did grow listening to songs like Sunset Grill by Don Henley which despite its awesome synth action and uplifting tempo, is very depressing and cynical song that details a dark underbelly in that California Dream (even more so then Hotel California)
In the end the singer, states that maybe he will leave by springtime.
Striking piece, Paul. The lost California you describe is oddly still the one fixed in my head, somewhere about, ooh, 1975. Huge bedsteads of cars swooshing along freeways, airconditioned, to wide and low mid-century houses, all in the sun, out the back into the in-ground pool, bountiful food. Perhaps even Alice the housekeeper with a sandwich after school….
In retrospect, we too had the sun and the room and a secure future, but all on less of a scale. No aircon, no in-ground pools, no dishwashers, shrunken six-cyl versions of the US bargery, no freeways really, the whole arrangement a slightly more uptight, frugal, English Empire one. Plenty of old biddies in hats, gloves, and Morrie Minors, for example.
All gone in both cases. But TV and film CA of 1965-1975 lives on as a fixture in my drifting mind.
Lots of Beetles here too, mostly in exactly the condition of the one in your photo. It looks like a Kodachrome snapshot from childhood made real. Also fast being replaced by the Japanese here by then.
Hitching and living on the road has long been done here, but largely by the tourists. There were certain locals, usually eccentric independent thinkers, who would do so, taking to the road with their tools. I strongly suspect our kiwibryce is one of them, with many an interesting tale of making do. We need to encourage him, somehow, to tell some of those tales. Such people have lived a version of your Californian dreaming, amongst gum trees, also by the Pacific. California Dreamin’ sounds the same played upside down…
My limited exposure to the California Dream came by way of Hollywood and radio. So many movies and television shows (both old and new) were filmed there that the place felt familiar. The Beach Boys and The Mamas and Papas were staples of the AM radio that filled life in the mid 1960s. I was of course too young to know what the whole California thing was about but it was alluring nonetheless.
I now have two brothers there (SoCal) and have visited a few times as an adult. It is easy to see why so many want to live there with the weather and beaches and what seems like the beautiful life. But the cost of living and the rest make me happy where I am. It’s a nice place to visit and all that.
Thanks for this beautifully written window into what that time and place was like.
“It is easy to see why so many want to live there with the weather and beaches and what seems like the beautiful life. But the cost of living and the rest make me happy where I am. It’s a nice place to visit and all that.”
I’d have to ditto that… I’ve been to San Francisco a few times on business (and in other CA airports on my way elsewhere), it was nice to visit for a few days, but I was quite happy to get back home. My “dreamin'” place these days is exactly where I’m at on the farm.
Because, you see, my temperament is such that I’ve never even considered hitchhiking, etc., and never took any solo road trips to ‘find myself’ or just chase a dream. And yet, I had a VW van as a DD for nearly eight years (that many mistook as a ‘hippie van’), followed by a DD Beetle for the next six years. Then the New Beetle (as Herbie) for the next twelve. The ’13 Beetle convertible that succeeded Herbie was shucked off eighteen months later – perhaps because, like CA, it no longer represented what my old air-cooled conveyances did?
I have to wonder, though – maybe there’s a little bit of Paul deep down inside me trying to get out?
What I probably failed to get across more fully is that being an outdoor person, it’s the endless natural beauty and variety that is by far the most compelling feature of California. The cities are necessary evils; I would be happy to never set foot in SF or LA again. But the sheer breathtaking splendor and incredible range of geographic diversity makes California still compelling to me, hence our recent road trip to Joshua Tree, a park we failed to explore when we lived there.
The problem is that although once upon a time, an outdoorsy person could live in LA or SF, and get to the outdoors quite readily on weekends. That’s becoming increasingly challenging. And living in the bowels of these giant metropolises with their endless traffic issues is for me utterly soul-sucking.
That’s why I left. Oregon’s mountains aren’t as spectacular as the Sierras, but they’re a lot easier to get to, and not nearly as overrun. Yet.
Excellent point and thanks for clarifying. I find the same kind of pleasure and enjoyment out here on the open prairie (but also enjoy going to the mountains from time-to-time). In fact, I took a long walkabout Sunday afternoon just to enjoy the snowy landscape.
Ed, you’re about as much a hippie as I am but I think you’re right about the PN in all of us. This site wouldn’t be near as fun without his stories and the “what if?” thoughts they inspire.
My “moving out west” dream almost came true, but was squashed the week before I left. I was in my early 20’s. I am content here, but when Mrs DougD and I spent a few days in San Diego we thought “ya, we could live here” but of course that is the unrealistic unbudgeted thought 🙂
And to add to PN’s comment about I have accepted that I can’t easily access mountains, but I know they are still there when I need them.
My first car was a 1966 Beetle purchased in March of 1976 (that’s me with my foot on the front bumper along with my siblings a two cousins thrown in) followed by two Karmann-Ghia convertibles. My second Ghia had an extractor with a glasspack exiting off to the right. I would always seek out garage parking because I loved the echo of that fat sound coming from such a modest engine, but I learned to avoid steep ramps because of the lack of clearance.
Here’s the photo.
I am a few years younger than Paul, so my my introduction to California was automotive, via Hot Wheels of course (https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/miniatures-toys/tcoal-from-tonka-to-hot-wheels-the-golden-age-of-toy-cars/). A few years later, my musical introduction came via Hotel California — both the song and the album — which celebrated the California extolled by The Mamas and the Papas but also mourned its loss. The last line in the album is “… if you call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.”
Ten years later I found myself in San Diego for work — I landed the day before Challenger exploded — and I am still here. San Diego in the 80s was a great place for a 20-something; I met the future Mrs CHD, and quickly found my way back when work returned me to the southeast (which I hated). I like San Diego, but never really felt like a Californian. By about 2000 there were plenty of moments when California started to feel like Hell, between the cost, the (almost) boring weather and the (seemingly) shallow residents. We very nearly decamped for New England (my parents’ original home region) before the kids started school, but having a steady job during recessions kept us here.
Now the kids are all college age, and they all went “back East” for school. You’d think that would make me more eager to return to my roots, but oddly enough it’s what has finally made me feel like a Californian, as they all say they want to come back. IOW, home will be where the (eventual) grandkids are…
Excuse my lack of love for old sixties Beetles. Not ideal transportion in the midst of a cold winter day. I remember being driven to high school a few times by my friend’s brother. Stuffed in the back listening to the engine wheeze and huff in the back, barely putting out any heat in the minus 30 (F) morning temp. Not a car for Canadian winters boys and girls.
First trip to California was in the summer of 72 after I graduated high school. It was an eye opener. Nice cars and very nice American girls!
Lots of interesting stories and views here on California .
I hope to be able to finish my years here, it’s still a good place to live IMO .
-Nate