I have only been in California three times, and I just returned from my first trip there since 1978. I was in the bay area in 1978, a place where God’s creative genius and the foolishness of man are both displayed in a spectacular fashion.
But this time I was in southern California for four days, visiting expensive tourist traps with my wife and kids. They had fun, and that was the purpose of the vacation, but my impressions of southern California are far from the romanticized surf music of the 1960s.
The first thing we learned about California is that gasoline is about forty cents a gallon more just across the border than it is in Arizona, and it’s best to buy gas on the Arizona side, if possible. I assume the difference is because of state taxes, not anything related to oil companies or supply and demand. I couldn’t help but recall former California governor Gray Davis saying that California is at war with Texas and big oil. Believe me, Texans were never routed at the Alamo the way Californians are routed every day at the gas pump. It seems evident that Texans won the war and Californians lost, but the reality is far more complicated than that. California is the ultimate laboratory for the display of the excesses of capitalism and the madness of socialism. Their war is really with Saudi Arabia (though they would rather blame Texans for it) and with their own desire to tax themselves into oblivion.
California is so expensive for tourists that we were only able to go because we could stay with friends. They live in a very nice $600,000 home, and I dare not speculate about their mortgage payments. Their $600,000 house would be two or three times more expensive if it were conveniently located. As is, it is near a farm at the end of a cow pasture. The stench outside their front door is unbelievable, considering the expense of living there. A house with the same aroma in Hereford, Texas would probably cost 80% less.
Worse than putting up with the cows, our friends have to drive two hours each way on the freeways to their jobs, to their son’s school, or to the church they pastor. We went to Legoland on Monday, Knott’s Berry Farm on Tuesday and Newport Beach on Wednesday, always with approximately the same two hour drive times each way. Unfortunately, my commutes in Phoenix are similar, because of the Dial-a-Ride buses I ride, so none of this shocks me very much. But nearly everyone in southern California is similarly inconvenienced, and I can barely imagine an entire culture being crushed by astronomical expenses and the exponentially greater hardships of California life.
One of the bleakest moments of the trip was when our hosts confessed that they don’t really have any friends. If someone gave me a pulpit and an audience for two hours every Sunday, I think I would eventually be friends with somebody, but perhaps not in California, where the daily struggle to survive saps everyone of the energy they might normally spend on relationships with other people.
On Monday night I sat and watched “24″ with them, a TV show whose plot includes a terrorist nuclear attack on the city of Los Angeles area, and I wondered if I wouldn’t sleep more comfortably in Toledo or Saginaw than I would in Los Angeles. I sat on the beach Wednesday and hoped that the San Andreas fault would hold itself together a little bit longer, and I thought about tidal waves, mud slides, forest fires, and the more immediate concern that someone on a California freeway might send my family and me into eternity prematurely. Most of all, I thought about my grandparents who lived in a small house in Amarillo, and I thought about how much wealthier they were than virtually anyone in southern California, where no amount of money can separate you from the catastrophe California has become and will likely be in the near future.
Of course, the glass is half full. My kids had a wonderful time, which they will probably remember for the rest of their lives, but I hope they gained some insight too. I hope they’ll confine their California days to visits, but they will never dwell with the teeming masses.
I forgot to mention the sunburn, from which I am still recovering. I get around, I’ve felt the warmth of the sun, but there weren’t any good vibrations. So don’t worry baby, I’m leaving.
Tags: Add new tag, CALIFORNIA
