Half the people I know say they’ve had it with California and are leaving the state for saner climes. And that was before the election.
Well, nobody ever said the allure of the Golden State was based on sanity, and now with Conan the Barbarian running things in Sacramento (he is actually moving there, isn’t he?), who knows how many more will flee the sinking ship. I wish him well. I have to. I still have a significant part of my family and fortune dependent on the success of this regime change. At least in the short term.
Among those who have defected are my daughter, Betty, and her husband, Mark, who washed their hands of the whole mess a few weeks ago and moved into their new house in Bozeman, Mont. They sold their little two-bedroom, one-bath home in a lovely old Manhattan Beach neighborhood. Theirs was about the only original house left, the rest having morphed into mansions squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder on tiny lots. It sold in one day. One phone call, actually, to a builder who will raze it and construct yet another manse. Sad. But the time was right.
Bozeman is beautiful, all of it, but particularly the southeast part where the new house is nestled in rolling hills adjoining the national forest with a long view west across the Gallatin Valley to the mountains. Even with the hassle of moving into an unfinished house with carpenters, electricians and landscapers still at work, the whole effect was utterly relaxing. It’s only about 4 miles to Main Street where a dozen cars at a stop sign is a Montana traffic jam. Drivers are unfailingly polite. No honking, even at a driver turning the wrong way on a one-way street. Even in an SUV with California plates. If there’s latent hostility toward expat Californians, famous for complaining when the snow piles up in their new driveways, I didn’t see it. Mostly the natives seem to respond with bemused tolerance. My daughter will ditch the California plates immediately. She may even test drive a Subaru, at the behest of her husband, who went to school at MSU and would like to look a bit more like a native, or at least less like a Californian.
After 10 days of helping Betty unpack and settle in, long walks with their border collie along the edge of the forest, whitetail deer grazing behind the house every evening and smashing sunsets, I was ready to stay. I even cruised around town looking at houses with For Rent and For Sale signs on them. I bought a copy of Homes and Land and found some outlying properties that might do for Betty’s sister, Susan, who says she’s ready to leave California, too.
But not quite.
Susan has the best job, the one with all the benefits (medical, dental, pension and profit sharing, the works), so she’s the one who would have to seek employment at a greatly reduced salary. Her husband would have to sell his business, and I would have to sell our home. This is not, however, a particularly good time to sell the house, scorched siding and deck not yet replaced and the landscape still black from last summer’s wildfire. My son would stay to run the ranch. The kids figure it will be worth more after Tejon Ranch, our neighbor to the east, gets its long-planned residential development under way. I somehow thought they would never sell it, but it’s an old story in California. Ranches and farmland get crowded out by suburban sprawl, and people who move in thinking they want the country life soon begin to complain about the lack of amenities and the proximity of livestock. They’re never prepared for horse pucky and dusty roads. I guess I’m not quite ready to move either. I’m still replanting trees and shrubs that burned, harvesting the few tomatoes and onions that survived. The last of the apples and pears in the ranch orchard came ripe while I was in Bozeman but the kids didn’t have time to pick more than a few. And the persimmons will be ripe soon, but if I pick them, I’ll have to make cookies. Oh well, I can always leave them for the blue jays.
I’ll be missing Betty and Mark and my 4-year-old granddaughter at Thanksgiving and Christmas. My sister and I will have to square off with the remaining Republicans, depending, of course, on how the Terminator is doing. Will he repeal the car tax and drivers licenses for illegals? Will he be recalled for serial groping? Or will he help us get a better shake from Washington? California has never seen a better time for lively political discourse. Is there a chance we’ll ever see our President kissing Maria Shriver’s hand? Nah. Way too Continental for a Texan.