The Dream of California

"Never saw my hometown
till I stayed away too long."
-Tom Waits


My father's illness and imminent death drew me back to California. It had been ten years since I actually lived there. I had spent my first thirty years in Los Angeles and San Francisco then I migrated to Texas due to a job change.

I moved to Nashville in 1983 with my wife, Lori. From 1983 to 1993 we never returned to California. I had a lot of excuses. Too busy, Too expensive. Too unfamiliar. Even when they discovered my father's cancer and a operation was scheduled to remove his lung, I didn't go home.

When people in Nashville asked us why we moved from Los Angeles I'd shrug it off with, "you don't think we could live in that crazy town, Loca de Los Angeles, ese?"
When people asked about our history in L.A., I said we didn't have one. "Heritage in L.A. goes back as far as 1945."

I got pulled over by a policeman after I had just moved to Nashville. I turned left on a yellow caution light. I tried to tell him, that's how we do it California, it moves the traffic along faster. (God knows, I had a better idea.) He looked me straight in the eye and said " I don't give a good goddamn how you do it in California. This is how we do it here." A car passed us by that had a bumper sticker on it that read, The Bible said it, I believe it, and that's that." There is no grey area like in California, it is black and white.

I had received a call about my father's quickly declining health from my sister. I flew out to Los Angeles as soon as possible.I was sitting on the couch in my parent's living room in San Pedro. The thin veneer that holding my emotions in check exploded apart that day. I faced my father as he sat in his old easy chair. It hurt to see the formally strapping man so small, engulfed in pillows and covered up like a boy-king sitting in the monarch's chair. His face was thin and taut. His skinny and twisted ankles and wrists, misshapen and blue. It was hard to believe that this same man had, in my youth ridiculed and bullied me. I used to wish he would die in a car wreck when I was in high school. I swore I would never be like him. I would never treat my children the way he treated me. Ironically, I had become a shadow of my father as a parent. I was the bully I swore I'd never become. Somehow I knew my only relief would come through talking to my father.

I traveled to Los Angeles fully intending to talk about my feelings. But until I got there I didn't realize just how sick dad was. (When I told my wife, Lori what I was about to do when I got out there she said, " why don't you not make it about you, don't talk about the past, but be of help to your mom and dad."

I took to dad to treatments and he never complained or showed any fear. He used humor, I suppose, to make doctors, nurses, techs, feel less pressure to deal with his pain. I had to carry him to and from the car and and sometimes I felt like, I was his father. One day I was sitting quietly with him in his living room. He seemed to drift in and out of sleep. He didn't appear to notice me. I was caught off guard when suddenly he said, " Thank you for helping your mother and I" he said slowly. I tried to say something but my words came out slurred. He continued, " I know you always thought it was your fault." I couldn't quite believe what he said, it seemed so out of context. "What did you say dad?" He repeated, " I know you always thought it was your fault," he continued, " but you weren't the problem I was."

My dad put his head in his hands and began sobbing. I had never seen him cry before. My father, who only prayed privately, asked if my mother and I could join him in prayer. (I thought my father, who was a cradle Catholic, would begin reciting the Lord's prayer. ) I was shocked when he took both my mother and my hands, and asked God for forgiveness. In prayer he said he was sorry for the things said in anger, and for all the things he left unsaid. He said he was a drunk and always scared how he could support my mother and sister and I. He raged out of fear, never out of lack of love. I asked for forgiveness for all the trouble I'd been growing up and for all my thoughts and hate and revenge. Mom and dad and I cried together and tried to hold on to our collapsing bodies. Like a Renaissance sculpture the scene was indelibly cast in my mind. I would never forget it.

I left the house at dusk. I wanted to be alone. The mixture of contrition and mea culpas had left me drained. I pulled my parents car out of the driveway and backed out onto Western Avenue, headed for Portuguese Bend.




My earliest memories growing up in California centered around driving in the family car. The cadence of the tires on the road gave me a warm feeling of security. Eventally, after watching the rhythmic shadows of the overhead wires on my car ceiling, I would fall asleep. No matter has short my nap, I woke up refreshed. It seemed like every weekend we would drive on trips with no destinations. We would stop at antique stores. Parks, Mexican restaurants. (Actually in the '50s I believe they were called "spanish restaurants.") My father's hobby was cooking "Spanish food." We would drive half a day to try out another enchilada sauce or chile rellanos. The town's names were exotic...Temecula, Pala, Calexico. No drive would be too far, no errand too small. The age of affordable transportation and fuel was upon us and we could see the future. And the future was the highway in front of us. The freedom of those California drives would carve and important fact in my psyche. No matter how difficult the problem, I could always avoid them by, as Mark Twain said, " lighting out for the Territory."

A lot of the old roads look the same as they did forty years ago. Only the unattended asphalt cracks are deeper and wider. The abandoned stone filling stations with their rusted pumps colored by years sitting on the sides of the highways. The pealed and faded signs that advertise products that are no longer part of our vocabulary. The stark and unkempt overgrowth of shrubbery. They are still there. The roads are the link to the past for my generation.



I drove to the cliffs about the ocean at White Park at the end of Western Avenue. I walked through a vacant baseball diamond and sat on the broken concrete World War ll gun mounts that protected the west coast from the "yellow peril." This place was familiar to me. I had spent a good portion of my life running and playing along these bluffs. The warmth of the sun, the bright reflective light off of the ocean, and the pick-axed silhouette of Catalina Island off the horizon felt familiar. I began to feel like I was emerging from a deep, dark cave. Finally an afternoon breeze put me at ease. I could smell the mixture of chaparral and pepper trees. For the first time I felt at home. I could breath.

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