California, preaching on the burning shore
California, I’ll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
— Grateful Dead from “Estimated Prophet”
I’m writing this Saturday’s column a couple days earlier than usual. My deadline is noon Thursday and I normally write it Wednesday night but I’m flying to Southern California in the morning and, as much as I enjoy sharing my so-called colorful life with you all, there are other things I’d rather be doing come the middle of this week.
While I still have friends and family here in Michigan, my son, brother, daughter and only grandchild are all out on the Left Coast. My son, Michael is in the South Bay, Torrance to be specific, home of the Beach Boys. We’ll probably look in on Brian and see if we can hang out in his sand box for a while. If Mike Love shows up, we won’t be staying. Mike Love — not a fan.
My son works in Huntington Beach, at a shop on the strand, selling T-shirts, sunglasses and swimwear. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up a sweet “Dump Trump” tee, featuring a colorful beach scene. #Nice
I plan on spending the better part of a week with my younger brother, Jonathan. Jonathan spent most of the ’80s and part of the ’90s singing and playing guitar in the LA post-punk rock scene before he decided to switch gears and perform neurosurgery. He used to have waist-length dreads and wore black. Now he has real short hair and rocks green scrubs. People change.
Today he lives with his wife and kids on the eastern edge of LA County in Claremont, the “City of Trees and PhD’s,” at the foot of 10,000 foot tall Mt. Baldy. Lovely town, chock-a-block with colleges, galleries and restaurants.
My daughter, Angela, lives north of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Rafael, the town that invented “yuppies” and where even the cops drive BMWs.
These people of mine all live in California because I took them there, 37 years ago and they decided to stick around. Jonathan wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll. Angela wanted to reopen Alcatraz. Debbie and I left Michigan for fun, adventure and big-ass mountains. We found all that and more.
First we spent a year in Columbia, an 1850’s Gold Rush town that is still intact and lives today as a Historic State Park. It’s been a popular shooting location for scores of western films. After that, we lived on a ranch in the foothills near Yosemite with a half dozen horses and the occasional diamondback rattler. Finally, we lived on some acreage at the edge of where the Wine Country merges with the Redwoods, in a cottage surrounded by trees the size of God. Arguably some of the nicest locations in the state
Debbie and I have always been “counter culture” for lack of a better term but Angela was such a mini-Republican that we used to refer to her as “our little Nancy Reagan.” When she was around 9, I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up. “I want to own a prison,” she answered. Keep in mind this was in the years before for-profit penitentiaries.
“OK, that’s disturbing on a couple levels,” I told her, adding, “You can’t OWN a prison but I guess you could be a warden.”
“That’s it!” she enthused, beaming at the notion.
Today, after receiving a degree in Criminal Justice, she runs a County Juvenile Lock-up. She’s a size 7, tops, with a black belt in taekwondo. I’m pretty sure I can still take her.
So I’m going all Californication for a couple weeks — one down in La-La Land and one up in Gold Country. For the next publication, I’m going to petition the paper to publish a chapter from my book, “A Very Fine Wing-Shot” that ran in these pages a couple years back. I’ll be somewhere between the North Bay and the Sierras.
See you all in two weeks. Until then I’ll be “preaching on that golden shore.”
And so it went.
Don Negus is a Morning Sun columnist. Email: dhughnegus@gmail.com