In “Notes From a Native Daughter,” Joan Didion includes the follow anecdote, to illustrate a larger point about the tragedy of nostalgia, and the loss to one’s cultural patrimony that comes with immigration:

“I want to tell you a Sacramento story.  A few miles out of town is a place, six or seven thousand acres, which belonged in the beginning to a rancher with one daughter.  That daughter went abroad and married a title, and when she brought the title home to live on the ranch, her father built them a vast house – music rooms, conservatories, a ballroom.  They needed a ballroom because they entertained: people from abroad, people from San Francisco, house parties that lasted weeks and involved special trains.  They are long dead, of course, but their only son, aging and unmarried, still lives on the place.  He does not live in the house, for the house is no longer there.  Over the years it burned, room by room, wing by wing.  Only the chimneys of the great house are still standing, and its heir lives in the shadow, lives by himself on the charred side, in a house trailer. 

That is a story my generation knows; I doubt that the next will know it, the children of the aerospace engineers.  Who would tell it to them?  Their grandmothers live in Scarsdale, and they have never met a great-aunt.  “Old” Sacramento to them will be something colorful, something they read about in Sunset.  They will probably think that the Redevelopment has always been there, that the Embarcadero, down along the river, with its amusing places to shop and its picturesque fire houses turned into bars, has about it the true flavor of the way it was.  There will be no reason for them to know that in homelier days it was called Front Street (the town was not, after all, settled by the Spanish) and was a place of derelicts and missions and itinerant pickers in town for a Saturday-night drunk: VICTORIOUS LIFE MISSION, JESUS SAVES, BEDS 25 [cents] A NIGHT, CROP INFORMATION HERE.  They will have lost the real past and gained a manufactured one, and there will be no way for them to know, no way at all, why a house trailer should stand alone on seven thousand acres outside town.” 

There is much to be mined from these two spare chunks of text, much to be gleaned from “a Sacramento story” of such thin but resonant detail that one cannot help but to read between the lines, sensing a whiff of incest (a rancher with one daughter but no wife), a subconscious reference to Consuelo Vanderbilt or Margaretta Drexel, a potential code for pre-Stonewall homosexuality.  And then there is that final telescoping of all the cautionary tales ever written about the dangers of inherited wealth: Fitzgerald and Mann and Welles and Paris Hilton, all rolled into seven grammatical cabochons strung along a glittering, baroque, paragraph.

There is also, of course, the mobius strip of irony that one could trace along through every implied and explicated accusation in the second paragraph.  For instance: the whole idea that we children of the aerospace engineers would neither care about nor understand a story told to us by a daughter of the gentry.  Or, more specifically, that we, who have visited our great-aunts in Omaha and Montgomery, and whose grandmother fled small-town Nebraska to live in Altadena (Scarsdale?  Surely there are more apposite symbols of suburban ahistoricism?) could not draw the moral parallels between every noir film ever made and the poor marriages made by our ancestors.  Or, that we, who grew up playing video games in Old Sac* did not, with the fearful glee peculiar to pre-pubescent boyhood, climb every chain-link fence we could find in order to explore the crumbling piers upon which every building in that part of town was jacked up after the floods of 1861.  Or, that we who stand accused of a willful ignorance of history, would not treasure in our hearts the moment when we first discovered the 1920s-era Moderne-style frescos painted upon the river wall undergirding Front Street.  A pretty piece of early civic beautification that was covered over almost as soon as the paint had dried and was not revealed until the “Redevelopment” Ms. Didion so much disdains.

Or.  

As if we, who attended the public schools of this fair city, did not sit through “now listen, children, because this story is important” lectures from our teachers.  Lectures such as the one about the poor engineer who built the great railroad.  You know this story, surely, dear reader.  The story of the engineer who was forced from his seat on the company board when he refused to find a way to move the mountains 20 miles westward, the better to cheat the federal government out of a quarter of a million dollars. The story of the engineer who was thus himself cheated out of his fair share of the profits from what became the Central Pacific. 

This lesson was not taught, apparently, to the children of Ms. Didion’s generation.  For while tales of loss, and the ever-receding golden dream, appear prominently in many of her stories, no references to theft appear in “Notes.”  Not stories about thefts perpetrated by rich Sacramentans upon engineers who came out of the East; not even stories that end with the hero dying in his wife’s arms in a New York apartment, as poor Judah did 140 years ago. 

No, those stories came later. 

Finally, as if at least one of us who learned those stories did not later attend the university built with the fortune stolen from the poor engineer, the better to learn precisely how gauchely spent were the profits that accrued to Mr. Crocker, the grantor of our hometown’s premier artistic institution.  As if those of us who spent our 20s in those picturesque firehouse bars did not wink and hoot at the music of bands become famous for their send-ups of our post-feminist objectifying gaze, our ironic poses, our pretensions to rebellious knowledge.  As if we, who grew up in Xanadu, would not return as adults and take up the challenge of transforming the mundane into the miraculous.

We have not lost our past, Ms. Didion, not least because you were there to tell it to us in such terrifyingly precise prose.  Not least because this story has become part of the canon; it was placed on the approved list of short stories taught in California 11th-grade English classes sometime before 1990.  So by way of rebutting your claim that there is no way for a child of an aerospace engineer to understand, precisely, why a house trailer should stand alone on seven thousand acres outside of town, I am going to tell you a Sacramento story of my own.

I left this fertile valley some years ago, to seek the fruits of knowledge.  Upon achieving a title, and finding a spouse, I then followed my career to a foul and barren place.  Escaping thence, I have returned, and will soon take possession of my parents’ home, in Midtown. 

Being temporarily unemployed, I sought to make myself useful around the house, and proceeded to tear from off our detached four-car garage the growth of ivy which had accumulated upon it.  I succeeded in removing upwards of two cord’s-worth of vines (but leaving, beyond reach, hundreds of pounds-worth on the roof).  By this process I gradually revealed the old doors that, locked, rusted, and warped, open on to the alley. 

My parents’ current boarder – a woman sick in body and mind whose tenure in our house is indeterminate – then asked if she might store her car in one of the garage bays.  A search for the relevant keys produced two: one for the west-most door (helpfully labeled “garage-dogs” as one of our former pets tore a hole in the wall that abuts the yard, the better to chase neighborhood cats), and the one next to it (less helpfully labeled simply “garage”).  Upon opening “garage” we discovered the chassis for a 1940s-era “salesman’s coupe” left there by a neighbor who then skipped town, but whom (we surmise) returned surreptitiously to recover the most valuable part of the car, which is to say the engine.  We also discovered that the roof had caved in: a branch had fallen from the large elm growing in the yard of the Section-8 complex next door.  The interior thus presented a jungle-like atmosphere, with tendrils of ivy and ropy old spider webs cascading through filtered green light.  This space thus occupied with verdure and (potentially valuable) junk, we turned to door #2. 

Upon opening “garage-dogs,” we discovered the laundry hooks, TV cart, and shelving installed by the space’s last tenant, a homeless man we ejected from the property at least a decade ago.  These additions were easily removed, however, and our boarder parked her car.  A neighbor, wandering by, offered both to take the TV cart off our hands and to find a buyer for the coupe on Ebay.  She also told us about the (former) inhabitant of the east-most space, of whose existence I had not until this moment known.** 

It would seem that, approximately 8 years ago, when the elderly neighbor across the alley was approaching her final end, she hired a woman as an in-home supportive care nurse.  This woman proceeded to help herself to her charge’s supply of pain medication.  When the owner of the house died, the nurse was hopelessly addicted.  Penniless, she then made her home in my parents’ garage until (I gathered) her own relatives came to collect her some weeks later.*** 

This space also contains a mechanic’s pit – a place of fright and caution from my boyhood.  I can only contemplate with some degree of horror the idea of living in a 10×20 space, thick with the dust of 80 years of decrepitude, and containing in its center a 6X3X4 concrete trench.

I am not sure what the lesson is of this little fable.  But I do know that the past is always manufactured, as surely Ms. Didion – one of the best fabricators in the business – knows. 

*Note how the children of immigrants re-name, in the ultimate act of squat-claiming, the very place itself.  That, at least, Didion got right.   

**I am reminded here of a quote from the Simpsons: “We knew about the spider eggs…but the Hanta virus, whoa-hoh! That really came out of left field!”

***This is not strictly true, as I learned after writing this piece.  But such things are never “strictly” true, as Didion reminds us, time after time, in other pieces (e.g., “On Keeping a Notebook”).  The “truth” is in the emotional force of the writing; in what might, or could, or should have been the case.  “Facts,” when not boringly mundane, have a distressing tendency to offer uncomfortably slippery interpretions.  The facts are that the homeless woman was discovered not by her family, but by the woman who has cleaned my parents’ home for two decades.  In an act of charity, the housecleaner took her into her (and so, by partial extension, my parents’) employ.  The facts are simply a matter of digging around for the buried narrative.  The truth, on the other hand, lies somewhere else. 

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Oh, but yes, she did.

Not only did the junior senator from New York openly compare herself to a mobster…

But she allowed herself to be sandbagged by her own supporters into choosing a Celine Dion song as her theme.

I’m sorry, but is someone actually getting paid to give her this sort of advice?  Is this what the best and the brightest at Georgetown (or wherever they hire fresh-faced young consultants from these days) could come up with?

Hillary Clinton as a mobster.  And not just any mobster, but one whose primary “legitimate” business consists of profiting from the exploitation of women’s bodies (in booming PA voice: “Paging Catherine MacKinnon, paging Catherine MacKinnon.  Please report to the lecture hall for an emergency session on semiotics with the junior senator from New York.  The situation is critical.  We need your presence immediately.  Paging Catherine MacKinnon, paging Catherine MacKinnon…”). 

A song by a Canadian.  And I love me my Canadians.  They’re fabulous people.  But for pity’s sake, she’s running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.  Pick a song by a naturalized immigrant, at the very least.

I’m very sorry, but this is a stupid, and very unfunny, joke.

*Said, by the way, with a glottal stop.

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That is all for now. 

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if the umbrage quotient — and, perhaps, the frequency of posting — declines in the next few weeks.

I’ve been spending my time too blissed out by actually being in a real city (where you can get decent sushi, and good beer on draft, quite apart from all the other pleasures of metropolitan life), in a place that actually works (I had entirely forgotten what a remarkable difference street-sweeping makes), run by people who, while certainly imperfect in many ways, at least have real debates (on, say, health care) on real issues (and not on, say, too-sexy cheerleading).

Yeah, and the gay pride parade?  You know what convinced me that this is all going to be okay in the long-term?  Sure there were a bunch of hate-obsessed unfortunates with nothing better to do of a Saturday afternoon than to indoctrinate their spawn into the gospel of fear and loathing by staging a “counter-parade.”  But you know what?  There was also no wet-boxer shorts contest.  For that I am profoundly thankful.

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The good folks at Lawyers, Guns, and Money get the point, I think, basically right: whatever else may produce anti-gay mobilization, the idea that making gay marriage legal, followed by taking a vote on the matter twice, will somehow lead to a mass attack of the vapors, is simply more of the kind of shite that Rev. King addressed in the opening passages of Letter From a Birmingham Jail.  Mealy-mouthed go-slow-itism is, to be quite precise about the matter, either cowardly or mendacious.  In either case, it is shameful. 

If you don’t think gay people ought to get married (or even if you don’t care), fine: be honest about it.  If you think we have more important issues to be fighting about (like oh, I don’t know, 3500 Americans dying for a lie), fine: be honest about it.  And if you support gay marriage, then for pity’s sake do something about it.  But whatever the case, don’t resort to utterly stupid arguments to support your POV. 

Just sayin’.

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So, my life in Texas was all one big trip through the inferno, right?  Only I haven’t yet figured out who should stand in the place of Brutus, Cassius, or Judas Iscariot (the last stuffed face-first into the devouring mouth of Satan, himself frozen waist-deep in an eternally-frozen lake of Cocytus — now there’s an image!).   But be that as it may…

My current project (other than, you know, finding a job), might qualify as cleaning out the Augean stables.*  On spare mornings in between giving out my resume to all and sundry, I’ve been sorting through the accumulated junk my parents have aquired over the past 30 years of living the same house.  This includes:

- boxes that my cousin used to ship his stuff out here 11 years ago.

- the rear door to a dodge minivan (crumpled when a diabetic old man went into hypoglycemic shock and plowed into the back of the car at 2 a.m. in the morning.  Luckily, he survived.  Unluckily, as he was driving with a suspended-for-medical-reasons license, our insurance company was not amused).  We haven’t owned the car to which this door originally fit since I was in college.

- the removable middle passenger seat for said Dodge minivan.

- a mummified PC computer, of indeterminate age.  

- at least a cord (that would be 8′X4′X4′) of ivy, ripped from the fence and garage in the back yard. 

- 3 dead fans.

- 4 broken ten-speed bikes.

- 2 busted bread machines.

- 2 rusted-shut lawn mowers.

- 2 disgustingly filthy dog-cages (with the doors long since gone), neither of which has been used in at least five years.

- the chassis for what we think is a ‘50 Chevrolet “salesman’s coupe”

- at least one metal folding chair with the words “Christ United Methodist Church” stenciled on to the back.  This would be the church that housed the Montesorri-type elementary school I attended up until 3rd grade.

- Assorted two-by-fours, one-by-sixes, staves, metal rods, chicken-wire, posts, and screens — all from past construction projects.

- Approximately 6 banker’s boxes full of medical supplies “waiting” to be shipped down to Honduras.

- Approximately 8 paper grocery bags full of books, also “waiting” to be shipped down to Honduras.

And more goddamned packing peanuts — which have somehow migrated out from the basement and into the far reaches of the backyard — than I could have imagined.

I leave aside the material belonging to my parents’ current tenant, which is packed into such bosonic concentrations in my old room that she has to sleep only on one half of the bed.  

**Perhaps I may in fact have to divert the American River to clean this shite up.

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Now why it took until I was 33 years old to learn lesson #1 is, perhaps, a question in its own right.  But be that as it may, I have in fact finally figured out that a trip to Sacramento’s own mecca of commodity fetishism will avail me naught.  Because even when I want two very simple items (a pack of thank-you cards and a tie-rack), and even when I traverse the entire length of the mall (twice, mind you, as it is two-storied), I can find neither item.  

Author: Parden me, but do you sell tie-racks?

Clerk at Sears: Um, what?

Author: You know, something to hang my ties from?

Clerk: Oh. Yeah, no.  Try J.C. Penney’s.

Tromp, tromp, to the other end of the mall.

Author: Pardon me, but do you sell tie racks?  You know, something to hang my ties from?

Clerk in the housewares department at Penney’s:  Neckties! Try menswear on the first floor!

Author: No, see, I don’t want to buy a necktie, I want to buy a… oh, never mind.

Tromp, tromp half-way back to Sears, where I pop into Papyrus. There I quickly discover that while it is possible to purchase a thank-you card, it is only possble to purchase the kind of hand-made paper with embossed gold figure of a frog (or butterfly, or whatever) thank-you card that screams “I am a bored housewife in Fair Oaks!” or (which amounts to the same thing) “I am a screaming queen!” (feel free to imagine me screaming at this point).

Tromp, tromp damn near back to Sears, where I briefly enter the Hallmark store.  Assaulted on the one hand by a wave of potpourri so strong it makes my eyes water, and on the other hand by the visual cacaphony of painted Lladro knock-off figurines of kitty-cats in trees and apple-cheeked cherubim playing fetch with Rover (OMG, gag me with a spoon), I run, not quite screaming, from the store.

At this point, I have walked the length of the mall, twice, and spent nary a dime.  This, my friends, is a failure of commerce. 

I got back in my car and fled across the river to the ever-loving arms of Midtown (or Land Park, more precisely) and went straight to Target.  Where, in less than 10 minutes, I walked out with a tie-rack and a pack of tastefully monochromatic (the chroma being sage or some other such yuppified shade of green) thank-you cards. 

Thus endeth the lesson.

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A 17-foot U-Haul is remarkably easy to maneuver and even has an acceptable turning radius.  

If you ever find yourself in Amarillo — and you have all my sympathies should such a sorry occasion come to pass — make sure to visit Cadillac Ranch. 

The radio improves by a rather stunning degree the literal moment you cross over the border into New Mexico.  Tucumcari, for instance, has a complaint rock station, a girl-rock station, and a classical station.  And that’s all.  No goddamned Toby Keith to be heard; or at least not by the reception of our U-Haul radio. And while it is true that the number of Spanish-language stations improved monotonically as we approached the Promised Land, mariachi (or even better, Spanish versions of songs such as Stop! Dementica), is infinitely preferable to the treacly and chauvinist ramblings of Jasper’s bards.

Once in one’s life, drive a portion of Route 66.  Drive as much of it as you can, in fact.  Preferably all in one go.  

If you find yourself on I-40 in the Mojave, make the time to drop by the closest thing one can come to a real-life counterpart to the Bagdad Cafe.  It’s in Ludlow, but it still effectively evoked the movie.  Plus the view is stunning. 

Needles, it turns out, has a fine beach (Zack Smith Marina; note the Black family in the photo.  God love California).  Perfect, in fact, for washing oneself clean of the filth of Texas.

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No, really, I did.  I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.

As a colleague put it oh so well, “I thought we weren’t supposed to do that anymore?”

It seemed a not-unfitting end to my time in that place. 

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They don’t want my always, already, tainted blood.

Not even when the Red Cross (hello! Red Cross?  You know, the place that Liddy Dole used to run, for crying out loud?) asks for it.

Whatev.  I’ll keep my iron-rich O+, thank you very much.

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