The Californiacs | Page 2

no longer apologize for being a Bostonian; I proffer no explanations. I make the damaging admission the instant I meet people and leave the matter of further recognition to them. If they choose to consider that Boston bringing-up a social bar sinister, so be it. I have discovered recently that the fact that I happened to be born in Rio Janeiro offers some amelioration. But nothing can entirely remove the handicap. So, I reiterate, indurated as I am to pity, the contemptuous attitude of the average Californiac did not at first annoy me. But after a while even I, calloused New Englander that I am, began to resent it.
This, for instance, may happen to you at any time in California - it is the Californiac's way of paying the greatest tribute he knows:
"Do you know," somebody says, "I should never guess that you were an Eastener. You're quite like one of us - cordial and simple and natural."
"But-but," you say, trying to collect your wits against this left-handed compliment, "I don't think I differ from the average Easterner."
"Oh, yes, you do. You don't notice it yourself, of course. But I give you my word, nobody will ever suspect that you are an Easterner unless you tell it yourself. They really won't."
"But-but," you say, beginning to come back, "I have no objection whatever to being known as an Easterner."
That holds her for a moment. And while she is casting about for phrases with which to meet this extraordinary condition, you rally gallantly. "In fact, I am Proud of being an Easterner."
That ends the conversation.
Or somebody in a group asks you what part of the East you're from.
"New York," perhaps you reply.
"New York. My husband came from New York," she goes on. "He was brought up there. But he's lived in California for twenty years. He got the idea a few years ago that he wanted to go back East. I said to him, 'All right, we'll go back and visit for a while and see how you like it.' One month was enough for him. The people there are so cold and formal and conventional, and then, my dear, your climate!"
"Yes," another takes it up. "When I was in the East, a friend invited me out to his place in the country. He wanted me to see his pine grove. My dears, if you could have seen those little sticks of trees."
"I went to New York once," a third chimes in. "I never could get accustomed to carrying an ice umbrella - I couldn't close it when I got home. I'd come to stay for a month but I left in a week.
And so it goes. No feeling on anybody's part of your sense of outrage. In fact, Californiacs always use the word eastern in your presence as a synonym for cold, conventional, dull, stupid, humorless.
Sometimes it actually casts a blight - this Californoia - on those who come to live in California. I remember saying once to a young man - just in passing and merely to make conversation: "Are you a native son?"
His face at once grew very serious. "No," he admitted reluctantly. "You see, it was my misfortune to be born in Iowa, but I came out here to college. After I'd graduated I made up my mind to go into business here. And now I feel that all my interests are in California. Of course it isn't quite the same as being born here. But sometimes I feel as though I really were a native son. Everybody is so kind. They do everything in their power to make you forget -"
"Good heavens," I interrupted, "are you apologizing to me for being born in Iowa? I've never been in Iowa, but nothing could convince me that it isn't just as good a place as any other place, including California. The trouble with you is that you've let these Californiacs buffalo you. What you want to do is to throw out your chest and insist that God made Iowa first and the rest of the world out of the leavings."
If you mention the eastern winter to a Californiac, he tells you with great particularity of the dreadful storms he encountered there. Nothing whatever about the beauty of the snow. To a Californiac, snow and ice are more to be dreaded than hell-fire and brimstone. If you mention the eastern summer, he refers in scathing terms to the puny trees we produce, the inadequate fruits and vegetables. Nothing at all about their delicious flavor. To a Californiac, beauty is measured only by size. Nothing that England or France has to offer makes any impression on the Californiac because it's different from California. As for the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, he simply never sees it.