The Californiacs | Page 5

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. The Netherlands are dismissed with one adjective - flat. For a
country to be flat is, in the opinion of the Californiac, to relinquish its
final claim to beauty. A Californiac once made the statement to me that
Californians considered themselves a little better than the rest of the
country. I considered that the prize Californiacism until I heard the
following from a woman-Californiac in Europe: "I saw nothing in all
Italy," she said, "to compare with the Italian quarter of San