The Native Son | Page 7

time for us to abandon them both and resort to some
bright, snappy sparkling statistics.
Reader, I had to soft-pedal here. If I gave you the correct statistics, You
wouldn't believe me.
So here goes!
California produces forty per cent of the gold, fifty per cent of the
wheat, sixty per cent of the oranges, seventy per cent of the prunes,
eighty per cent of the asparagus and (including the Native Daughters)
ninety-nine and ninety-nine one-hundredths per cent of the peaches of
the world. I pause to say here that none of these figures is true. They
are all made up for the occasion. But don't despair! I am sure that they
don't do California justice by half. Any other Californiac - with the
mathematical memory which I unfortunately lack - will provide the
correct data. Somebody told me once, I seem to recall, that the Santa
Clara valley produces sixty per cent of the worlds prunes. But I may be
mistaken. What I prefer to remember is one day's trip in that springtide
of prune bloom. For hours and hours of motor speed, we glided through
a snowy world that showed no speck of black bark or fleck of green
leaf; a world in which the sole relief from a silent white blizzard of
blossom was the blue of the sky arch, the purple of distant lupines
alternating with the gold of blood-centered poppies, pouring like
avalanches down hills of emerald green.
Getting out of the scenery zone only to fall into the climate zone.
Reader, it's just the same with the climate as the scenery. It's got to be
done some time, so why not now?
That's what California produces in the way of scenery and fodder. So

now, let's consider the climate, even if I am invading Jesse Williams's
territory. For it has magical properties - that climate of California. It
makes people grow big and beautiful and strenuous; it makes flowers
grow big and beautiful; it makes fleas grow big and - strenuous. It
offers, except in the most southern or the most mountainous regions, no
such extremes of heat or cold as are found elsewhere in the country. Its
marvel is of course the season which corresponds to our winter. The
visitor coming, let us say in February, from the ice-bound and
frost-locked East through the flat, dreary Middle West, and stalled
possibly on the way, remains glued in stupefaction to the car window.
In a very few hours he slides from the white, glittering snow-covered
heights of the evergreen-packed Sierras through their purple, hazy,
snow-filled depths into the sudden warmth of California.
It is like waking suddenly from a nightmare of winter to a poets or a
painter's vision of spring.
Who, having seen this picture in January, could resist describing it?
Easterners, I appeal to your sense of justice.
At one side, perhaps close to the train, near hills, on which the live oaks
spread big, ebon-emerald umbrellas, serpentine endlessly into the
distance. On the other side, far hills, bathed in an amethystine mist,
invade the horizon. Between stretches the flat green field of the valley,
gashed with tawny streaks that are roads and dotted with soft, silvery
bunches that are frisking new-born lambs. Little white houses, with a
coquettish air of perpetual summer, flaunt long windows and
wooden-lace balconies, Early roses flask pink flames here and there.
The green-black meshes of the eucalyptus hedges film the distance. The
madrone, richly leaved like the laurel, reflects the sunlight from a bole
glistening as though freshly carved from wet gold.
Cheer up! We're getting out of scenery and climate into
The race - a blend of many rich bloods - that California has evolved
with the help of this scenery and climate is a rare brew. The physical
background is Anglo-Saxon of course; and it still breaks through in the
prevailing Anglo-Saxon type. To this, the Celt has brought his poetry

and mysticism. To it, the Latin has contributed his art instinct; and not
art instinct alone but in an infinity of combinations, the dignity of the
Spaniard, the spirit of the French, the passion of the Italian.
- into -
All the foregoing is put in, not to make it harder, but because - as a
Californiac - I couldn't help it, and to show you what, in the way of a
State, the Native Son is accustomed to. You will have to admit that it is
some State. The emblem on the California flag is singularly apposite -
it's a bear.
- oh boy! - San Francisco!
And if, in addition to being a Californian, this Native Son visiting the
East for the first time, is also a San Franciscan, he has come from a city
which is, with the exception of peacetime Paris,