The Big Move: Waking up from the California Dream

California, it's been nice to know ya!

I’ve lived in the Golden State for almost 54 of my 55 years, and I’ve written three books on its history, but it’s time to say farewell to sunny California.

I do so with mixed feelings. The past few years have dealt me one change after another, each one seemingly intent on prying loose another one of my anchors and setting me adrift on a new course.

Seven years ago, I lost my job at The Fresno Bee when my position was eliminated, but I was fortunate enough to find a new job less than 200 miles away in San Luis Obispo. After a brief detour into substitute teaching, it meant a return to my chosen field. I’d earned my degree in journalism and had spent the previous quarter-century in newspapers, and I was perfectly happy to stay there.

Except the industry had other ideas. In May, after more than six years, I lost my job in SLO County when my position was eliminated (starting to sound like a broken record)? In between those two layoffs, my father died in Fresno. I’ve still got a few friends there, and I’ve made some here on the Central Coast, as well, but there was no way I could afford to continue living here without a job. Heck, I was struggling to afford the cost of living even with a job.

With circumstances conspiring against me like the James Gang plotting a train robbery, I decided not to fight it. This train has already left the station – it started rolling down the track May 4 when I lost my job – and I’m determined not to be held up at gunpoint by California’s exorbitant cost of living any longer. So, this month, we’re packing everything up (we have a lot to pack) and moving east, embarking on a great new adventure.

SUCH SWEET SORROW

There’s a lot I’ll miss about California. I’ll miss traveling the highways I’ve written two books about, asking, “What used to be here? What was it like driving these roads a century ago?” And then doing the research to find out.

I’ll miss exploring the rolling hills, marveling at the giant redwoods, braving the Tule fog and basking in the sunshine – not the 100-degree days of the Central Valley, though; I definitely won’t miss those.

I’ll miss being able to drive down the coast to see a Dodgers or Rams game on a whim. Or over to Fresno to visit my old haunts and high school friends. I missed Fresno so much I wrote a book about it, and I’ll always have those memories. I didn’t live in Cambria nearly as long, but I’ll fondly remember the misty mornings and the Monterey Pines; the elephant seals and the scarecrows and Pinedorado; reading at open-mic nights seeing familiar faces during a stroll down Main Street.

I’ll miss Cal Poly basketball games and Fresno State football.

I’ll miss eating at La Terraza in Cambria and DiCicco’s in Fresno. And I’ll definitely miss Me-N-Ed’s Pizza. That may be the biggest sacrifice of all.

I’m sorry I won’t get another chance to provide guest commentary on KTEA’s broadcasts of Coast Union baseball games. I did it once with John FitzRandolph, and it was a kick.

Of course, I’ll miss writing stories and taking photos for The Cambrian newspaper. I love telling stories, and there were some great stories to tell during my time in Cambria – from the closure of Highway 1 to the Cambria Christmas Market. I’m a sucker for Christmas lights, so that was always a highlight of my year.

Now there will be other stories, as an author, as a journalist or both, and I look forward to telling them. They’ll be different, but that’s what will make them interesting.

I’ll miss working in the historic home they’d converted into an office for The Cambrian newspaper. How many people get to work in a place with such character? That office is gone now, though, yet another sign that my time here is truly done. 

The friends I’ve made over the years, I’ll miss them, too, though not nearly as much as I would have if I’d made this move 20 years ago. We’ll keep in touch on Facebook, which is where we see each other most often now anyway. (I will miss shooting the breeze with Art Van Rhyn on Mondays, when he would arrive at The Cambrian office to submit his weekly cartoon; he’s not on Facebook, but I’m sure we’ll keep in touch.)

AN ADVENTURE AHEAD

With all that, there’s much to look forward to. I’ll miss the history of California, but there’s even more history where we’re going. And everything’s closer together there, so I’ll be able to explore more easily. I’ll miss the Monterey pines, but there are more trees where I’m going: dogwood and cypress and oak and pine and maple. I’ll still be able to catch the Dodgers and Rams on the road, and it will be fun to see them play in different venues.

We’ll get to eat at Cracker Barrel and pay $1 a gallon less for gas. There won’t be majestic mountains, but there will be rolling hills that stay green all year long instead of staying brown for half the year or more. We won’t miss droughts or wildfires or earthquakes, and a little snow never hurt anyone (we hope!)

Best of all, we found a sweet house in a quiet neighborhood that has something in common with Fresno’s old Fig Garden. There’s a forest behind the house and a lake within walking distance. The home itself is a 3-bedroom, 2-bath two-story with a finished cellar complete with a wet bar. We don’t drink much, so this room will be our library (it’s big, but trust me, we have enough books to fill it).

There are three balconies, a fireplace and dual-pane windows, all in nearly 2,000 square feet on two-thirds of an acre. Compare that to the place we’ve been renting for the past two years, which is slightly more than 1,100 square feet. And cost? If we paid 3 years and 9 months more in rent, we’d have spent what it costs to buy the new place.

One thing I’m not looking forward to is the move itself. We’ve got 100 cardboard boxes on the way, and we’re trying to figure out the safest-cheapest-best way to move. Packing up all our stuff, driving more than 2,500 miles in five days with our animals, then getting everything unloaded and hooked up on the other end is not my idea of fun. When I was 25, I loved the idea of driving 10 hours in a day; at 55, it’s not nearly as appealing.

Wherever I end up, though, I’ll have what’s most important: my family, my cats and my writing. And I’ll always have my memories. Ask my imaginary friend Minerva how important those are. She’s the hero of my Memortality series. Is that a shameless plug for my books? Damn right. I’ll still be writing them and, I hope, you’ll still be buying them.

See you on the other side (of the country)!

Age brings more reminders of what we've lost

It’s a well-known phenomenon. You hear that song on the radio, and it takes you back to your senior prom, your first concert, summer camp or some other event relegated to memory. It activates that memory and makes it new again. You know you can never go back there again, but in that moment, you remember what it was like to be there.

You smile a little smile, and maybe you get choked up a little, too. It’s the essence of “bittersweet.”

Because music is such a potent reminder of the past, it hurts to realize it’s going to stay there. That’s what happened a couple of years ago, when a large number of famed musicians from my childhood all left us: David Bowie, Glen Frey of the Eagles, Prince, George Michael, Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of ELP, Leon Russell.

It wasn’t just the year the music died, it was a year a part of us died, because with their deaths, we knew they’d never be making new music again. We’d never get another chance to see them in concert. Even if their bands had broken up, there had always been a chance they’d get back together, at least for a reunion show. No more. I remember thinking about that when John Lennon died. There would never be a Beatles reunion. Maybe there wouldn’t have been one, anyway, but there had always been that hope.

Hope is about the future; memories are about the past. They work best in tandem, and when we lose one part of that equation, we’re a little worse off for it.

We didn’t just lose musicians in 2016. My childhood sitcoms were decimated by the deaths of Florence Henderson (The Brady Bunch), William Christopher (M*A*S*H), Abe Vigoda and Ron Glass (Barney Miller), Alan Thicke (Growing Pains) and Garry Marshall (creator of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Mork & Mindy).

They live on in reruns, but in some ways, that’s just as hard, because whenever you see them, there’s a chance you’ll be reminded that they’re no longer with us.

This happens to me a lot, with music, TV shows, landmarks, mementos, old photographs.

I see movies starring Alan Rickman or Robin Williams, and I can’t help but be reminded how much I valued their talents … and now, they’re no longer here.

TAKEN FOR GRANTED

You take things for granted when you’re young, at least I did. When I first became aware of things, I assumed they’d always been that way and that they always would be. I think the first time I realized they wouldn’t was when I moved back to my hometown, Fresno, at age 15, after six years away. The radio station formats had changed. The big discount department store called White Front, where everyone had shopped, was gone. The Lesterburger fast food chain, which had been ubiquitous in the 1960s, had gone out of business, too. It all seemed surreal, impossible even.

Three more years passed, and there was a new freeway and a new football stadium. Both were big improvements, but I still remember sitting on the splintery wooden seats at the old stadium and watching Fresno State’s football team rout Los Angeles State (back when it had a football team). The splinters aren’t a pleasant memory, but the game itself is, and they’re tied together in my soon-to-be-55-year-old mind.

Going south on a trip to San Diego last weekend on U.S. 101, I passed through the area where I lived for six years as a child and young teenager: Woodland Hills. I was reminded of riding in my parents’ Buick LeSabre down that same Ventura Freeway to see the Dodgers play every summer in the 1970s. People mention Bill Buckner’s error on his gimpy leg for the Red Sox in the 1986 series, and it triggers memories of when he was my next-door neighbor in Southern California, making circus catches in the outfield for the Dodgers before that leg slowed him down.

When I went back to Fresno as an adult a year or two ago, I went back to eat at the first Me-N-Ed’s pizza parlor on Blackstone, where my folks introduced me to my favorite pizza (cheese and black olives) when I was 5 or 6. Yes, it’s still there, and that’s comforting. But it also reminds me that my parents aren’t, and that will never stop hurting.

When I see high school football games, I remember when I used to cover them as a reporter for the Tulare Advance-Register. When I drive by my old office, I remember when I used to work there.

"BACK IN MY DAY"

Then there’s the music.

Whenever I hear the Eagles’ Best of My Love, I remember sitting by the radio in my room, listening to the week’s top 40 countdown and wondering what would be No. 1 that week.

When I hear Have You Never Been Mellow? by Olivia Newton John, I think of riding to summer school at A.E. Wright Middle School, the ride so much longer than it needed to be because of all the stops they made in the canyons and foothills west of the San Fernando Valley. And me, sitting there, my legs cramped and hurting because, even at that age, I was far too tall to fit comfortably in bus seats designed for third-graders.

Maybe it’s because I’ve done so much historical writing that these memories hit me so often, but I think it’s the other way around: The feeling that the past is somehow slipping away has prompted me to keep some portion of it alive, if only in recorded memory. I suspect it happens to a lot of people like this, even if they don’t write any of it down, and that’s why our elders reminisce so often about the way things used to be “back in my day.”

My dad did that, and now I’m doing it, too.

It’s bittersweet to remember the things that are gone, but the alternative, forgetting them, is far worse.

In memory of David H. Provost, father, mentor and friend

I stood in the imaginary batter’s box at one end of the back yard in Woodland Hills, waiting for the pitch. There were imaginary baserunners, too. And imaginary fielders. Just beyond the “outfield fence,” in the next house over, lived a real live baseball player, Bill Buckner, then at the beginning of his career with the L.A. Dodgers.

But on this field, in our back yard, it was just me, my dad, and a Whiffle ball. He’d come home after work – a day working as the dean of new program development in the Cal State University Chancellor’s Office bracketed by an hour or more in rush hour traffic each way. And he’d play Whiffle ball with his only son in that back yard.

Sometimes, he’d be too tired, and looking back, I can’t really blame him. A man in his forties in a high-pressure job doesn’t always have enough energy to get out of the car, walk through the house and out back to engage in a game of Whiffle ball – or ping pong, a game he taught me how to play. He even built a basketball court, complete with a permanent, regulation 10-foot hoop and a square concrete slab on which to bounce that ball until your hands were caked with dust the consistency of chalk.

I never played competitive basketball, or baseball or, for that matter, ping pong, but my dad gave me the opportunity to try all of them on for size – this 6-foot-8 giant of a man whose own foray into competitive sports consisted, to my knowledge, of some recreational basketball in Australia in the early 1950s, where he did his postgraduate studies. He was so much taller than the rest of the people on the court that he was able to score almost at will in one game and wound up with more points than everyone else combined.

Wilt Chamberlain, eat your heart out.

Fan

But mostly, Dad enjoyed sports from the stands – or in front of the TV. In fact, his love of sports went back long before the age of television: He vividly remembered listening to the 1939 Rose Bowl as an 8-year-old boy and how thrilled he’d been to hear USC score the winning touchdown with a minute left to beat Duke 7-3. It was the only touchdown the Blue Devils had allowed all season, and Dad was a USC fan the rest of his life.

How big a fan? In 1974, we were watching the Trojans play archrival Notre Dame on TV, and Dad was so upset he stormed out of the house when the Irish took a 24-0 lead. I don’t know where he went, but shortly after he left, the Trojans scored a touchdown to make it 24-6; then star running back Anthony Davis returned the second-half kickoff for another score.

“Dad, you’re missing this!” I remember saying aloud, pacing back and forth in front of the TV (just as he would do), waiting for him to come home as USC scored another touchdown, then another, then yet another. By the time he got back, the Trojans had scored 35 points in the third quarter and led 41-24 on their way to a 55-24 victory. Dad had missed the best part of one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.

Dad took my mom and me to half a dozen Dodger games each year, and one of them was the last game of the 1977 season. That one was special because we got to see Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run of the year, the first time four players from the same team (Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith being the others) all hit 30 or more home runs in a season. And I got to see it, thanks to my dad.

We also saw Fresno State’s football team beat Bowling Green twice in the California Bowl. And we got to see the men’s basketball team dismantle fifth-ranked UNLV 68-43 in perhaps the greatest basketball game ever played at Selland Arena in downtown Fresno.

Mom, as a rule, didn’t enjoy sports too much; she’d go off and do her own thing while Dad and I were watching football in the family room. But when we moved back to Fresno in 1978 and the basketball team became a regional powerhouse, she caught the bug and began rooting for Boyd Grant’s Bulldogs as hard as either one of us.

All three of us were part of the famous "Red Wave" of Fresno State fans who packed Selland Arena (aka Grant's Tomb) to watch the Bulldogs' suffocating defense dismantle one foe after another. 

One year, Dad and I went to the mall and bought Mom a custom red T-shirt with metallic lettering that read “I love Mitch Arnold,” in honor of her favorite player. He kept it in the closet of the house where I grew up long after she passed away.

Partner

Mom and Dad were married for 39 years until she died of a stroke on Jan. 9, 1995, just shy of her 63rd birthday. Stricken by polio as a child, she’d been told she’d never walk again, but not only did she walk – despite being almost fully paralyzed on the right side of her body – she earned a degree from UCLA and then went to work at Douglas Aircraft in Southern California, which is where she met my father.

He asked her to marry him on the spur of the moment when they were smooching in the car, and she said “yes.” They were married Sept. 1, 1956.

They seemed, from the looks of them, to be a bit of a mismatch: my father at 6-8 towering over his 5-foot-2 bride; this beautiful woman on the arm of the professor with the dark-rimmed glasses. When she couldn’t get up off the couch or needed help steading herself as she walked, he was always there with a hand to help her. His lasting impression of Richard Nixon, whom he met before Nixon became president, wasn’t anything political; it was that Nixon had once helped steady my mom when she stumbled as the three of them were walking together. That cemented Nixon in my Dad’s mind as a good guy. Sure, there was Watergate later on, but he had shown compassion toward my mom, and that’s what Dad remembered most.

During all the time my parents were married, I never heard Dad yell at Mom. Oh, he’d raise his voice and had quite a temper, but he never took it out on her. He never remarried and, although he flirted with women from time to time and even had a couple of girlfriends, there was never any doubt that Mom was, and always would be, the love of his life.

My parents tried for years to have a child, without success. Doctors told them they could find nothing wrong, but after six years, they had pretty much resigned themselves to a childless marriage. Then, in 1962, Dad was recruited to run for state Assembly. He’d been teaching at Fresno State for a few years by then, and as a former debating champion at Pomona College, he’d caught the attention of the California Republican Party.

It was an uphill battle, as he was running in a heavily Democratic district, and he was out on the campaign trail when he got the word from Mom that she was expecting. He lost the race by a handful of votes and never ran for office again; but he became a father in the process. He considered it a good tradeoff.

Teacher

I often asked Dad why he hadn’t run for office again, and he told me he preferred to teach.

He loved it so much that he continued to do so at Fresno State as long as he could, after the “traditional” retirement age, teaching into his 70s. In 2004, at the age of 73, he even taught a class for free. That’s right. And they almost didn’t let him.

Of all my father’s many professional accomplishments, it was this the singular act that, to me, said the most about his character.

A budget crisis in California had forced Fresno State to cancel several sections of a political science course. All the remaining classes were full, leaving some students without a class they’d need to graduate. So Dad, who had just retired, offered to teach a section for free.

The university rejected his offer, leading Dad to ask, “Why the heck can’t someone volunteer?” Officials contended it would actually cost the university money, based on a complex funding formula, but Dad wasn’t buying it: “It is difficult to figure out how that works,” he said. “I have a serious problem with that kind of logic.”

A story about the university’s rejection of his offer appeared on the front page of The Fresno Bee. Then, three days later, the university reversed itself and allowed him to teach a class, after all.

Not only did Dad teach the class, he taught everyone in the community at large something about the importance of character – and of putting students before the almighty dollar.  

Father

Dad also taught me a few personal lessons that I’ll never forget. Perhaps foremost among them was the value of an education. When I was struggling as a freshman in high school, failing more than one class, he told me once as he was driving our gold Buick LeSabre that I had two choices: I could start taking school seriously, or I could wind up in a minimum-wage job or doing field labor for the rest of my life. I listened, and the next year, I was earning all A’s and B’s.

He also taught me that victories are infinitely sweeter when they are earned. For a while, when we started to play ping pong, I never beat him. Ever. He wouldn’t let me win just to make me “feel good” because I was a 12-year-old kid; he wanted me to enjoy that feeling of accomplishment he knew I’d get when I finally did beat him.

He knew what he was doing, and he was right.

He was honest in action and word alike. When I wrote a novel I was sure he’d enjoy, he told me it hadn’t really grabbed him. He wasn’t harshly critical, but he didn’t offer false praise to spare my feelings. On the other hand, when I wrote a book on discrimination, he said it should be in every classroom in the country. So when he told my wife, Samaire, that her Mad World novels were some of the most exciting stories he’d read, I knew he was telling the truth. Although the two of them only knew each other for five years, they developed a close bond and heartfelt friendship; Samaire dedicated the third book in her trilogy to him.

Although he spent most of his career in the classroom, Dad did take a couple of detours from his job as a tenured professor at Fresno State. In 1966, he took me and Mom back to Australia, where he spent a year teaching as a visiting professor specializing in American government. His 3-year-old son played with plastic trains, drew crayon pictures and befriended imaginary dragons in an apartment overlooking Botany Bay in Sydney.

Politician

Dad was twice a finalist to become president of a Cal State university – once in Chico and once in Bakersfield – and he served for six years as dean of new program development for the entire university system. He wrote a textbook on California politics that went through 17 editions and served as a political analyst on virtually every Fresno TV station during election season over a period of more than two decades.

He served as chairman of the California Republican Assembly president of the statewide Academic Senate. He liked to talk about how he had invited then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to speak to the latter body, amid criticism that faculty members weren’t interested in hearing from a conservative politician. Dad introduced Reagan to tepid applause but said that, by the end of the session, he had won over the room to such an extent that he received a standing ovation.

He also recalled a visit to Reagan's office in Sacramento, where the governor invited him to try some jelly beans.

Dad was an interesting character, politically speaking. A lifelong Republican, he was nonetheless once branded the “pink professor” for a wholly imagined sympathy for communism. Yet despite his conservatism, he did hold a number of views that could only be described as progressive, and he valued a willingness to compromise well above any rigid allegiance to partisan dogma. In his later years, he often lamented the gridlock that evolved from a growing refusal to see the other side of things. He’d been trained as a debater to argue either side of a given issue, so it was natural that this refusal to listen to other points of view didn’t sit well with him. It’s yet another value he passed along to me.

Adventurer

But Dad’s life was so much more than politics.

He hitchhiked the Australian Outback during his first stay there (enduring an encounter with leeches in the process). He visited Egypt, Italy, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Utah … and I’m sure I’m leaving something out. We flew in a helicopter together on Maui, where we also drive the infamously curvy Road to Hana. We visited Stonehenge, Edinburgh Castle, York Cathedral, Monument Valley, Waimea Canyon, the Oregon coast and Haleakala crater together.

Along the way, he introduced me to his love of photography, shooting seemingly endless rolls of slides with his trusty Minolta. He taught me how to “frame” a photo and explore different angles to find just the right composition. We once arose before the crack of dawn to drive around the San Joaquin Valley, taking black-and-white photos of old barns and dilapidated buildings as the first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon, creating shadowy ghosts that appeared to linger among the beams and rafters.

Supporter

Dad was also a fan of science fiction from way back, from the literary world of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke to the on-screen entertainment of Star Trek and Star Wars. We watched all the movies in both series together up until the late ’90s, but there was never any doubt which franchise we both preferred. In the ST vs. SW debate, he came down squarely on the side of Trek. He introduced me to The Original Series in the early 1970s, and I’ve seen every episode of every incarnation – big and small screen – since.

He enjoyed folk music (Glenn Yarbrough, who died just a few days after he did at the age of 86; Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul and Mary) and endured my   preference for bands like KISS, Aerosmith and Queen with good grace. He might not have agreed with my tastes, but he respected them: He was the kind of person who picked out Christmas and birthday gifts he thought you’d like, rather than just buying something he would have liked to get himself. He knew I liked dragons, so he picked out a dragon-themed wallet for me; he knew I liked “Star Trek,” so he bought me a “Star Trek”-themed mug. Little things like that from a very big heart.

There were big things, too. He bought a car for me to drive after I got my license. When I was a teenager, we visited Kauai every other year for about a decade. After Mom died, he took me on trips to Maui and England.

He also put me through college at Fresno State, where I graduated summa cum laude (all A’s except for one B and a single C). I was proud of my academic achievement, and I once suggested that I take one of my dad’s classes to see how well I would do. He had a reputation as a good but very challenging teacher, and I wanted to test myself, but Dad pointed out it would be a no-win situation: If I didn’t do well, it would be a discouraging setback, and if I aced the class, people might think he’d showed me some sort of favoritism.

There were all those things he did for me, and then there was just who he was. I would not be who I am today without my father’s love of language, history, science fiction, sports, logic … the list goes on and on.

For years, Dad and his colleagues would gather every week at 4 p.m. at a Fresno watering hole to “solve all the world’s problems” in the space of a couple of hours. Club, as he called it (not “the club,” just “Club”) was primarily a gathering of political science professors: my father’s best friend, Karl Swenson; Freeman Wright, Maurice Van Gerpen and Lyman Heine were among the regulars. They met at Fresno Feed and Fuel for a while, then switched to Sutter Street Bar & Grill at the Ramada for many years, where I was initiated as a sort of adjunct member of the group (not being a professor) for several of those years. Dad would almost always order a martini and an O’Doul’s.

Giver

Dad worked as a professor into his 70s and taught many future leaders, including onetime Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, Fresno City Councilman Craig Scharton and Fresno Bee Executive Editor Jim Boren,

His health declined in later years, but his mind remained active even after he sold his home and moved into a long-term care facility. As long as you kept your sense of humor, he’d often say, you'd have a life worth living. His favorite comedians included Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Tim Conway and Carol Burnett. He was himself an inveterate punster, which I’m happy to say has rubbed off on me (although others may not be quite so happy about that!).

A couple of years ago, Dad helped me by providing information and firsthand recollections for my book Fresno Growing Up. His insights, as always, were invaluable. One of the last times he made the trek out of his care facility was a year ago, when he attended my launch party and signing for the book in downtown Fresno. In his final months, he told me repeatedly how proud he was of me and how much he was looking forward to reading my next two books, both due out next year. One is a history of Highway 99 in California, to which he introduced me; the other is a novel called Memortality about a woman who can bring back the dead through the power of her memory.

I wish I could do that with Dad now. In a sense, I’m doing the best I can with this remembrance, which can never come close to doing justice to perhaps the most accomplished man I’ve ever known, not to mention my greatest supporter and lifelong friend.

My father passed away Aug. 6, 2016. We’d seen him a few weeks earlier and held a three-hour conversation with him about politics and life, the past and the future. As always, he was gracious, telling us we should get going as the day stretched into late afternoon because we had a long drive ahead of us and shouldn’t be traveling too much after nightfall. “Watch out for all those nuts on the road,” he’d say. Every time.

I talked to my dad on the phone two days before he lost consciousness. He didn’t seem to be feeling too well, so just before I hung up, I told him something I said too infrequently.

“I love you, Dad.”

He told me he loved me, too. Those were the last and best words we ever exchanged.

Note: The photo that appears above shows my father and my mom, Lollie Provost, in the early 1970s.