My First Home After Leaving Home

Recently, I saw that San Bernardino, California had declared bankruptcy.

San Bernardino holds a special place in my memories.  I lived there from January 1971 to January 1977, and visited many more times up through the mid 90s.

In a way, I grew up there.  I was only 19 when I got there and it introduced me to a lot of the world I had never experienced growing up in Tennessee.  I was married there and my first two kids were born there.

I was there almost 2 months before I realized it butted up against the San Bernardino Mountains.  There was forest fire burning in the mountains and the smog blew in from LA each day and made it hard to see anything.  I had heard the mountains mentioned several times but had no idea how close they were.  Then, one morning I walked out of the barracks and there they were.  They were so close you could almost touch them.  It was like, “Where in the hell did those things come from?” 

 

So that was the down side.  The smog was a terrible, especially during the summer.  Jed Clampett remarked once that the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife, and then you had to wipe off the knife.  But when the smog cleared, it was a very pretty place.

 

It took some time to get used to the desert, especially after growing up where everything was so green most of the time, but I did.  In fact, the desert can be a very beautiful place in its own way.  At times, the nights were full of even more stars than I could see in Tennessee; literally millions and millions of them.

 

The heat really didn’t take that much to get used to.  Yes, it got hot every day during the summer, in most cases much hotter than in Tennessee, but it was drier, and usually shade was enough to make it comfortable.  Also, they used “swamp coolers” which added moisture to the air instead of taking it out like an air conditioner does, but it did the job.  Some people knew how to take advantage of the limitations the area had to offer, too.  A guy I worked with had two side jobs that paid him almost as much money as his salary from the government.  He sold earthworms and lion poop.   He sold the worms to people who wanted to landscape their yards.  The sun baked the ground so hard and the worms would loosen it up, sort of a natural aerator.  He got the lion’s poop an outdoor zoo nearby and sold it to the people in the mountains to keep deer out of their gardens.

 

The people were different, and there was so many of them.  Again, literally millions.  Every road you drove on, every sidewalk you walked on, every store or business you went to, was full of people.  I have always had a thing about being in crowds, so that was a big adjustment, but I made it.  Besides, it helped me learn more about other people, a host of other races, their foods and cultures.  I like to think I became a better person for the experience.

I didn’t much care for all the concrete, I will say that much.  Even back then, it was 80% concrete from San Diego to Santa Barbara and inland as far as San Bernardino and Riverside.  That’s way too much concrete but it could have its advantages sometimes too.  You could take the little ones up to a pull out on the mountain on New Year’s Eve and watch firework displays from LA to Palm Springs and to the south past Riverside.  Dozens of displays, and part of the fun was trying to guess which city was doing which display.

There were basically two seasons; the dry, hot summer and the moderate, rainy periods through the winter and early spring.  The winter was also the time for the Santa Ana winds to pick up, and they could make things change dramatically.  I recall one night shift with a lot of fog and visibility was getting worse and worse.  I was just about to report the visibility dipping below a half mile when out of the corner of my eye I saw a light I shouldn’t have been able to see.  To the northwest, I could see cars coming through the Cajon Pass, which was roughly about 12 miles away.  It was the Santa Ana wind coming through the pass.  Within 15 minutes, there was literally no fog and visibility in all directions was approaching 40 miles, the wind had picked up to 25-30 knots, the temperature shot up 10 degrees and the dew point dropped 20+ degrees.  Instant clear.  

The beach was as close as 45 minutes if you went toward Newport, there was snow skiing in the mountains (the one and only time in my life I tried snow skiing), LA with all its glitz and glamor was an hour west, along with the Lakers, the Dodgers, the Rams and the Angels.  Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, Busch Gardens and countless other parks and amusements were nearby. 

Yep, it was a good place to be back then.  I’m sure some things have changed, not the least of which is economical, and I probably wouldn’t approve of a lot of them, but it was my second home for a number of years, and it will always be special to me.