jerawyn

Today is company lunch for the holiday. We're going to Gulliver's by John Wayne Airport. It's the place in the 1970's that held office parties for my Dad & Uncle's real estate companies...i've heard many stories (of which i'm wistfully jealous) of noon lunches with rounds and rounds of drinks...ending in long bullshit sessions by dinnertime.

So my Bro and i have resurrected the tradition of eating there for Christmas...and making Dad tell us stories of California in the 70's. It's the best.

Here's a true story:

Dad came back to Pennsylvania (Butler County) to pick me up after the first grade, and to drive across country to our new home in California. I remember us singing the "California here i come" song...which i thought was the theme song for the state, but which i screamed wholeheartedly out of tune...while the words conjured images on a golden land, rainbows..and at 6..i was pretty sure there were Unicorns in California too. It was surely a mystical land, a fairyland...a Disneyland.

I was told that California was so laid back that you didn't have to change your underware everyday...you could just turn them inside out. The same went with t-shirts. People wouldn't care what you looked like, or how you talked. I was told that everyone had an orange tree and a lemon tree in their front yards...that strawberries grew everywhere. I heard it didn't rain much, and there was lots of yogurt (which i later realised was YOGA) teachers. Everyone wore bikinis...to the beach, to the store, to ski in....remarkable.

What a complete, boldfaced lie. But i'm not leaving quite yet. It's the only place i've lived where i claimed always to be from somewhere else...but i'm so typically Californian...it's Rad. Totally.