Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Westward Ho
JONI MITCHELL SANG
of sitting in a park in Paris, France lamenting lost dreams but feeling so
homesick for California she would even kiss a Sunset pig.
Heading down the road with the right tunes on the box has been a primary benefit to the
spirit since cars began. It made sense of a migration in late youth—another migration, with
the clock ticking. Paris seemed as far from South Carolina as crudités from corn pone. So did
California, yet her siren song lured the whole show westward to new horizons, and California-
bound with a couple of cats felt like old home week one more time, like getting back to where
we once belonged. No generation generated music with such staying power; at ten years old the
power tunes pumped like brand new, sometimes better.
Wait a minute—
Jojo left his home in bumfuck Carolina, for some California grass
. Well, hell,
a westbound migration can take a quick look back with easy caricature and good riddance. Yet
a tear rolled for those tidal marshlands and oyster roasts and down-home feeds with all the
boys at the Club and the social warmth and so many fine women stopping by to say farewell.
What the fuck you do-een, boy? You crazy?
Well, sir, you cain't very well leave a place hateful once't a place was good to you, though
leave you sometimes must. No doubt about it, certain friends and aspects of the sunny south
lingered in lovable recollection. The exclusionary code barring immigrants from true bubba-
hood would not be missed. The assessment was harsh, and so was its ring of truth. Do you
really want to be a bubba?
California, on the other hand, waited to embrace another brother. Lazy went to laid back
and the cool breeze felt rich with artistry. Eighty miles south of San Francisco at the top of
Monterey Bay sat a little beach town famous for surf and great weather.
Decades later, with twice as many people occupying the same spaces, on-ramp traffic would
thicken dramatically, friends of friends and brothers in the bond would no longer be welcome
to crash on the couch. Soccer moms would discover artistic endeavor as quaint pursuits, as
busy parenting schedules would allow, and a bumper sticker would proclaim:
Not all those who
wander are lost.
Things would get crowded, impersonal, injurious and unstable. Human popu-
lation will double again before too long with new bumper stickers. But at the front end of the
80s the California coast glowed with options.
A refugee from anywhere could come home to California. South Carolina faded to the east,
where many friends would remain content in a culture of decomposition, compulsive for his-
tory and paper mills poisoning the estuaries to create jobs for the people—not to be confused
