Word of the Week - 69

Painting by Maynard Dixon.

Word of the Week:  WEST

Lucky me, I didn't have to come west.  I was already here.

As children about three years old, both of my parents moved to Southern  California with their families, my father from Illinois, my mother from Michigan.  Both families chose the midwestern sensibility of Pasadena, though my father, uncle and grandparents eventually settled on a farm in the San Joaquin Valley.  My best guess is that it more nearly matched the life my grandfather knew.  My parents met during World War II while attending the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, Mother working toward her BFA, Father there as part of his Navy Officer Candidate School.  My brother, sister and I were all born in Pasadena.

Until I heard Lucinda Williams sing this, I'd forgotten that my former and late husband, growing up in South Africa with western dreams fueled by his Yankee father and Hollywood depictions, was determined to reach California.  Newspaper work knows no geographical limits and he believed there would always be employment wherever he landed.  After reporting jobs in Virginia and New Jersey, after Army service at Ft. Knox, after the Associated Press, he claimed the West as home.   Though Lucinda's West is not California, it is close enough in spirit and allure.  I think it's a swell song.

California and the road

September brings full-on summer here.  It is a purely Los Angeles day, hot blue sky and anyone beyond the age of 23 staying indoors with the air conditioning.  But once, in another life, we drove with the windows down and the freeways were open and we sang.  We didn't sing like Joni, but we sang anyway.

And because the freeways were open we could drive fast and it was before gas costs what it costs now and there was music that made the accelerator seem to control itself.  The Doors really don't hold up (may be encroaching fogeydom) but I feel this does as an official LA road song.