Living in a New Place
It’s no small thing, leaving the place where you were born and lived for half a century — even if your “new” place is only a bit more than 100 miles from your “old” one. You leave many things behind — including friends and a sense of pride that you had played a part in the life of your hometown for most of your existence (except, of course, for those 20 or so years when you traveled the country, in search of new adventures and new jobs).
No, it’s no small thing — but it’s what we did, a few weeks ago — packed up and drove out of Fresno and started “the rest of our lives” in a small town on California’s Central Coast. Truth to tell, we had already spent a considerable amount of time in our “new” abode. We bought it four years ago and had spent virtually every weekend in it since then. There was, after all, a whole lot of painting and renovating and landscaping that needed to be done to get it ready for that inevitable day when Sharon would retire and we could stop driving back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. During those four years of weekends, I usually would pick her up in downtown Fresno on Friday afternoons, and we’d head south on the 41 and then west on the 46, arriving in Our Future Little Burg almost exactly two hours later. Well, that’s not completely true — we often stopped halfway, in Kettleman City (a regrettable town, in many ways) and grab a bite at a restaurant in a made-for-tourists shopping spot near Interstate 5. The Cobb salads were always decent.
Weekends in Our Future Little Burg were always frenzied. We often worked our rears off, fixing this and that around our place (no, I’m not good at fixing “this,” and I’m certainly hopeless at fixing “that” — I usually just painted, while Sharon took care of “this” and occasionally dealt with “that”). We normally left for Fresno around noon Sundays — and in the first couple of years of all this, I was usually bummed — not because I didn’t like Fresno, but because we had bought into our future, and here we always were, leaving it behind.
But lo and behold, Sharon eventually “caught up” with me — not in age, of course. That horse left the barn when we married. No, her “catching up” took place when she became old enough, in her mind, to leave the job she had held — and performed magnificently — for the past couple of decades. And so it came to be that, on a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, we took leave of Fresno and came here — to Our Now Little Burg — for the weekend — and all the days that followed.
Prior to our arrival, the big, bad drought had asserted itself again over California. Our Little Burg had “enjoyed” sunny February days with temperatures in the 70’s and even the low-80’s. So imagine our surprise when — almost immediately upon our not-at-all-heralded arrival, the weather went south. Really, really far south. It got cold here in Our Tiny Slice of Paradise — the daytime high’s barely scratched the 40’s, and our nighttime lows plunged, at times, into the high teens. And then came something so unusual, it made news even on our local radio station, which barely has time for news, given that it has an almost-around-the-clock schedule of extreme right-wing talk shows. Yes, it rained here. And rained. And kept raining. One night a couple of weeks ago, we received four inches of the wet stuff in our immediate area, and that wasn’t the worst of it around the county. Now, don’t get me wrong — we needed that rain. Badly. Our mini “March Miracle” gave us a respite from drought worries, and it also provided our sump pump with a chance to prove its worth. It did.
So our first few weeks here mainly involved dodging raindrops, covering up at night to stay warm — and, for Sharon, trying to figure out exactly what it meant to be retired — to not have to go to work in the morning. A few years ago — when I finally decided I’d covered enough fires and killings and court cases and left KMJ Radio — I had to go through the same process. It had not been easy. For months, I was, frankly, lost — had no clue what I should be doing. I sedated myself from such bothersome thoughts by munching on chips and gobbling ice cream. Yep — gained weight. Looked like a small-time slob. Then I somehow snapped out of it, took some classes, and started volunteering with the Community Emergency Response Team. I also took the Fresno PD’s citizens training class. I started eating better, walking more, and the result is the Adonis-of-a-man you see today. (Please — don’t laugh so hard — choking is not good, at any age.) I am happy to say that Sharon has not gone through any of my misadventures during her early retirement and seems to be adjusting quite well.
Well, back to the weather — and, in life, it always seems to come back to the weather, doesn’t it? After our last multi-inch drenching, we have, I am pleased to say, warmed up — temperatures in the 70’s dayside. Now, those 70’s are mighty fine for me — but for Sharon, they have prompted a certain urge to drive “over the hill” to the California coastline. (She’s always been partial to an ocean. Me, I’m a desert guy. Opposites attract, and all that.) So just a few days ago, we got into the car — leaving a gorgeous, sunny-and-high-70’s day here — and less than a half-hour later, found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of fog. You see, when it’s warm and sunny “inland” in our Golden State in spring and summer, it’s drizzly, cold and foggy on most of our coastline — and we have plenty of coastline. Yes, we had managed to convert our lovely spring day into something that, to my mind, was not nearly as satisfying. It was 60 degrees in Cayucos. No sign of the sun. Ugh.
So we U-turned and headed north on the 101, up to Cambria. This is a delightful, incredibly-expensive-to-live-in little tourist trap that annually lures many Valley residents because — well, because it’s Cambria. Valley folks love to come here on weekends, spend tons of money, then go back to work Mondays and brag to their co-workers about how they spent the weekend in (clearing their throats in a quite self-important way), Cambria. (Some of them pronounce it “CAM-bree-uh, while others verbalize it as “CAME-bree-uh.” No matter. From what we can tell, no one around these parts knows what the real pronunciation is, and no one cares.)
Well, long story short (I know — you’ve been hoping for that yourself for the past few minutes) — it was cold and foggy and drizzly in Cambria, too. But Sharon enjoyed taking photos with the camera she received as a retirement present (she gave it to herself) — and I was just fine, shivering in the shorts I had foolishly worn (though I had at least brought along a hooded sweatshirt, something no self-respecting person goes without on the Central Coast in spring and summer). Then we drove home. Our new home. In Our Little Burg. It was still in the high-70’s here, so Sharon took the plunge into our neighborhood’s swimming pool. Yes, it was a tough day of retirement, but I am pleased to report that we both survived.
Our life here is a delightful mix of doing whatever we want — which often includes doing almost nothing. During our years of weekends here, we had discovered that there are numerous really good restaurants around our downtown city park, and we frequent them. One of the benefits of retirement is that we no longer have to visit them on weekends — a Monday afternoon works quite nicely, thank you. The food is equally as good as it would be on a Saturday, and the tourists have, thankfully, all gone back to their working lives, so we can actually get a parking space near our chosen eatery. On the spur of any moment, we may decide to go shopping, or browse in one of the antique stores downtown, or attend a movie or undertake a project of some kind. Or we may trek down to San Luis Obispo to soak up the ambience of a really good college town. But we have no schedules, and there are no requirements to “do” anything.
Of course, we are still adjusting to the differences between Fresno and Our Little Burg. For one thing, it’s easier to breathe here because the air is cleaner. For another, it’s easier to walk around these parts — and I’m “big” into walking around — because, frankly, it’s safer. There’s also the issue of traffic. We have a “rush minute” here, not a “rush hour.” And then there’s TV. Three stations provide what can be charitably described as “local news,” but one is down the coast in San Luis Obispo, the second is farther down the coast in Santa Maria, and the third is even farther down the coast in Santa Barbara. When all that bad stuff — fires and mudslides — took place near Santa Barbara, we watched that city’s local outlet. When “nothing much” is happening, we watch the San Luis Obispo station. And we never watch the Santa Maria station. No one we know ever watches the Santa Maria station.
The SLO station is a curious thing, indeed. It seems unable to hire anyone over the age of 21 for any reporting jobs, and it also seems unable to hire anyone who is a male as a reporter. However, it has an excellent weatherman, and the station’s female anchor recently moved from Fresno, where she was anchor on a local morning newscast there. She does a good job here, and she has to, because her station’s reporting team is, frankly, too young and immature to have much credibility.
Having said that, I must admit I’m not certain that old age gives one credibility, But if it does, I have tons of it. Yes, I’m an old guy now, trying to learn new things in a new place. Novelist Wallace Stegner once memorably said, “If you’re going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get.” Okay, I can buy into that. And someone once asked William Saroyan — like me, Fresno born-and-raised, but unlike me, a guy everyone knew — what the secret of his longevity was. “Not dying,” Mr. Saroyan responded. Not bad, Bill, and thanks. Think I’ll give that a shot. After all, there are still lots of things I want to see and do around these parts — and, just up the road a couple of thousand miles, there’s another place we have our sights on. We’d like to spend more than a bit of time there.
Heck, if having One Little Burg is nice — having two is heaven. Or Iowa.