The Controlled Chaos of Growing up in California

I first came to California from the Seattle Area in 1952 when I was 4 years old on the Southern Pacific train with my mother and her mother. My father had driven his 1941 Century Buick that had been his brother's before he was supposed to have died in 1942. (The true story was never told to any of the family).

When I arrived in San Diego in the Vista area it was sunny all the time there near the beach. My first experience was to watch my mother almost drown at Corona Del Mar. I was 4 years old and my father had to leave me on the beach alone to rescue my mother who got caught in a rip tide. He just threw off his shoes and swam into rescue her. He had spent two years in the Tahiti and Hawaii area on a Yacht he chartered with his first wife and brother from 1939 to 1941 so he was an expert diver and swimmer in the ocean and understood ocean currents. My mother was used to the Puget Sound without surf and almost died in the high waves and rip currents that day. I was left crying alone on the beach to watch them survive or drown. This was expected of me. I didn't disappoint them. I stayed put on the shore and hoped they would return for me.

California was mostly sunny all the time. It was the exact opposite in this way than Seattle where it was almost always cloudy, or rainy or snowing year around. Seattle is one of the most beautiful places on earth when it is sunny but that sun might only be there for full days 7 days a year. So, understanding this about Seattle might be important if you want to visit or live there. Otherwise you are going to be depressed and really miss the sunlight.

So, California people were less polite than Seattle where we were much more Canadian in our politeness because many people intermarry between Canada and the Seattle area because they are right next to each other. So, the Canadian politeness I already had down Seattle style before I moved to California.

However, California is about doing whatever you can get away with creatively. So, whatever you think about doing that you can get away with you do always as a child growing up. And the more creative you are about doing this the better you are thought of always.

Where other places on earth you might be put down or killed for being different or creative, often in California on the coast especially if what you create helps people or entertains people everyone might start trying whatever you are doing or creating. And then eventually, if it is a really good idea it might go worldwide whatever it is.

So, this is what California has always been like and in this creative sense California since it's existence has always financially from ideas led the U.S. out of any financial difficulties for much more than 100 years now.

So, I would say it is the richest most creative place on earth because of this. There is no place like California on earth yet. But, likely anyplace like California would have it's own types of creativity and soul just like California does. And I think that is a good thing worldwide.