[Bumps After the Road]
I had never moved to any place so far away from where I lived that I was unable to visit, prior to the transfer of my residence and belongings, to scout out the new setting and find an apartment. So I approached the move to California with great methodicalness and thoroughness. I had never heard of Riverside before the AHA interview, so I wrote to the Chamber of Commerce for information, specifically requesting a city street map and list of apartments.
Other than the Chamber of Commerce brochure, I had only three other sources of information about Riverside. One: on Johnny Carson's late-night television show--which I almost never watched--in June 1970, he had Little Richard as a guest. Little Richard mentioned in conversation that he had visited his mother (grandmother?) in Riverside. So I knew that Riverside was associated with Little Richard.*
Two: A newspaper story about college graduation had a photostory about UCR, where a graduating woman wore a bikini to commencement and another student released a pig during the award ceremony (was this UCR, or Santa Cruz that had the pig episode?).
Three: A Time magazine article on the UC system referred to UCR as the dope-smoking, wife-swapping campus of the system. This is hilarious to contemplate. What kind of place were we moving to, I wondered; it seems a little kinky.
Of course, the greatest source of information about Riverside was my vivid imagination. I pored over the city map, trying to imagine what the place looked like, reading carefully all the symbols for parks, schools, shopping centers, and so on. The only images I could fit into these schematic blanks were those of places I had known--so naturally my image of Riverside, thus invented, was a replica of the Northeast. Without realizing it, prior to moving to California, I had carefully constructed a universe and predicted experience for Riverside. Of course, reality would be different--in fact, it turned out--greatly different.
Half out of intent, half out of inadvertence, I had built barriers to California, carrying a head filled with New England and the Northeast. Too full to allow new experiences in. These preconceptions and defenses were to prove the fundamental source of difficulty in adjusting to California. Though, I did not know this, either, until after a year of living there [here!].
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[* Oddly, in 2005, thirty-five years after I heard of Little Richard's connection to Riverside, a man who had been one of Little Richard's bodyguards and gofers moved into a house in our neighborhood. I got to know him in a casual way.]
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Oh California!
- Epiphany (August 19, 1982)
- Temptation (July 18, 1983)
- No Heating Blanket Needed (August 13, 1983)
- Bumps After the Road (August 15, 1983)
- Outside (August 23, 1983)
- All That Is Gray Is Not (August 26, 1983)
- A New World (August 27, 1983)
- Screwed-Up Resistance (September 5, 1983)
- Peace and Reconciliation (September 7, 1983)
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