Produced by David A. Schwan
THE CALIFORNIACS
By Inez Haynes Irwin
California, which produces the maximum of scenery and the minimum of
weather; California, which grows the biggest men, trees, vegetables and
fleas in the world, and the most beautiful women, babies, flowers
and fruits; California, which, on the side, delivers a yearly crop of
athletes, boxers, tennis players, swimmers, runners and a yearly crop of
geniuses, painters, sculptors, architects, authors, musicians, actors,
producers and photographers; California, where every business man writes
novels, or plays, or poetry, or all three; California, which has spawned
the Coppa, Carmel and San Quentin schools of literature; California,
where all the ex-pugs become statesmen and all the ex-cons become
literateurs; California, the home of the movie, the Spanish mission,
the golden poppy, the militant labor leader, the turkey-trot, the
grizzly-bear, the bunny-hug, progressive politics and most American
slang; California, which can at a moment's notice produce an earthquake,
a volcano, a geyser; California, where the spring comes in the fall and
the fall comes in the summer and the summer comes in the winter and the
winter never comes at all; California, where everybody is born
beautiful and nobody grows old--that California is populated mainly with
Californiacs.
California, I repeat, is populated mainly with Californiacs; but the
Californiacs are by no means confined to California. They have, indeed,
wandered far afield. New York, for instance, has a colony so large
that the average New Yorker is well acquainted with the symptoms
of California. The Californiac is unable to talk about anything but
California, except when he interrupts himself to knock every other place
on the face of the earth. He looks with pity on anybody born outside
of California and he believes that no one who has ever seen California
willingly lives elsewhere. He himself often lives elsewhere, but he
never admits that it is from choice. He refers to California always as
"God's country", and if you permit him to start his God's country line
of talk, it is all up with intelligent conversation for the rest of the
day. He will discourse on California scenery, climate, crops, athletes,
women, art-sense, etc., ad libitum, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. He is
a walking compendium of those Who's Whosers who were born in California.
He can reel off statistics which flatter California, not by the yard,
but by the mile. And although he is proud enough of the ease and
abundance with which things grow in California, he is even more proud
of the size to which they attain. Gibes do not stop the Californiac, nor
jeers give him pause. He believes that he was appointed to talk about
California. And Heaven knows, he does. He has plenty of sense of humor
otherwise, but mention California and it is as though he were conducting
a revival meeting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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