California Dreamin'

I was thinking about winter just yesterday. Winter in Florida comes in fits and starts. It pops in and out as "cold snaps", a short period of relatively intense cold flanked by warm weeks. Usually. But I started life in a small town on Long Island where winter rolled in and set up camp for months. And I didn't much like that time of the year which seemed to stretch out endlessly. Drab and dreary and cold. Damp and barren and cold. Even sunny days seemed cold and brittle. I would lie on the hard, crisp lawn on those days and try to absorb the suns warmth.

But I was fortunate, my parents moved us to Florida; to the south end of it. And I loved it. The first year I don't think I wore anything heavier than a light jacket or sweater during those snaps. The years after that, I did. You get acclimatized. People say, "your blood thins." Which is unlikely but makes the point.

The Mamas and the Papas had a song, a big hit, called California Dreamin' back in 1965 or `66. It was a little depressing. I first went to California in 1965, in November. It was not warm, not to this (now) Florida boy, it was cold. And gray. And rainy and foggy. And even when the sun was out, it was like those days on Long Island.



I would spend almost 20 years mostly in California (cruises to the Gulf of Tonkin and a year back in Florida interrupting) and developed a different image of the state.

California is, to me, a place you could stand on a hillside overlooking the vast Pacific Ocean, an endless black expanse under gray skies. It is that image which sticks with me. Especially when I think of winter there. The beaches were near empty during mid-winter, the air cold, the water freezing.




In the end, California wasn't sunshine and sandy beaches to me.