Pretty soon you\u2019ve got to drive from Bakersfield to Sacramento.\u00a0 You are, of course, thankful you don\u2019t have to start further south in Los Angeles and thus crawl up and down scorched and barren mountains that separate the city of glamour and poverty from the rest of the state. \u00a0Your journey, instead, will take you through the desolation and haze of California\u2019s great Central Valley where citizens in several towns and cities are battling Angelinos for the distinction of breathing the most noxious air in the nation.<\/p>\n
At the same time, it must not merely be conceded but emphasized that water flowing down and directed in from the High Sierra has coalesced with money, ingenuity, and discipline to transform a valley desert into a fountain of fruit and vegetables more prolific than anything the world has produced.\u00a0 That will make you proud.\u00a0 If you reflect, it will also humble you.\u00a0 But it will not long entertain your eyes or your mind during the four or five hours you\u2019ll be on Highway 99. \u00a0The people who have lived along and near this aging and often too narrow throughway are much more intriguing than anything visible from a speeding car.<\/p>\n
In Bakersfield, as you\u2019re departing, think not of the dry bed of the Kern River crawling under the freeway.\u00a0 Ignore the frighteningly discolored earth everywhere you look.\u00a0 Don\u2019t stare at the oil wells bowing and rising the same way forever.\u00a0 Instead, think about Earl Warren, born and raised here before leaving to become a fine Bay Area district attorney, an excellent governor of this state, and a great Supreme Court Chief Justice who, in 1954, was a leader in approving the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case declaring that in America \u201cseparate is not equal\u201d and that all races must have access to the same schools.<\/p>\n
Enthusiasm also rises with recollections that in country music Bakersfield deserves the modestly exaggerated nickname Nashville West.\u00a0 Merle Haggard drew his first breath here and overcame criminal tendencies and a stint in San Quentin to become a singing and songwriting legend.\u00a0 Only slightly less prestigious is transplanted Oklahoman Buck Owens, who croons and plays several instruments quite well, and also runs a business empire founded on country radio stations, some of which have been sold for huge profits.\u00a0 Buck\u2019s enduring legacy may be his Crystal Palace restaurant, museum, and concert hall that serves sumptuous albeit artery-clogging food before you watch top notch singers from around the country in a glittering yet intimate atmosphere that keeps luring you back.\u00a0 You can\u2019t be sure when Buck will join his Buckaroos on stage; he\u2019s in his mid-seventies now, and a decade ago had surgery for throat cancer, and last year barely survived a stroke.\u00a0 But when he decides he\u2019s ready, the man still delivers.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s move to sports.\u00a0 In Bakersfield that means you start with Frank Gifford, the Bakersfield High and Bakersfield College alum who then headed south to become an All American running back at USC before traveling east and starring many years for the New York (football) Giants.\u00a0 In his early off seasons, Gifford lived in Bakersfield but the entertainment allure of Hollywood and New York predominated.\u00a0 You need only recall Burt Reynolds\u2019 anecdote about the young Gifford.\u00a0 Both were among a group of actors preparing for screen tests, and the makeup artist asked Reynolds what kind he wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll take the same thing he\u2019s wearing,\u201d said Reynolds, pointing at Gifford.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not wearing makeup,\u201d said the artist.<\/p>\n
Memories of Gifford inevitably also prompt visions (pleasant or not) of Howard Cosell, the two of them on Monday Night Football, then a national institution, Cosell sardonically slicing everyone he could and Gifford suavely serving as a straight man between Howard and Dandy Don Meredith.<\/p>\n
At least two other gridiron luminaries must be mentioned.\u00a0 David Carr played high school ball in Bakersfield, was considered only a fair prospect, went to Fresno State, sat on the bench two seasons, redshirted one, then as a junior and senior filled the Valley air with tight spirals for touchdowns and became the first player taken in the NFL draft.\u00a0 He\u2019s currently starting and progressing toward stardom for the Houston Texans.\u00a0 The other late bloomer is Stephen Neal who, as a slender six-foot-five, hundred ninety pound prep wrestler from San Diego, finished only fourth in the state meet.\u00a0 He came to Cal State Bakersfield, frequently got roughed up during his first three years, one as a redshirt, but continued lifting weights and eating and learning, and as a super heavyweight senior in 1999 became the first wrestler to in one year win the NCAA title, the National Championship, the Pan American Games gold, and the World Championship.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, weary of rolling around on the mat for low pay, Neal headed for the NFL, where coaches told him he was big and strong, all right, but hadn\u2019t learned much football in high school and must have forgotten that.\u00a0 This decade\u2019s gridiron guru, Bill Bellichek of the New England Patriots, said it \u201cwould have been a stretch to even call Neal a player.\u201d\u00a0 No coach is going to lead three Super Bowl winners without foresight: Bellichek kept Neal on the reserve squad a couple of years and was patient during a series of injuries after Neal had become a player.\u00a0 The result was evident this January during the AFC title game when Neal, pulling from right guard, led running back Corey Dillon on some key gains.\u00a0 He also started two weeks later in the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Up Highway 99 about a half hour you enter Delano, a small town with much poverty, and therefore an appropriate headquarters for Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers union, a champion of civil rights as well as workers rights, friend and colleague of Bobby Kennedy and Jesse Jackson, and a man with a high school in town named after him.\u00a0 Chavez died in his mid-sixties in 1993 but his name is still, and will always be, associated with Delano, and the Central Valley, and the eternal struggle to get better wages and benefits for those who sacrifice their bodies to earn a subsistence living while providing low-cost produce for a hungry state and nation.<\/p>\n
Another half hour up Highway 99 and you\u2019re moving through Tulare.\u00a0 Don\u2019t blink.\u00a0 Just keep your eyes on the road and tell yourself here is the boyhood home of Bob Matthias.\u00a0 As a seventeen-year old prep he went to the 1948 Olympics \u2013 due to the war, the first since the 1936 Olympics in Berlin \u2013 and won the decathlon.\u00a0 He repeated the feat in 1952.\u00a0 How does such a young fellow with two gold medals stay competitive and enthused?\u00a0 Eventually, the answer came: run for Congress.\u00a0 Matthias won those elections.\u00a0 And you can\u2019t mention his name in the Central Valley without knowledgeable people volunteering he also was a renowned social decathlete in the nation\u2019s capital.\u00a0 That, perhaps, was a delayed reward for having won gold medals in an era before track and field excellence was appropriately compensated.<\/p>\n
Even though Lemoore is about twenty minutes west of Highway 99, there\u2019s a road sign pointing to the town, so you\u2019re encouraged to envision one of the fastest-moving folks who ever lived \u2013 Tommie Smith, winner of the most exciting two-hundred meter race of all, the final in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.\u00a0 Teammate John Carlos had recently beaten Smith and was favored by some, and that preference looked appropriate as the fast-starting Carlos powered away from the always slow-starting Smith until the backstretch where the six-foot-four Smith finally unlimbered his long legs and put himself into a gear no man had attained.\u00a0 The result was a world record.\u00a0 The awards ceremony is by some even better remembered.\u00a0 Standing on the gold medal podium, Smith raised a black-gloved hand as a civil rights protest, and John Carlos did the same from the bonze medal step.\u00a0 (While the shocked Carlos had looked over at the zooming Smith, an Aussie passed him on the back side to take the silver medal.) \u00a0Both men were kicked off the team and banished from Olympic competition.\u00a0 Years later, in 1980, Smith was interviewed in San Jose where he\u2019d brought his Santa Monica City College track team for the state championships.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was letting people know how I felt about this country\u2019s racial problems, and that helped me a lot psychologically,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cThe demonstration doesn\u2019t hurt my career now, but it caused me to be fired from jobs ten years ago.\u00a0 I was ridiculed and insulted by uncouth people to the point where I almost had a complete mental and physical breakdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to lie and say there are no longer any problems.\u00a0 I try to be a realist.\u00a0 I think racism is now overt, whereas it was covert in the sixties.\u00a0 There has been progress in this area, however.\u00a0 The fight must go on, that\u2019s all.\u00a0 I\u2019m just as proud of this country as anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another gold medalist, Rafer Johnson, went to school a little further up Highway 99 in Kingsburg. \u00a0He is renowned for the stirring decathlon battle he waged with UCLA teammate and close friend C.K. Yang at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.\u00a0 Throughout the competition, when both frequently appeared on the verge of winning or losing, the athletes encouraged each other, and made a powerful statement about international cooperation.\u00a0 Yang was from Taiwan (then Formosa), in every way a world away from the heartland of the Central Valley.\u00a0 In 1984 Johnson was still trim and athletic as he ran up the steps in the Coliseum, torch in hand, to light the Olympic flame initiating the Games in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re in Fresno now, ignoring the smoky skyline and thinking about creative arts.\u00a0 You know an original painting by Diego Rivera hangs in the Fresno Art Museum.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a major Rivera work but it\u2019s a good one he sold for a few hundred dollars, a lot of money eighty years ago, to an art patron who later donated it.\u00a0 Right off the freeway, in the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, you can visit the section honoring writer William Saroyan, a Pulitzer Prize recipient for \u201cThe Time of Your Life.\u201d\u00a0 This dedicated man of letters scoffed at the award, declaring the winning work no better than the rest of his output.\u00a0 Saroyan twice married the same beautiful blond woman, and was twice divorced.\u00a0 She subsequently married actor Walter Matthau.\u00a0 Saroyan might not have found personal tranquility but he created quietude by purchasing the house next door and leaving it vacant as a buffer against the world.<\/p>\n
It seems athletes who hurl balls are most prominent in Fresno.\u00a0 Local pitcher Tom Seaver overpowered Major League hitters for two decades and won more than three hundred games and a place in the Hall of Fame.\u00a0 And one of David Carr\u2019s predecessors at Fresno State, Trent Dilfer, quarterbacked the Baltimore Ravens when their pulverizing defense keyed a Super Bowl victory several years ago.\u00a0 You could also reasonably say that former Fresno State basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian hurled the recruiting rule book and brought in every good player he could, regardless of the athlete\u2019s academic aptitude or criminal background.\u00a0 Quite a few of Tark\u2019s guys were arrested, one while wielding a sword.\u00a0 No one got hurt, so don\u2019t dwell on that.\u00a0 Picture instead the Runnin\u2019 Rebels of Nevada \u2013 Las Vegas, where Tarkanian had his greatest teams.\u00a0 Remember a nice guy who believed in giving kids a chance to climb out of poverty.<\/p>\n
About an hour more and you\u2019re in Modesto and not for a second have you thought: \u201cThis is \u201cCondit Country.\u201d\u00a0 You had been afraid you\u2019d recall former Congressman Gary Condit and his evident lack of concern for a missing mistress, who was later discovered dead in a park near Washington, D.C.\u00a0 Condit didn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 \u00a0Scott Peterson certainly did; he murdered his wife and unborn child.\u00a0 But you\u2019re light years from any of them.\u00a0 You\u2019re remembering the countless world class sprinting events from the Modesto Relays. \u00a0You\u2019re savoring images of Carl Lewis, the greatest track and field athlete in history, dashing down the lane to victory.\u00a0 You\u2019re also intrigued by memories of the urbane Payton Jordan, former track coach at Stanford.\u00a0 In his mid-sixties a quarter century ago, the professor of running is thrusting his knees high, sprinting like a young man, as he demolishes then Senator Alan Cranston and everyone else in the world in his age group.<\/p>\n
A half hour later you\u2019re in Stockton.\u00a0 The geography hasn\u2019t changed \u2013 everything\u2019s still flat and brown \u2013 but you\u2019re in the same town as the University of the Pacific, where the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg once patrolled the gridiron and amassed some of the wins that made him number one on the career list until surpassed by Bear Bryant of Alabama. \u00a0\u00a0UOP is also the alma mater of all conference safety Pete Carroll, the dynamically laid-back and eternally youthful lad who has resurrected the USC football program and led it to two straight national championships.<\/p>\n
Stockton is also the birthplace of artist Kara Walker.\u00a0 As you glance at the rough edges of the city of her youth, remember that her work depicts a very different place \u2013 the antebellum South, which she began to creatively explore as a student at the Atlanta College of Art.\u00a0 In Walker\u2019s hands, black paper is intricately cut into various human forms, then silhouetted against white walls, to depict the lives of slaves and slave owners.\u00a0 Degradation, sex, violence, sadism, humor, and grace \u2013 they are all on the wall, a temporary screen exploring the past and asking what it means today.<\/p>\n
Lighter moments are less than a half hour ahead in Elk Grove.\u00a0 Here big Bill Cartwright played stellar high school basketball and launched a career that would lead to the New York Knicks and the Chicago Bulls.\u00a0 Michael Jordan was a teammate.\u00a0 The Bulls were Jordan\u2019s team.\u00a0 The NBA was Jordan\u2019s league.\u00a0 He often scolded and corrected Cartwright, who usually absorbed the commander\u2019s barbs but once threatened to bust his chops.\u00a0 In recent years Cartwright returned as head coach of the Bulls but was impatient with young players still far from their prime, and he was fired.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re in Sacramento now, the pearl of the Valley, capital of the most populous and creative and exasperating state in the land, and home of the Kings.\u00a0 The most compelling personalities in Sacramento have generally come from other cities, states, and nations.\u00a0 Governors Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, Pat Brown, Ronald Reagan, and Jerry Brown ruled here.\u00a0 Now it is Arnold Schwarzenegger\u2019s town, even when he one day proclaims he wants to close the border, and the next says he really just meant control it.\u00a0 Sacramento was also home to Max Baer, Sr., for a time heavyweight champion of the world and forevermore father of Junior, who played Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies.\u00a0 This is also where Mark Spitz received intensive early training in a swimming career that culminated in his winning seven gold medals during the 1972 Olympics.\u00a0 Artist Wayne Thiebaud still lives here and paints surrealistic from-the-sky-down landscapes of the morose fields and water in the valley.\u00a0 He is most renowned for his cheerful paintings of desserts but more distinguished because of his striking human portraits and dizzying cityscapes that make you feel like you\u2019re about to fall out of tall buildings onto streets in San Francisco. \u00a0That\u2019s right. The City by the Bay beckons only ninety miles away.\u00a0 Take Interstate 80 west.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pretty soon you\u2019ve got to drive from Bakersfield to Sacramento.\u00a0 You are, of course, thankful you don\u2019t have to start further south in Los Angeles and thus crawl up and down scorched and barren mountains that separate the city of glamour and poverty from the rest of the state. \u00a0Your journey, instead, will take you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,50,109,387,112,110,111,475],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n