California Girl!

I was almost a California girl! Reminds me of that fab song by the Beach Boys – if you are old enough to know what I am talking about you are wise in my books :)(The older, the wiser?!!).

I am standing in front of my mother’s high school in Oakland, California. Fremont High School had less than 300 students in her day and a picture tells me that it was white and proper. Anyway, I am standing out front taking a picture and it dawns on me that if it weren’t for “Uncle Bill” I might well be Californian! My mother and her parents and Uncle Bill came to Oakland to build houses. They were labourers and had built many houses in the East end of Hamilton – London Street, Cope Street and others. Uncle Bill heard it was the land of plenty. The internet tells me that 13,000 houses or more were built in the years my family were there – about 1922-1927. My Mom was born in 1911.

Fremont High School today has 1,000 or more students. The racial profile goes like this:
Asian 15%; Hispanic 49%; African American 35%; Whites and other ethnic groups – you got it – 1%. My mother, true to some others in her generation, might just roll over in her urn! Otherwise the school is like any other in Burlington, Ontario. There are blue jeans, tattoes, sculpted hair cuts and overall high spirited youth hanging out together.

I am thinking that it is sometimes by a hair that we end up where we are geographically. Uncle Bill got disenchanted with California – I’m not sure why – so my family moved back to Hamilton. You can tell that “Uncle Bill” had big vote.

My mother’s brother, Clifford, was born in Oakland while they were there. He was 14years younger than my mother and my grandmother was 43 when he was born. As I stand near where they made home I am thinking that one of the hardest things about the death of a parent is that you don’t have access to their story any more. My mother would have been thrilled that I went to Oakland where she had lived – I wish I knew what street it was.

My guess is that life was interesting in California and that lots of families in that day coped with many challenges and heartaches amid the joys and gifts of life. Sabbatical time gives you the moments you need to become perhaps a little more philosophical about life and time to savour the flavour of the moment – so much easier than in the 1920’s - in California no less!