Sunday, November 05, 2006

Repost Sunday: In California Everything Old Is New Again (Because It's Not That Old To Begin With)

I rerun some of my older posts on Sundays as a way to highlight stories that you may have missed. Just think of it as 'thought recycling' and a day off. This was originally posted August 5, 2006.

I was just looking through some old pictures from a trip to the East Coast a few years ago. There is so much history on the right coast of our country. It’s a little difficult for us “Left Coasters” to understand in a land where people are always trying to turn back time (or pull back and stretch it in the case of our pretty faces) instead of embracing it.

Of course people in Europe, the Middle East and just about everywhere else on this globe will shake their heads when they read this. To them B.C. actually means ‘Before Christ’ instead of ‘Before Cable,’ the standard by which many of us judge the passage of time.

To illustrate my point, many of the photos I was looking at were of bridges, churches and battlefields and all had nifty plaques showing that they were all from the 1700s. It’s amazing and almost incomprehensible to me to look at something that was built when our country was founded, if not before. Out here in Southern California, we measure history by things like ‘this is where Jimmy Durante ordered a hot dog in 1952.’ Our historic buildings are old theaters, restaurants and spots where scenes from certain movies were filmed (and by old I mean just a hair older than my oldest pair of white socks).

We don’t have Civil War or Revolutionary War battlefields; we have fields where movies about the Civil and Revolutionary Wars were filmed. While we do have the famous California missions that dot our coastline, their ages pale in comparison to the settlements at Jamestown. We have no Plymouth Rock but we sure as heck have the Hollywood sign.

No matter what you consider history, as southern Californians, we have our own special type of it. I can’t say I’ve been to one of America’s first colonial taverns but I can probably show you the library where Charlie Chaplain once visited (silently of course) or where Clark Gable ate a pastrami sandwich on July 6, 1934. But when all is said and done, there is one thing I’m sure of. The East Coast can’t brag about having the actual Brady Bunch house. And believe me, that is history no one can ever replace.

8 comments:

Irene said...

Definitely an entry worth reposting, Michael! I linked you to my site already. Woohoo! ;p

thethinker said...

I'd rather live in Southern California than Southeast Texas.

Give me a beatiful beach/coastline over historical sites anyday.

Parlancheq said...

Ha! The Brady Bunch rules. :)

I was thinking that you have Old Town San Diego, too, but maybe that doesn't count because it's from back when lots of Mexican folks were squatting on our land. ;)

Billy said...

aha, that picture is worth a thousand words. Fond memories of watching that show, even into my 20's.

heartinsanfrancisco said...

Well, Paul Revere can't possibly compare to Charlie Chaplin. (He had a bunch of kids, too.) I liked your contrast between the battlefields and the fields where movie battles were filmed.

Plymouth rock, by the way, should be called Plymouth Pebble. It's unimpressive, and has a thin chain around it which is attached to metal poles.

Is the Brady Bunch house in the Valley?

Odat said...

Ditto my last comment....lol..sorry but it's too early right now...;-)(but I think it was a good one) and of course your posts are always excellent, even the second time around!
Peace

ShadowFalcon said...

History ? California? Really? ;-)

mist1 said...

So, you work for the Tourism Board?