California, There It Went
Jennifer Rubin
October 2010

[My note: I remember the California of the 60s described here. My grandfather retired there after a heart attack at work. His son, my uncle, had already established himself there - he'd completed a Master's degree at SUNY Binghampton and no local employer would hire him, fearing that he'd just move on when something better turned up. But I hated it and left to join my mother back east.]

More than 40 years later, I still remember the bright sun and the palm trees when we got off the plane. California in 1968 was a magical place, a magnet for those seeking new opportunities or to lose an old identity. The Golden State was allowing the rich to get richer and the middle class to live out the American dream in its pristine state. The public schools and expanding state-university system (two separate systems, in fact) were the envy of the nation. The corruption and Mob influence that had paralyzed many eastern and midwestern states and cities were largely absent.

When my parents announced they were uprooting the Glazer family from a cozy suburb of Philadelphia, as 5 million people did from eastern and midwestern towns between 1950 and 1980, the news was met with a mixture of awe (“California...â€