Cynthia Hobart Lindsay - The Natives are Restless

This edition is published by Valmy Publishing www.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books valmypublishing@gmail.com

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

Valmy Publishing 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS

BY

CYNTHIA HOBART LINDSAY

Contents

Due to the extraordinary speed with which everything in the Procals orbit changes, absolutely anything may no longer be true. At the time this was written, everything was absolutely truereally.

C.L.

For Tay and Alan who started the whole thing

Now here, you see, said the Queen to Alice, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! Alice in Wonderland

AT the height of the first Summit Conference, four members of the Russian Air Ministry arrived from Moscow at the International Airport in Los Angeles, California.

They were met by a space man from Disneyland.

The picture of the momentous occasion that appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times showed the space man smiling happily under his space helmet, and the Russians looking bemused under their felt hats. If you find something odd in the occurrence, you are alone. No one, including the Russians, seemed to feel there was anything untoward in this form of official greeting. That is because the event occurred in Southern California. In Southern California no one is ever surprised.

Sorrythere is an exception: every winter the territory is inundated by torrential rains which sweep houses and mountains before them, and make rivers of the streets, and every winter everyone is surprised. It is considered to be unusual, an adjective applied to all forms of weather except bluebird. Along with lack of surprise, the Southern Californian, regardless of social, cultural, intellectual, or economic status, demonstrates another dominant trait: he is Satisfied. As far as he is concerned, there is no place in the world like Southern California. Nowhere. Not any place. It is the end. It is the most. Even if he used to live in Texas.

In attempting to understand the native of the southern portion of the state of California, it will be necessary to observe briefly his geographical, ethnological, and historical background. Having observed and absorbed this background, you will find him to be incomprehensible. Actually, it will be easier if you dont try to understandjust accept. All I can do is tell you how it is. You figure out why. Im tired. Ive been doing all the research.

I love you, California, youre the greatest state of alland I know when I die, I shall breathe my last sigh for sunny California. This semi-official state song is the anthem of both Californiasnorthern and southern. It is one of the few things the sections share, divided as they are by differences of opinion, background, and culture so acute that there have been numerous attempts to divide the state: seven, officially, between 1882 and 1909.

Natives of Los Angeles, in the south, refer to San Francisco, in the north, as Frisco. San Franciscans do not refer to Los Angeles at all.

The native whom we shall study is peculiar (very, in fact) to the southern part of the state. As a convenient way of placing him, it might be well to refer to him as the Procalbecause he is so for California that rarely can he see past it. The Procal lives in the southern, or best, part of the greatest state of all. His state is all things to all men, and boasts the most of everything: Both the highest and the lowest points in the land, Mt. Whitney and Death Valley, only sixty miles apart. The greenest valleys, the most barren desert wastes; sloping foothills, giant mountains lavender in the sunset. Miles of golden orange groves. The tallest and almost the oldest trees in the world, the sequoias. The only trees of their kind in the world, the Monterey cypress. The deepest lake in the United States, Lake Tahoe. The greatestthe biggestthe most . But regardless of the scenic wonders of the northern part of the state, the Procal just cant see it. Hes happy right where he is.

For many years after its discovery in 1542 by Juan Rodrguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese navigator on exploration for the King of Spain, California was thought to be an island.

As far as the Procal is concerned, Southern California might as well be.

Technically, Southern Californias boundaries are the Mexican border at Tijuana below San Diego in the south, the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Tehachapi mountain range on the north, and the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains on the east.

Not so, however, for the Procal. He lives in the Los Angeles basin, surrounded by its suburbs and the beach, desert, and mountain areas a few miles away. (Everything is a few miles away; those working in the motion-picture industry live twenty minutes from the studioit is always twenty minutes regardless of where they, or the studio, are.) He may go to Vegas. He seldom, or never, goes to Santa Barbaraunless, that is, he lives in Pasadena. Procals who live in Pasadena can think in terms of Santa Barbara. The average Los Angeles citizen thinks of Santa Barbara as inhabited by northerners and Pasadena as inhabited by little old ladies.

Ethnologically, there are so many contributing folk-ways in the background of the Southern California native that defining the most influential is difficult. As a matter of fact, its impossible. It is probably safe to say, however, that his important cultural heritages derive from Spain and Iowa.

Today, whether he is a native with the blood of the Dons flowing through his veins and a name he shares with a Los Angeles boulevard, or whether he is a misplaced Iowan, he is first and foremost a Procal. He stands firmly on his sandaled feet, his Hawaiian shirt blowing in the breeze, his streaming eyes looking proudly upward toward the flag with the California bear. But he cant see it because the top of the flagpole is lost in the smog.

The Procal is crazy about his history, but doesnt know much about it. Having done months of research, I know a great deal about his history but am not crazy about it. So we shall skim over its early phases and come at once to the portion with which we are concerned.

Historically, even the name of California has been a subject of conjecture for years. There are those who believe it derives from the Latin calida fornax , meaning hot oven, in reference to the hot dry climate of Baja California; those who hold to cala fornix , or vault, after an arch under a rock where Cortez landed; those who insist that the name comes from the passage in The Song of Roland where the Emperor Charlemagne laments his nephew Rolands death: Dead is my nephew who conquered many lands! And now the Saxons will rebel against me, and the Hungarians, Bulgarians, and many others, the Romans, the Apulians, and those of Palermo, those of Africa, and those of Califerne.