It was a place full of potential where dreams come true. Remembering the California I first fell in love with makes me emotional about its tragic decline in the intervening decades.Ĭalifornia has long represented opportunity and boundless growth, and that’s exactly what it did until 2020, when, for the first time in a century, the state’s population declined. California was everything I’d imagined and so much more. We got chowder in a sourdough bread bowl on Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey. We visited colleges and took a road trip up the coast to San Francisco, which struck me as the most gorgeous city I’d ever seen: a sparkling radiant jewel upon the sea. We went to San Diego, Disneyland and Universal Studios. Several years later I spent a summer with my aunt and uncle in Los Angeles and took some UCLA extension classes. My dreams of being a California girl began in those afternoons lost in fantasyland. I imagined Midge was me, cruising down the boardwalk with the wind in my hair and the sun on my cheeks. We wore that cassette tape out, screaming the lyrics to “California Dreamin’” on cold winter days in Connecticut. My sister had California Dream Barbie and we would pop in the Beach Boys Greatest Hits cassette tape and pretend we were living in California for hours upon hours, day after day. Midge came with roller skates and a blue visor and I loved her. Barbie’s BFF, she had auburn hair and freckles. When I was about eleven years old my favorite Barbie was Midge from the California Dream collection.
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