Bakersfield
Bakersfield
On the streets of Bakersfield, the tumbleweeds blow, the fog lays
low in the air in which our cars drive, and the spores of valley fever
rest in the fine dirt. Some days are hot and some are cold. Snow is
foreign to these streets. Suffocated by mountains, then dirt, then
crops, Bakersfield sits in the middle like the red circle on a dart
board.
Did the churches grow for a reason? How many high schools grow
each decade? How many more activities can one do on the
weekend?
Each person has a hospital to go to. Each person has their favorite
restaurant. Where does one shop?
The streets are filled with the local dealership license plate frames
on cars.
What fantastical things do we wish for in town?
What do we settle for now?
Certain times the streets are empty. Why?
The residents are traveling to where their dreams are set in. The beaches and palm trees are glamorous Christmas card opportunities while the locals are there for the best restaurants and the Christmas boat parade. But if you leave that certain area with Disneyland and Dodger games, freeway traffic north and south all hours of the day and leave the neighborhoods of housewives that have nothing else to do but have the occasional ignorant tweets, you drive north through mountains that once had yellow umbrellas on the side, and you slide back and forth on a road where deer cross, you come out of it all and see a long black strip of road with nothing on the side but dirt and cattle and mountains way off in the distance. The drop from the mountain and that long black road with the gray and brown haze of smog only make you dislike it more even before you get into the main town ahead. There is nothing that can amuse the average person, only if they get excited about rain birds sprinklers and tractors. While I pass this my grandmother can name every growing plant or fruit or vegetable in the vast fields while we enter or exit. This town of the southern part of the San Joaquin valley is a town where the detriment of staying in college in Bakersfield means you will possibly stay in the town forever. This town is where I grew up, wasn’t born there, but felt like I’ve been there forever growing up. A town where you can only be widely known as a doctor or a farmer or a be a well know oil company owner. Those well known people grew up in this town. It was different back then my grandmother tells me. Her generation can remember Bakersfield as the big earthquake in the 50s and my parents generation can remember how many high school were built in a short amount of time. While my generation in Bakersfield will remember how sports dominated the news cycles and the high schools money distribution and the bias it gave to sports. Today, the town is growing but at a slower pace than when I was young. The downtown called downtown is fading away of good shops and good restaurants and now being invaded by the homeless. The right side of the 99 freeway is divided into four sections. The first is north and south of the railroad tracks and East and West of Union Ave. North of the railroad tracks have the older homes but the nicer homes. Remodeled to sell for five hundred thousand and up and south of the railroad tracks is the ignorant and the irrevocable loss ones self value unless you are good a sports. East and went of union is either homeless people or the immensely disposable person who has no chance of climbing the social ladder. Left of the 99 freeway has the Neverland neighborhoods and the best restaurants and the old and new money in town.
No one would drive to or through Bakersfield for a fun family vacation. Why even leave Southern California to go up north? Thankfully to those victims, I mean citizens of Bakersfield, Sacramento and Tahoe are up the state and you have to drive through the flat and dull lands of Bakersfield. Buck Owens and Dewars are key stopping grounds to enjoy an overpriced ice cream or listen to an Oildale member trying to make it big with his guitar. With the news at eleven on a Friday night in the fall is nothing to be excited about only if you played on the grass in the cold that night. Football can be a great learning tool for obedience and authority, yet the teenagers that are playing a sport rather be play video games or have a burrito from the local gas stations. The private schools are no different, yet people think they the kids think they are better, yet they are on the same level of maturity and wisdom. The dismal lands surrounding Bakersfield can be beautiful after it rains and you can see the white mountains and you can see nothing else around you. The freeway is here which everyone takes. The surface streets occasionally cross over the 99 and on the other side of the freeway to where you can either find a marijuana store or a McDonald’s. Two colleges occupy this town. Nothing to be excited about and who are excited about the sports there have nothing else better to do. The adventure of growing up there is a congested knowledge of everything and everyone in town. Everyone knows everyone and you can’t get away with anything because that police man who pulls you over is the father of the friend you played football with and he lets you off because “ you’re a nice kid and I know your parents”. The passing of people going north or south is something to admire when you are young and growing up and you see LA on tv and want to experience it yourself. The flat announcements in the paper don’t fill your amusement or the churches blandly decorated. This is the holy land right? Bakersfield is in the famous California. The world loves California even if they have not visited it. I remember going on vacation to the southern part of New Jersey where there is a quaint town that is filled with people that have summer houses there. Sometimes people ask” where are you from?” And my mother or father says “ California “. Those people look at us like we have three eyes. “ why would you come here? Why would you leave California ?” I do agree but not all the glamorousness of Beverly Hills and Newport Beach are all of California. It’s a dull and boring desert, yet people still come to have opportunities in advancement in life. But those opportunities are different then when my grandmother came. Now people want to be flawless and fake to get attention but you can not do that in Bakersfield. Before, people came here to California to grow a certain food that they would sell to make a living for their families. Times are evolving and Bakersfield is not advanced like Southern California. The dismal summers when it’s one hundred and nine degrees, when everyone is inside and their air conditioner is on, and all the blinds are closed, it makes sense, while every male has a white ford truck with tan interior. My affliction with this town started when I was young and had a girlfriend. What to do is either go to a coffee shop and talk or walk around the Marketplace and go to the movies. That’s it. No concerts or amusement parks, no freedoms to express yourself and no one to talk to besides your friends who feel the same way you do, stuck in a town with no where to go.