I know, after many California discontent posts, it seems somehow impossible that I could actually be a native. Almost sacrilege! But they stem from a love of the way it was, not the way it is. All things change, but seeing things change for the worse is depressing.

Naples was great. In the late seventies they built the "Marina Pacifica" right there by Pacific Coast Highway. They had a Buffums there too originally. My grandmother loved shopping at Buffums, which was a LB based department store. I think Buffums stores were sold out or folded in the late eighties. In nearby Belmont Shore I watched Lynda Carter shoot a Wonder Woman episode circa 1978. Lynda Carter defined "Foxy" back then and actually still seems to be doing pretty good. I recall the water Christmas parade around Naples/Belmont where they would decorate boats with lights, etc.

I did some Google map search and see the Circle Drive-In theatre is long gone replaced with condos or something similar. Shame. Seeing that Neon sign and its circular target, sequential flashing light pattern was something so fifties-cool. Just like the rocket ship in El Dorado Park. It brings to the fore of my mind the way "futurism" has changed from "outer" to "inner". Exploration of space and the underseas has been discarded by modern culture and instead have been replaced with computer explorations from a well-planted keister. Old visions brought people together - in parks, auditoriums, world fairs, etcetera - even "drive-in" movie theatres. In the seventies and eighties the "malls" performed that valuable social interaction and now more and more technology is being designed to minimize human interaction - computers, ipods, etcetera. I guess we have to await all those post-war folks to reincarnate again and bring in another renaissance in another 40 or 50 years. 2050 will probably usher in the beginnning of another wave of futurism - because, I'm afraid to say the boomer, X, Y and whatever generations certainly have not inherited their ancestors optimism, drive and forward looking gaze.

This is what is wrong with the 21st century. It started with everyone paranoid and doing a "duck and cover" on December 31, 1999 as the "Millennium" began and after September 11, 2001, the theme of isolation and fear has continued. People who do not interact with crowds and learn social graces become hostile and more prejudiced. They develop an intolerance for others and the isolation route is a fast-track to the promotion of fanaticism. The future is a place that looks, somewhat disturbingly, like the isolation tube Neo found himself in, in the Matrix - plugged in to artificial reality, and socially worthless - one of billions of cogs on a wheel.

Thanks though for the trip down memory lane. Anyone of these little memory jogs can spur its own glorious thought trains.

To be quite honest civil defense drills never scared me a bit. I knew there would be no nuclear war, but like learning the heimlich maneuver, I knew it was always good to prepare for things like that. Perhaps it was because Mrs. S did take so long to find her way under the desk, I already figured out that the threat was pretty minimal.

;-)