The Winter That Sent Me West

I moved from Minnesota to California in 1968, and I wish I could tell you it was because I had some grand plan for my life.

The truth is, I was cold. I had been cold for what felt like my entire life.

Minnesota winters have a way of becoming personal. The cold does not just stay outside where it belongs. It follows you into the car, into your boots, and somehow all the way down into your bones. You scrape ice off the windshield in the dark, drive to work in the dark, and come home in the dark. Then someone tells you it will be ten degrees warmer tomorrow, and you get excited until you realize they mean five below instead of fifteen below.

The winter of 1967 finally did me in. I was twenty-three years old and working at a warehouse outside Minneapolis. Every morning I walked several blocks from the bus stop with the wind coming straight at me. No matter which direction I walked, the wind always seemed to be coming straight at me. One morning I got to work and could barely feel my fingers. I remember standing near a little space heater in the break room, holding my hands over it, and thinking, Why am I doing this? Not just why was I standing over the heater. Why was I living somewhere that hurt my face every time I stepped outside?

California had been in my imagination for years. To me, California was sunshine, palm trees, beaches, convertibles, and people walking around in short sleeves in January. I had seen it in movies and magazines. Everything looked bright and open. The roads were wide, the sky was blue, and nobody ever seemed to own a snow shovel.

I pictured myself living near the ocean in some clean little apartment with a balcony. I would buy a convertible, even though I had very little money. I would go to the beach after work. I would become the sort of person who wore sunglasses all the time.

It was not a very detailed plan. I did not have a job waiting for me. I barely knew anyone in California. A fellow I had gone to school with was living near San Francisco, and he said I could sleep on his couch until I found work. That was enough for me.

My parents thought I had lost my mind. My mother kept asking what I was going to do out there. I told her I would find a job. She asked, “What kind of job?” and I said, “A California job.” I had no idea what that meant.

My father was quieter about the whole thing. He helped me check the oil in my old Chevrolet and gave me twenty dollars before I left. Twenty dollars meant more then than it does now, but it still was not enough to build a new life. He shook my hand and said, “You can always come home.” I think he expected me to be back before summer.

I packed everything I owned into that car: clothes, a few records, a coffee pot, a winter coat I was convinced I would never need again, and a cardboard box full of books I had not read. Then I started driving west.

That drive was the first time I understood how big the country really was. I had traveled before, but mostly around the Midwest. Now the landscape kept changing. Flat farmland gave way to open plains, then mountains, then long stretches where I felt like I was the only person on the road.

The car overheated once in Wyoming. I slept in it two nights because I was trying to save money. I lived mostly on coffee, hamburgers, and whatever came out of vending machines at gas stations. But every mile west felt like I was moving toward something.

When I finally crossed into California, I expected an immediate transformation. I thought I would see palm trees lined up along the highway and maybe the ocean sparkling in the distance.

Instead, I saw traffic. Miles and miles of traffic. There were more cars than I had ever seen in one place, and everyone seemed to be driving faster than I was. I had directions written on a piece of paper balanced on the seat beside me, and I missed at least three turns.

By the time I reached the Bay Area, it was late afternoon. The sky was gray, the wind was blowing, and it was much colder than I had expected. I remember getting out of the car in San Francisco and thinking, You have got to be kidding me. I had driven all the way from Minnesota to California, and I still needed a jacket.

Nobody had explained the fog.

That was my first lesson about California: the state was not one thing. It was not endless summer everywhere. The ocean was freezing, San Francisco could be cold in August, and many of the palm trees I had imagined were nowhere to be seen.

The apartment where my friend lived was not clean, and it did not have a balcony. It was on the second floor of an old building, and four people were already living there. I slept on a couch that sagged so badly in the middle that every morning I woke up folded like a pocketknife. The kitchen sink leaked. Someone was always playing music. Nobody seemed to know who had bought the food in the refrigerator, so everything had somebody’s name written on it.

Still, I loved it almost immediately. Everything felt alive.

Minnesota had not been cut off from what was happening in the country, but California felt like it was right in the middle of it. Young people were arriving from everywhere. Some were looking for work, some were looking for themselves, and some were clearly not sure what they were looking for.

You saw long hair, painted vans, sandals, beads, Army jackets, and clothes in colors I had never seen anyone wear back home. There were people handing out leaflets on street corners. There were protests, poetry readings, political arguments, and music coming from open windows.

I went over to Haight-Ashbury a few times. By 1968, the famous “Summer of Love” had already happened, and people said the neighborhood had changed. It was not all peace and flowers. Some people looked lost. Some looked tired. There was a lot of idealism, but there were also drugs and poverty and people who did not seem to have anywhere else to go.

I was never much of a hippie myself. My hair got a little longer, mostly because I could not afford regular haircuts. I owned one shirt that could probably be called psychedelic, although I only wore it twice. But I liked the openness of it all. People seemed more willing to question things. They talked about the war, civil rights, politics, music, and what kind of life they wanted to build.

The music was everywhere. You could hear bands in clubs, parks, apartments, and little coffeehouses. Someone always had a new record they insisted you had to hear. I saw concerts I did not fully appreciate at the time because we assumed there would always be another one next week. I would come home with my ears ringing and my clothes smelling like cigarette smoke. It felt like the music belonged to the city, and the city belonged to anyone willing to show up.

Of course, I still needed a job. The first one I found was unloading trucks for a grocery distributor. So I had left a warehouse in Minnesota only to end up in another warehouse in California. The difference was that I did not have to walk through snow to get there.

Eventually I found a better-paying job with an insurance company. It required wearing a tie, which made my roommates laugh. Every morning I would leave the apartment looking respectable while someone else was sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal at noon.

California was more expensive than I expected. My paycheck disappeared quickly between rent, food, gasoline, and everything else. That convertible never happened. I drove the same old Chevrolet until it finally gave up on me.

And the beaches were not what I had pictured, either. They were beautiful, but the water was so cold that my feet hurt after only a few seconds. The first time I went in past my knees, a wave knocked me over, and I came out covered in sand, pretending I had meant to do that.

But the longer I stayed, the less I cared about the California I had imagined. The real California was better because it surprised me. It was fog rolling over the hills in the evening. It was eucalyptus trees and steep streets and houses painted colors nobody would have chosen back home. It was hearing different languages in the grocery store. It was driving across the bridge and seeing the bay spread out below me. It was crowded, expensive, complicated, and sometimes strange. It also felt like a place where I could become someone new.

And then, of course, I met your mother.

That happened about six months after I arrived. A friend from work invited me to a small party in Berkeley. I almost did not go because I had been working all day and did not know most of the people there. Your mom was sitting on the floor near the record player, arguing with someone about which album to put on next. She had a quick smile and a way of looking directly at you when you spoke, as if she had nowhere else she needed to be.

We started talking about where we had grown up. When I told her I had moved from Minnesota because I hated the cold, she laughed and said, “Then you picked the wrong part of California.” I told her San Francisco winters were nothing compared to Minnesota. She said, “You complain about the weather every morning.” She was right, although I had only known her for about fifteen minutes.

I did not know that night that she would become my wife. I just knew I wanted to keep talking to her.

California was not what I expected. There was no convertible, no little apartment overlooking the ocean, and not nearly as much warm weather as I had been promised. But I found work. I found music. I found a place that challenged me and opened up my idea of what life could look like.

Most importantly, I found your mom.

So I suppose the cold did me a favor. Had that Minnesota winter been just a little easier, I might never have left.