Your Routes Are Showing

"So won't you carry me back to
California
I've been on the road too long
Take me
To the West Coast daddy
And let me be where I belong" (Carole King/ "Back to California")


"Better start packing, kids."
"We're moving to California."
That's what I told my daughters and my wife Linda in July of 1976. We were living in Tampa at the time and I had just said "yes" to an offer from a radio station in San Diego. The job, the afternoon drive show on KOGO, was a fantastic offer and I had to be on the air by the second week in August. We made it on time and have pretty much been denizens of the West Coast ever since. Our oldest daughter, Kelly, migrated to the East Coast for college in 1989 and has lived and worked in New York City since 1993. She always had, I think, an East Coast soul. That's good. We all need to be where it feels like HOME.

I love the West. We have lived in California, (North and South), Washington state, and Nevada. We settled in San Diego twice: in 1976 and once again in 1986. We must like it.
The absolute best thing about the West is the fact that damn near everybody here has a "story". They left someplace else to get here and most of the time it's an interesting narrative. The place is alive with characters. That's the reason your crazy cousin Carl lives here now. We're ALL here!

Linda and I are both native Midwesterners, she from South Dakota and I from Illinois, Michigan, Iowa and South Dakota. Our youngest daughter, Katie, was born in Kansas. Somehow, even with all of those roots, the Midwest never felt like home to any of us. Too flat, too common sensical, too windy, too.....who knows, it just never felt quite right.

We have lived in the South and love the people and the food. (Hate the heat and the bugs!) But, by virtue of birth, will always be looked on as "Yankees" by those natives of the Land of Cotton.

New England is a magical place of real beauty with all that early American history. It charms me every time I'm there, but knowing that my old pal "The Skipper" has lived in New Hampshire for nearly forty years and is still "The New Guy"makes me think that Linda and I could never feel truly at home there.

You have got to be where you're supposed to be.
That's why I'll be right here on the West Coast with all of the other weirdos making sure that the sun sets in the Pacific each evening.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe old Sol is waiting for my cue...