Coming of Age in California

I had heard of Gerald Haslam's _Coming of Age in California_, 2nd edition, Devil Mountain Books, 2000. But I only just now had a chance to read it. I too grew up in Bakersfield/Oildale just a few years later than the events chronicled in this book. In fact, I even worked out at Babe's Gym (see the essay "Growing Up at Babe's"). Gerald Haslam's descriptions are on the mark. The San Joaquin Valley was and still is a fertile, hot, humid area. In the 1950s, disputes among young men were settled by fists and then maybe a beer afterwards. It was a simpler time. We lived according to movie stereotypes portrayed by John Wayne and Marlon Brando. We were tough and uneducated; we didn't dare show any sensitivity in the potato sheds, packing plants, grape sheds, sugar beet dumps. Gerry Haslam's book, consisting of seventeen brief essays, explains this "toughness" with incisive observations and peels it away. We weren't as tough as we thought, and many of us had the same feelings as Haslam but could not express them half so well as he does in this text. For those readers interested in a sensitive, well-written insight into what it was like coming of age in [central] California in the 1950s and 1960s, this is a must-read book.

Gerald Haslam demonstrates his power of reporting and his gift for the language in this slender volume which contains such large truths.He writes of California's awesome San Joaquin Valley (called the Central Valley by some) and his youth in Bakersfield and Oildale. He went to a proud private Catholic high school, Garces and he so captures this area you can feel the heat of a Baker'spatch summer, feel the grit of its famous dust storms in your teeth and the sweat on the back of your neck.How easy it is to remember what it is like to be sixteen and hear all the gossip about what the kids at "the high school across town" are like. How all of us remember what it is like to go out to "work in the sheds" for a little extra money in the summer, only to find out we barely have the strength to work 'til noon in the physically demanding jobs offered in agriculture and in the oil patch. How many of us went home after such a learning experience with teeth clenched and a furious resolve to go to college and learn a white-collar job - one which could be performed under air conditioning with clean fingernails.He tells of the local tough young guys of a largely blue collar town and exposes the tender vulnerabilities of these same youth in the next paragraph. He describes the harrowing adventures of hanging out with some 1955-era "crazy guys" and the humor he found in some of these escapades. If you grew up "in these parts" every word will ring true. What puts this book at the top of my list is his ability to sketch a family which, while not perfect, functions as that rarest of the rare, a truly loving and functional family. You understand how this enormously gifted writer attained his talent when you see how carefully he was reared and taught life's lessons by parents who quietly loved each other and generously loved their son.In time he had to return their gentle lessons in family cohesiveness when age and illness rendered them dependent on their son and his wife. Suddenly you remember ... oh yes, some people are decent and honorable. Some families work to the benefit of its members ... even in the most trying of conditions. I fell in love with the picture of my hometown which he painted truthfully and without pretense. He not only wrote of his classmates (and spelled their names right), he captured the essence of them.After reading this I have thought of Haslam as not only my favorite California writer, but my friend. I've purchased this book many times to give as a gift to my favorite local people. I can only thank him for giving me a glimpse of a good family, and a wonderful Bakersfield success story.My lifetime Bakersfield best friend told me she cried for three days after reading it. "It was a happy, healing, cleansing cry," she later reported.After this, I can't miss a Haslam book! Read them all!

Captures an important time in anyones life. Great period piece on Central California 50 years ago.