I’m a California kid, great-grandson (on one side) of pioneers, forty-niners, homesteaders, farmers, and fortune seekers, and (on the other) devout New Englanders who left their mark on Pacific Grove. I was born in Bakersfield just as the Great Depression got started, but I never felt depressed. My dad was a forest ranger, and I grew up between San Luis Obispo and Kernville in the tail end of the Sierra, and up the Valley from Bakersfield to Delano...