The view from here after a trip to Sonora for supplies. More to come: Glynn Wilson
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
COULTERVILLE, Ca. – Never in my wildest dreams of making the move nearly 3,000 miles across the country to the Golden State of California did I imagine landing in the nicest small town in America. But due to preparation, opportunity, timing, good friends and little luck, it’s come true.
Back in 2022, Reader’s Digest named Coulterville, California the “Nicest Place in America” – talking about its people.
“Just 2.5 hours from the San Francisco Bay Area and 45 minutes from Yosemite National Park … Coulterville serves as the golden gateway to unmatched outdoor recreation and is the perfect base camp for a true Mother Lode experience. With everything from deep history dives to showy flower tours, from one-of-a-kind lodging to foodie brunches, Coulterville epitomizes the spirit of where granite meets gold. Welcome to winding (mountain) roads … and lots of Gold Rush-era flavor.”
Quite frankly, dear readers, I knew it was a risk to even try to make it here. I could have broken down and gotten stuck anywhere along the way, like I nearly got stuck in West Virginia last year. But like all those who came before back to 1803 after the Louisiana Purchase and through all the economic crises that drove people here since, including the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl disaster that hit America’s great prairies and High Plains in the 1930s, I made it too. Eureka and Hallelujah!
John Steinbeck made it here in the 1930s and documented that crisis in his novel The Grapes of Wrath published in 1939 (now in the public domain).
Woody Guthrie made it here too, and wrote and sang ballads about it.
Dorothea Lange made it and photographed the conditions of migrants, particularly her famous Migrant Mother in 1936.
The Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange: NAJ screen shot
The California Dream is up there with the American Dream, which may in fact be on its death bed now after so many writers have declared it so over the decades, including Hunter S. Thompson, who chose to settle in the mountains of Colorado instead.
Song writers and bands have sung about the California Dream, most famously the Mamas and the Papas when they had a hit with the song written by John and Michelle Phillips in 1963.
The Beach Boys had a hit when they covered it too.
The people here in my experience so far are, in fact, incredibly nice. And I know a thing or two about nice people. Being from the American South, where people have bragged for decades about “Southern Hospitality,” I know nice when I see it. I’ve long said, as a matter of personal philosophy, “Simply being nice to people goes a long way.”
(By the way, I will turn 68 on October 15, 2025, in California. So I’ve outlived Hunter Thompson, Henry David Thoreau, Willie Morris, Ted Bryant, Spider Martin, and many others who did not make it this far in life. I will be making my way into Yosemite one day this week).
Alas, the people of this country, including many in the rural South, have turned mean now. It’s not all their fault. Blame it on the devilish influence of a certain politician in Washington. You know who I mean.
Truth be told, Southern hospitality always had a two-edged sword to it anyway. Those with Old Money might be nice to your face, but they were quick to stab you in the back when given the chance. I know this for a fact. I’ve seen it. It has happened to me. And of course those with “New Money” learned from them how to pretend to be nice, while picking your pocket when you weren’t looking.
In fact, dear readers, I believe Southern Hospitality – to the extent it ever really existed – is now deader than dead, as dead as the American Dream itself.
Does Southern Hospitality Still Exist?
I hope that is not the case with the California Dream.
At least the Governor of California seems willing to stand toe-to-toe with the dictator-in-chief in Washington. You can’t put all your faith in any politician, of course. But I’m going to give this one a chance – and try to help.
Trump to Democrats and Americans on Government Shutdown: ‘Go Fuck Yourself’
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Simply amazing