California.  Just the name filled one with wonder.  We arrived at the end of the Second World War, when I was not yet two years old.  Mythologically lovely, it bustled with vitality and throbbed with the irresistible rhythm of infinite possibility.  Even as children we felt that our living in this beguiling land signified some sort of favor.  This was due in part -- no doubt -- to indoctrination but mostly, I fancy, to the organic absorption of enchantment as our busy little feet touched the ground.  Dating from that Los Angeles childhood I’ve known a passionate attachment to the way it was in times gone by that exists to this very day, though I’ve not lived there for nearly four decades.

        Garrison Keillor, the Prairie Home Companion guy, says “we are all born with a story we have an obligation to tell.”  Mine is of the lure of a land by the sea and the dreams and schemes that defined it.  My historytellings are mere vignettes told that others might know, in some small way, about a place which now seems almost to have been an illusion -- that paradise by the Pacific now so tragically lost. 

I can be reached by email at:

deloreshanney@cox.net