Recalling a four-decade scrapbook of memories of life in Fresno while bidding farewell
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, Fresno.
Forty-two years ago my young family, after slipping and sliding across the frozen countryside via Interstate 40, sandwiched between semis threatening to crush our Chevy station wagon and us out of existence; after driving all the way to L.A. and traveling up I-5 instead of veering diagonally from Barstow in a shortcut to Bakersfield like the seasoned road tripper I would later become; after despairing at the ugliness of farm machinery graveyards, landfills and scrap metal junk heaps greeting us up Highway 99; arrived in Fresno, exhausted but full of hope for a fresh start.
An entire personal history book of experiences ensued, its pages filled with ups and downs, successes and failures, delights and disappointments.
On the career front, I forged into battle many times, for businesses, for individuals, work I relished: with the Department of Justice for a doctor and his walk-in medical clinics, with financial institutions for struggling family farming operations, with U.S. Bankruptcy Court and creditors of a 75-year-old olive processor and cooperative, with the state of California over brine ponds, with the powers that be to save an employee pension fund, and finally, a rewarding 20 years assisting in the steerage of the local PBS station through the choppy waters of every challenge and hurdle imaginable, except a global pandemic, which no one could have foreseen.
Through the years, a writing passion emerged, which led me to return to school for two graduate degrees and publications I am proud of, all the while keeping my day job rocking and rolling along.
On the personal front, I have been marked and no doubt left marks, not unlike the yellow and black marks left by my Mustang around a traffic light pole at the SW corner of Bullard and West in the early 1980s, after a woman ran a red light broadsiding me; my toddler son, thankfully unharmed, asleep in the back seat. Though normally open and forthcoming in my writing, I’ll forego that here, honoring my past and present families and loved ones their privacy, which they deserve. I could say that in my personal decision-making I did the very best I could at the time, but we all know such a statement is often a crock, an easy out.
On a nostalgic happy note, I’ll never forget:
▪ Old Fig
▪ Christmas Tree Lane
▪ The Velvet Turtle (Green Goddess)
▪ The old LimeLite, Clinton and 99 (two martini lunch)
▪ The old Elbow Room (steak sandwich)
▪ The Tower District
▪ Vineyard Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning (tomatoes, classical music and the smell of fresh ground coffee)
▪ Meat Market bacon (maybe shipped to me in dry ice?)
▪ Fresno State corn (the lines!)
▪ David “Mas” Masumoto family (their peaches, books, Nikiko and the Yonsei Memory Project)
▪ Fresno’s own US Poet Laureates Juan Felipe Herrera and Philip Levine
▪ Sunday’s Fresno Bee (when it was fat)
▪ Bitwise (Irma, Jake, every single thing about it)
▪ Yosemite (as much the road in and out, stops along the way)
▪ Tule fog (when you have to roll down the car window and stick your head out to follow the white lines home)
A pandemic and COVID-19 isolation has a way of crystalizing your thoughts for how you want to live out your remaining years. Reno, Nevada, its milder climate, clean air and expansive blue skies, are calling. Just imagine, a summer afternoon thunderstorm. We may have to purchase a snow-blower. An adventure awaits.
A fond farewell, dear Fresno. It’s been real and very fine, indeed.
Exit Highway 99 — stage right.