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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nofearfactor" data-source="post: 1346841" data-attributes="member: 1535">I can sit and read more of the California bashing and then either join in or defend the place. I'm some where in the middle of that. Truth is, I'm torn up about California and its problems are getting worse and Im worried. 4 months out of the year I still live in northern California. I spent the first 31 years of my life in California- 18 in southern Cali,13 years in the bay area,central valley, and up north in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Now I live part time up in the mountains where Ive owned my small cabin home in Bear Valley for the last 15 years along with other property I bought. I also help manage and maintain substantial family property that my grandfather bought up in the 20s,30s. Me and my ex moved out east 10 years ago to get away from the rat race of San Francisco during the DotCom bust to start a business some where other than in California. We sold our businesses but I kept my house and properties up north and we chose Des Moines Iowa to move to get started. We established our business and built a house there. Then we ended up divorcing. After visits to visit family in Oklahoma I met someone from Tulsa and eventually migrated down to Oklahoma after remarrying. My mother and stepfather are snowbirds- they live in San Francisco and the bay area part of the year during winters and then come back to Oklahoma part time in the summers. Theyre both retired from long years in Oklahoma jobs,my mom a banker and my stepdad a former country school superintendant,and theyre also both hardcore Republicans both born and raised in rural Oklahoma. My mother moved to California as a kid while my grandfather acted in western movies and then met my father,also born and raised in Oklahoma,while he was there in the Marines in the San Diego area. I just happened to be born and raised in Oceanside while my dad was a Marine,but have been going back and forth between Oklahoma and California my whole life because our relatives are in Oklahoma,Texas,Louisianna,etc. My mother left us when I was 10 and went back to Oklahoma and when my dad retired from the Marine Corps he headed for home too. My older brother,sisters,and me though we were all born in California and have all made homes our there. You cant help where you were born,you didnt really have a say in the matter. I love both places. The demographics in California are all over the place,but up north where I live where its all mountains and rural life its about as conservative there as it is here where I live in Oklahoma. Still. I dont ever plan on selling my place there as I love the mountains and the life I have there as much as I love my life in Oklahoma. Im not ever going to apologize for loving the place because its where I was born. Its some times hard to read some of the stuff said about the place but most of it is true,and my older brother and sisters represent the liberal upwardly mobile azzholes most often joked about. Some of it though is so far off its not even funny. Its like the jokes people make about toothless,dumb,redneck Okies and about how they sleep with their sisters. If you live in Oklahoma you know thats pretty far from the truth. And if you live in California or are from there you know the truth about that place too. Beautiful place to live,but a ****ed up infrastructure and a system on the verge of complete breakdown. I just hope that when the **** hits the fan there Im here and not there.</blockquote>

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