where mark grew up

Reflections on Growing Up in the Climatic Wonderland

Three years before I was born, the City of Vista was incoporated. My family moved to this booming bedroom community 35 miles norht of San Diego in 1972. We took up residence in a brand new house on a 1/2 acre of land where my parents still live to this day. There were snakes, coyotes, an occaisonal scorpion, skunks, and opossums all crawling about. We planted fruit trees, made a garden, and I took a stab at fashioning bricks out of the red clay soil. The large drainage canal ("the ditch") that bounded one side of our property was planted as a Eucalyptus windbreak (these trees would sometimes fall down). The ditch offered unlimited opportunities for play and only once in my recollection resulted in a trip to the hospital (an improperly engineered zip line tested by my younger, trusting, daredevil brother).

I spent my entire youth there and then fled as soon it was feasible.

When we arrived in Vista about 30,000 people lived there and the most notable things about the place were the avocado groves, the "Friday Night Fever" bumperstickers on pickup trucks, and the Chamber of Commerce catch phrase touting Vista as "the climatic wonderland." This boast, if I remember the story correctly, was based on temperature records documenting Vista's supremely temperate climate. We lived on Warmlands Avenue, so named (so I was told) because it never froze. I have only good memories about growing up, but chafed at the bit when I hit my mid-teens, fled, and then developed a generally contemptuous attitude toward Vista as I saw more of the world.

Funny how age and experience can inform an opinion.

When I was growing up (and having no other reference point) I was generally oblivious to the wonderful things about Vista--the sense of community created among my parents' circle of friends, the idyllic weather (having no other reference point), the ability/requirement to make your own fun, building things, creating games, the fact that it was incredibly safe in a way that only seems notable in contrast to city life circa 2003, good schools, and a culture that is unmistakably inflected by its proximity to the border. Since we moved there, the population of Vista has nearly tripled.

I do not contemplate a permanent return to Vista. My experiences since living Vista have honed a taste for things Vista won't be providing any time soon: dense urban neighborhoods, multiple thriving subcultures, pedestrian (as in walking, not as in ordinary) conveniences and, generally, the accoutrements of an urban environ.

Yet I feel compelled to attone for my arrogant, youthful denunciations of Vista. I wish to make a public statement--Mom and Dad, thanks for moving to Vista and bringing me up there--and enumerate the things about Vista I that find splendid.

Mexican Food

For years now, I have been physically incapable of landing at the San Diego airport and driving to my parents' house without stopping along the way for rolled tacos with guacamole.

The San Diego county environs are rife with 'bertos--as in taco shops with names like "Robertos," "Hilibertos," "Albertos," "Adalbertos," "Filibertos," and so on. Each has a near-identical menu with the ubiquitous rolled tacos, carne asada burritos, quesadillas, and so on. The food is cheap, and tasty, and not to be missed are the "hot carrots," pickled carrots, onions, and jalapenos. I believe the best of the bunch to be El Asadero, conveniently located less than a mile from my parent's homestead.

By universal acclaim, the finest Mexican food is to be had at La Paloma. This is an actual restaurant (table service, a bar, a menu not printed onthe wall) built adjacent to Rancho Buena Vista, the Mexican Rancho that was the basis for Vista. La Paloma was started by the parents of a grade school acquaintance who clinged to the belief (I believe) that they could turn Vista into a culturally significant destination. They sold out after a few years, which is just fine as the food has only gotten better and more consistent whether you hanker for the seafood fajhitas, the butternut squash enchiladas, the rellanos con hongas, or just a taco.

There has not been a single visit to my parents in the history of visits to my parents that has not included a meal at La Paloma, and in fact the starting point for visit negotiations is always about which night we will eat there and then leave, stuffed, feeling warm from margaritas, to continue our catching up on our lucky lives.

The Farmers Market

In Seattle, the farmers market lasts from June until October. In Vista, it's a year round affair that offers tomatoes in January (not imported, just grown there, see "weather"), bizzare plants, prickly pears, chiles, and all sorts of other good eats. Every Saturday in the parking lot of a City Hall dominated by "portable" building that have, over the years become permanent, vendors gather for a few hours to display their wares under canopies, on folding tables, and on the tailgates of pickups. I get tingely just thinking about it.

Border Culture

Seattle is very white place. It's a big reason why we bought a house in the Central District where there are black people. But what's missing in Seattle is the pervasive influence of Mexico and Latin America. Truth be told the influx of immigrants has created considerable racial tensions in lovely Vista. [An issue explored in my widely read Master's Thesis Racial Imbalance in the Vista Unified School District: An Examination of Paul Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition Theory of the Policy Process]. These tensions should not be surprising given that California was taken from Mexico in the first place. Unpleasantness aside, the border culture that permeates San Diego county is a treasure. There's the food (see above), Spanglish that rings in the ear and, fundamentally, the fact that two cultures are mashed up against each other. I miss that deeply.

Vista High School

Vista High School circa the mid-1980s was a fabulous place to go to school. A great place to go to public school. My family moved to Vista when my dad's company relocated its operations. They could have relocated to any number of booming bedroom communities, but I believe a primary reason they chose Vista was the schools. This fact shines a spotlight on my youthful ingratitude, as a key reason we ended up in a place I fled from was mom & dad's concern and careful consideration about what would be best for my brother and me. The schools were great. Despite my successful efforts at ditching significant portions of my senior year, the Vista Unified School District provided a fabulous education that I only began to appreciate when Dia and I compared notes on our experiences. Much of this (the greatness and the ditching school) was a function of my status on the "A track." While I can argue against the "tracking" of young minds--and lord only knows who was left behind by the system--I was indisputably a beneficiary. My elementary school experience was colored by the horribly named "Mentally Gifted Minors" (MGM) program which I hold responsible for both sparking my creativity and diminishing my language skills (while other students learned grammar, we were excused to focus on creative writing, having demonstrated our articulateness but having no idea how to diagram a sentence--something that would bite me in my failed attempts to learn French, then German, then Spanish). In junior high I was a science fair rock star, winning the Greater San Diego Science Fair (rotating disk chromatography), but watching the state crown go to an inferior project that involved the oh so obvious burning burning of apples (alas, the bitterness of this injustice remains). In High School, it was literature, and physics, and "theory of knowledge" that got me out of bed in the morning (but did not neccessarily get me to class). As one of the poster children for the inagural International Baccalaureate class at VHS I found that pleading "stress" was an effective way to be given a bye. When I look back on the cohort I graduated with I'm stunned that this high school in a small Californian town produced so many people doing interesting thing s, earning advanced degrees, and generally excceding what I would have thought would have been our expectations. Gracias, Vista.

The Weather

Living in Seattle I've come to appreciate that there are many definitions of "good weather." Or at least that's what Northwesterners would have one believe. I think it is all an elaborate excercise in self-denial. Who really likes reading a weather in the local paper that tells you your day is going to be "dreary"? Please. In Vista, the weather is near perfect, if perfect for you is somewhere between 50 and 70 degrees every day of the year. Extreme weather is defined as Santa Ana winds.

The Kooky Local Paper

My world of information is grounded in the New York Times and bounded by the World Wide Web. My politics are partisan Democrat and left-leaning global capitalist (figure that one out). So you might think that a small town paper in northern San Diego County would have little to add to my world view, but you would be so wrong. The North County Times (The Vista Press long ago having folded its tent) is precisely the news organ I need to provide me with a little perspective. The paper is thin, heavy on high school sports and local crime and political reporting, but the gem of the paper is its letters page, which is flypaper for bitter and angry citizens fulminating incessantly about creationism, patriotism, a demonization of every other ism, which more or less work to confirm my deepest fears about "public opinion" and reinvigorate my belief in a representative democracy (see Federalist Papers #10 and #51). It is almost as if the NCT letters page is curated for the express purpose of venting steam that, if not released, would turn into news fit for the crime blotter.

That's all for now.

Mark
4.3.03