Golly momma, lookie what the big city feller said about us in de Tribuuune!”
Well, the horses and buggies went out and the tongues were wagging when “Bootstrap” Willie Brown was quoted in the local San Luis Obispo paper :
“Willie Brown tells Angelides to stay in SLO, “wherever there are no known systems of technology and communications”…
Not to be slighted the Telegram Tribune which boasts around a full 16 pages on a good day fired off an editorial! Here’s a few of the quotes that …well… shucks… just shows how much corn is growing in some of the ears around here:
“Just us rubes here, Willie” ( Yee-ha!)
“It’s a simpler life, the SLO Life. And now the rest of the world knows our little secret. Thanks a bunch, Willie.”
(… there’s several ways to read that, boys… oh yeah.. yeeeehah!)
“We don’t know about Dinuba or Chico…”
( frankly, you gotta travel to know about other places, dude)
Now, I don’t kid you when I say that there are folks in these parts that have never been to the big city of New York, fear the bay area and evil Elay … and there are some who have never been out of the county …and are PROUD of it! Hard to believe it’s 2006. Old hippes around here refer to themselves as ‘hobbits’ and this land as ‘middle earth’… get the picture? Frankly, I think too many generations have married their sisters.
On a positive note, many local young men and women see that San Luis obispo county has little to offer them … intellectually, socially or for a future for themselves or their families … and they move on to greater glory. Unfortunately, it’d be really nice if they took some of the ‘hobbits’ with them. Oh ….there I go again being a ‘disturber of the peace.’
One of the bright spots at Cal Poly is folks like my wife who teach there. However, if she had to depend on the assets of the university she’d still be typing on a Smith-Corona (remember those?). By the by, I think Cal Poly just got their first computer but I think it’s working on Windows 3.1. They have their issues.
I am asked so often why my children did not go to Cal Poly? I always answer them by saying,” because they could do better.”
Steve Martin starred in a movie called “My Blue Heaven” that was filmed here. It was about a squeeky clean community filled with federal witness protected felons… ah… the town was named “Friburg”. Hmmmmm…. very funny, boys. Anyway, in the movie, they referred to the town as the ‘place you go when you die’… a good place… but not a fun place…. it wears thin after a while.
Truth hurts.
San Luis Obispo has many charming things about it. It’s a great place to relax… but when you want to put your brain and your body in gear… it’s also great, because it’s only 200 miles from either Los Angeles or San Francisco.
They don’t call it “SLO” for nothing.
Roger Freberg
PS– I have to tell how “Bootstrap Bill” Willie Brown got his name … I was up in Sacramento back in 1991 getting then Senator Ken Maddy and former Assemblywoman Andrea Seastrand to sign a few hundred ‘Welcome Home’ proclamations for the men and women who fought in the first Gulf War… and there… I listened to Willie Brown discribe how he had ‘pulled himself up by the bootstraps’ to the pinacle of greatness that he now enjoyed. It was a good speech… but he wasn’t wearing boots… so this ol’ boy wasn’t too impressed.
The picture atop is of San Luis Obispo’s main tourist attraction… a wall in which one can deposit their used chewing gum… drinking beer with gum isn’t great, so before entering the bar, students made a contribution to our culture… I guess they ran out of desks.