When Big-City Names Hit Close to Home

If an alien from Neptune’s moon Triton were visiting in New York City, and someone happened to ask him “Where are you from?” as someone inevitably would, he would probably say he was from Neptune, rather than Triton.

He would assume that everyone had heard of Neptune, whereas Triton might not be as well-known, and he would probably have to explain that it was just a little moon in orbit around Neptune.

This is a device most of us use when we’re traveling, not so much to pretend that we are from a place of importance, but to avoid having to explain the exact location of our home, in relation to someplace larger.

Thus, if you happen to be from Sausalito, and you’re talking to a stranger in a bar in Paris, there’s no use saying you’re from Sausalito, and having to explain where that is; best just to say you’re from San Francisco, to avoid complications.

While traveling I have heard many variations on this dodge. Someone will say “Where you folks from?” And the person asked will say, “Los Angeles.” And the stranger will say, “Oh? Where in Los Angeles?” And the visitor is obliged to say, “Well, actually, we live in Covina. That’s a suburb of Los Angeles.” Whereupon his interrogator puts him down as an impostor.

How this innocent subterfuge can be carried to ultimately comic and embarrassing lengths is shown in a letter from Robert Taylor of Tustin (in the Anaheim area).

Taylor recalls that in 1956 he was flying from New York to Los Angeles and he asked the man sitting next to him, in the lounge, whether he was going home or was traveling on business.

“Home,” the man answered, and volunteered that he lived “in the L.A. area.”

“So do I,” Taylor said. “In San Gabriel. Where do you live?”

“Well,” the man said, “I really live in Bakersfield.”

Taylor allowed that he was familiar with Bakersfield, having stopped there many times on trips to Fresno, Madera, Yosemite or Sequoia National Park.

Well, the man said, he didn’t actually live in Bakersfield. “I really stay in Buttonwillow, where my son has a place.”

Now Buttonwillow, while home to many folks, is not an internationally known place name.

But Taylor was familiar with it: “A little bitty place out of Bakersfield, maybe 20 miles west on the old road to San Luis.”

“Actually,” the man said, “I really work in the oil fields in Weed Patch. That’s about halfway to Arvin from Highway 99. No one has ever heard of Weed Patch so I tell them I’m from the L.A. area.”

Taylor said he was also familiar with Weed Patch. His brother had helped bring in the first oil well there. Evidently, his traveling companion had exhausted his lines of retreat. He stayed with Weed Patch.

Having lived for some years in Bakersfield, I have always known where Weed Patch was, and if I were traveling in London or Cairo or Athens and some American told me he was from Weed Patch, I’d say, “Weed Patch, hey--I know it well. Up there just southeast of Bakersfield, isn’t it ?” The “up there” would refer, of course, to its relationship to Los Angeles.

Actually, Weed Patch is not the absolutely most rustic name in the Bakersfield area. The man could have been from Pumpkin Center.

When my wife and I were first married we lived in Oildale, north of the Kern River from Bakersfield. Now Oildale is not a name that is recognized throughout the world as a population and cultural center. So when we traveled, which was rarely, and never any farther than San Francisco, we always said we were from Bakersfield.

I am proud to say that, out of a sense of modesty or honesty or loyalty to Bakersfield, we never said we were from Los Angeles.

There is one exception to this harmless attempt to upgrade one’s place of residence. I have never met anyone from Orange County who pretended to live in Los Angeles.

Why should they? Anaheim is so well-known throughout the civilized world as the home of Disneyland and the Rams and the Angels, that to say, “I’m from Anaheim,” is enough to identify one’s place of origin, whether one is from Tustin, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Garden Grove, Yorba Linda or El Toro.