Bakersfield Blues Again : For Knocking Its Rural Neighbor, L.A. Is Still a Town Without Pity

WHEN KFAC dropped classical music in favor of rock a while ago, The Times deplored this atavistic corporate decision editorially, noting that it left Los Angeles the largest city in the nation without a commercial classical music station.

“Even Bakersfield has one,” The Times observed.

The Bakersfield Californian, on which I began my journalistic career, answered with an editorial of its own (a copy of which was sent to me by Mary De Armond of that city), noting that the reference to Bakersfield’s KIWI-FM was “somewhat derisive.”

As a product of Bakersfield, I, too, felt that the phrase “even Bakersfield” was loaded with the stereotypical notion that Bakersfield is a cultural desert peopled by oil well workers who hang out in beer bars.

Of course, Los Angeles itself has so long been denigrated as a wasteland by New Yorkers that we needed some smaller town to serve as our cultural inferior, and Bakersfield has always been there to oblige.

I happen to know that Bakersfield harbors many intellectuals and creative people, one of whom, Jim Day, was my first editor when I joined the Californian staff as a sports reporter. He is a psychology graduate of the University of Washington. He knew nothing about football, basketball or baseball, but he knew the English language. His first gift to me, even before I got my first paycheck, was Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

In listing Bakersfield’s assets (such as affordable housing, Basque restaurants and the absence of youth-gang slayings) the Californian overlooked Russell Travis, a California State University, Bakersfield, sociology professor who had been the subject of a recent Californian profile.

Travis himself has corrected the oversight by sending me a copy of the article, which described him as a creative humorist with a multiplicity of marketable, if absurd, ideas.

Enclosed was a sample of his most profitable product--a T-shirt. This one was black with the Batman logo in yellow and the word Batma’am across the chest. It was obviously a gift for my wife.

Travis reminded me that I have on my desk at the office a Writer’s Block--a small, square block of oak and walnut that either does or does not have a therapeutic effect on a writer’s most frustrating demon. The Writer’s Block (Travis said he saw one in a picture of me sitting at my desk) was one of his earlier inventions.

His muse at present seems to be devoted mostly to the T-shirt. Besides Batma’am, he has recently created T-shirts bearing such provincial legends as Hard Wok Cafe, Bakersfield; Why Waikiki When There’s Bakersfield? and Bakersfield, California, It’s a Gas.

One that seems to put Bakersfield in its place among the world’s most prestigious cities spells them out in letters of increasing size: Paris . . . Cairo . . . Sydney . . . Bakersfield. My wife has one that says Paris, London, Rome, Bakersfield. She wears it to the gym as a symbol of loyalty to her home town.

Travis explains his perverse muse: “My penchant for wordplay finds its creative release in the design of T-shirts, including such subjects as the Santa Monica Pier, the UCLA Bruins, Alcatraz and many other themes that fall into the categories of humor: students, tourists, beach life and kid stuff.”

A favorite among students coming to class, he says, is one that reads This Is Only a Test, This Is Only a Test. An R-rated T-shirt has an aspirin and the legend: Not Tonight, Honey. One with an environmental theme has the words: One Oil Spill Can Ruin Your Whole Day.

Travis has so many ideas he doesn’t expect to do them all himself. “I don’t race around trying to follow up on all these ideas. There’s just too many,” the Californian quoted him as saying.

One of his ideas is Fortune 500 cookies, which, like the Chinese variety, would be wrapped around pithy sayings from the corporate world: “They would be great for business people--500 different sayings. As soon as you put this in your newspaper, somebody is going to do it.”

I’ve got a pithy corporate saying for him: What’s good for General Motors is good for the country. And Calvin Coolidge’s shrewd remark: The business of America is business.

And don’t forget that Bakersfield is the Nashville of the West.