Eastward, Ho: Paradise Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

The postcard arrived last September and was basically a thoughtful goodby note from a Times reader. His name was Tom Lister and he lived in Costa Mesa, and he wrote to say he and his wife Sherry were packing up and moving to her hometown of Norfolk, Neb.

One phrase in his postcard stuck in my mind: “We want to see if the madness is everywhere or just endemic to Orange County,” Lister wrote, referring as we all do from time to time to the swirling pace of Southern California life.

We’re all looking for our little piece of paradise. Once upon a time, that place was called California. People moved from the Norfolks and the Wichitas and the Dubuques to California. It hardly ever worked the other way around.

So when I got Lister’s postcard, it was a partial validation of a theory I’ve been toying with ever since moving here six years ago. Seeing how large and seemingly unmanageable California was getting and watching people’s growing impatience with it, I wondered if, having geographically run out of westward paradises, people would begin returning to the places from which they had come.

I won’t put all the pressure of proving my theory on Tom Lister’s shoulders, but I did want to hear how things were going, now that he has seen his first Midwestern autumn and is in the midst of his first winter.

Lister was born in Monterey Park and moved to Santa Ana as a teen-ager. He drove a truck for the then Santa Ana Register before eventually retraining in mechanics. He and his wife were married in 1984 and have a 4-year-old daughter, Shannon.

“I think Sherry could have always moved back in a heartbeat,” Lister said, “but she never really harped about it. Her immediate and big extended family is in Nebraska, but she never pushed or anything. Essentially, what it came down to for me was having a 4-year-old daughter and realizing that, hey, she’s missing a lot of the same things I wanted to go through when I was young.”

For the 40-year-old Lister, that means wide open spaces and fresh air and being able to enjoy nature without throngs of people. When the Listers lived in Costa Mesa, it wasn’t unusual for them to pack up the camper and head out. “You go camping around, but you’re surrounded by hordes of people. I had a camper van, and we’d be ready to go in 30 or 45 minutes after work on a Friday night. But invariably somebody (at the campsite) would be playing loud music or being jerks at 2 in the morning.”

There was no specific incident, Lister said, that prompted him to move, other than the growing realization that his daughter was, like him, “a tree-watcher and butterfly-petter.”

After his wife and daughter visited Nebraska last summer, Lister decided to join them. “I don’t know why, but there was a snap in my head. I just said, ‘It’s not worth it out there (in California).’ ”

It’s not that Lister thought people in California were unfriendly. Rather, they seemed suspicious or increasingly on guard. “It depends on how you want to live life,” he said. “I enjoy going up the street to the store, being able to look people in the eye and say hi.” Initially, he was caught off guard by the rural Nebraska trait of drivers tipping their forefinger to you as they drive by. It’s a form of acknowledgment, but Lister wondered why people were making what seemed like obscene gestures at him.

On his first trip to the state years ago, Lister was surprised that people didn’t hold being a Californian against him. “It was more like everybody was in awe, saying ‘Oh, you’re from California!’ People were just friendly. To this day, you go to the bank or the grocery store, and people don’t know you, but it’s like everybody’s your own best friend.”

What does he think of his fellow Nebraskans so far? “Aw, they’re a bunch of rednecks,” he joked. “They all voted for Bush.”

Any culture deprivation, I asked.

“ ‘Malcolm X’ still hasn’t come to town,” he said. “ ‘Aladdin’ has been playing.”

His impression this time around is that the job market is not as variable in Nebraska. He’s been unable to find work as a mechanic and is working in the parts department for an Oldsmobile dealership. The flip side: the Listers resigned themselves to never being able to afford a home in California, and although they’re now living with Sherry’s parents, they’ve scouted around and could get a two-story house, with land, for around $40,000.

I trotted out my California theory for him, but Lister isn’t sure how valid it is.

“The whole world is getting so much smaller, and people are starting to feel the pinch. It’s everywhere. Out here, the first day I started, my boss was saying, ‘You’re going to find people who don’t know how to speak the language too well.’ ” She was referring to an influx of Spanish-speaking workers at area beef-packing plants.

He has no regrets about leaving, other than missing his family and friends, especially the Californians for Nebraska group that headquarters at a Fullerton bar.

So, regrets, no, but Lister isn’t under the illusion that Nebraska is any more an escape than California once was. “Nothing is as wondrous and simple as everyone says,” he said. “You find things like drugs and crime and everything else and jerks anywhere you go, but as I told my wife, I’ll freeze in a cornfield before I move back there.”

What’s the coldest it’s been?

“Not counting windchill, it’s been down to about 10 below,” he said. “We’ve been averaging 10 to 15 degrees lately.”

How are you handling that, I asked.

“No problem. Dress warm.”

Who knows, maybe someday “No problem, dress warm” will replace “Go west, young man” as the slogan of the 21st Century.