Then as Now as Then as Now as . . .

The choice of reading material is simple: People magazine’s take on the Iowa septuplets; or the little green guidebook, “Rider’s California.” A gift from a friend, this 667-page travel guide was published in 1925. It once belonged to a California scholar, a man whose penciled margin notes kindly haunt the browned pages.

The book was the work of Fremont Rider, a publisher of periodicals and travel guides. Rider and his associates came west in the early 1920s--roughly the halfway point between the birth of the state and the present day.

Elaborate, fold-out maps separate the chapters, and some of the dots no longer exist. Walteria and Spanishtown, Wheatville and Oleander. The text is a weave of travel tips, history, demographic and economic data and sometimes trenchant observations of the local scene: “MAIN STREET, S. of Temple St., has comparatively little of interest to the tourist.” And to the tar pits, ho!

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The most fascinating material is found right up front, where The Editor--as Rider persistently calls himself--offers an essay titled, “Some Informal Notes on California Life and Custom.” More than anything, this piece demonstrates just how long the cement has been hardening around California’s golden myths. The staples--from car culture, to hedonism, to the outsized California “Dream,” all were there, then as now. Read over my shoulder now, as this train rumbles south down the San Joaquin Valley on a bright November afternoon:

* From the time that the first Spanish explorers named it after Montalvo’s fabled island, [Rider begins] California has retained a certain halo of legend. There has persisted a belief, naturally not unfostered by its inhabitants, that it is literally a terrestrial paradise, basking in the generous gold of its sunshine.

* One of the biggest instruments in making the Californian live so large a share of his life outdoors is the automobile. You do not realize at first how relatively large a proportion of the people own cars. . . . They not only have them, but they use them, and to an extent that the Easterner does not dream of.

* The frank revelation made by the California one-piece bathing suit is equaled only by the perfect naturalness and unconcern with which it is worn; and the younger generation swim and dive together, run races and play ball in an untrammeled freedom approximating the Arcadian Age.

* On the religious side of life, the Eastern visitor will probably be struck by the amazing diversity of creeds and doctrines. . . . In Los Angeles alone, to mention but one city, there are congregations of Buddhists, Vedantists, Zoroastrians, Confucians, Shintoists, Spiritualists, Swedenborgians and Mohammedans, together with an assortment of strange Christian sects, New Thought and Faith and Mind Cure cults of bewildering variety.

* The first time a visitor breaks a ten-dollar greenback it may be a shock to receive a stacked-up pile of perhaps nine silver pieces and some small change. . . . This California preference for hard money, dating it is said from the days of the Comstock lode and the great silver boom, becomes more pronounced as one journeys northward; and when San Francisco is reached, a demand for paper money may be met with a quizzical look and the mild sarcasm, “Oh, you want Los Angeles money!”

* It is the fact that throughout the state the conspicuous engineering and architectural features are the highways, bridges and reservoirs, the hotels and office buildings, while the churches, although numerous, are relatively small and inconspicuous, public monuments of importance few and far between, and interest in art galleries only recently awakening.

* The Californian’s viewpoint is pithily expressed by a sign prominently placed in San Bernardino, “Please don’t say ‘San Berdou.’ It won’t hurt you to say ‘San Bernardino,’ and we like it better.”

* Don’t smile at the huge signboard which, towering over the lonely desert water tank and huddled general store, proclaims: “This is Ambrosia. Watch us grow”--for of such invincible courage and sometimes almost blind optimism as this was California created!

And so the pages turn, until the train reaches Fresno, which Rider reminds was moved down from the foothill town of Millerton in the late 1800s to accommodate the railroads: Since there was nothing in the surrounding stretch of sheep pasture out of which to fashion homes, most of them brought their houses with them from Millerton. Fresno town lots in those days could be bought for the price of a drink or two. . . . No doubt The Editor would be amazed today to see just how far the subdivisions of houses have sprawled across Fresno and beyond, marching almost all the way back to Millerton. Then, too, so am I.