California Dreamin’ Gets a Wake-Up Call

I liked “A Native Daughter Puts Ax to Myth” (Opinion, Oct. 19) very much. I have admired Joan Didion for years, but what is she so upset about? Did she think California was going to stay pristine, small and only have individual farmers, no crime, etc., throughout the state? Did she think she would live the myth? Hey, I’d like to have the 49ers back with Joe Montana and Steve Young, even Elroy Hirsch and the L.A. Rams, but that isn’t possible.

What has happened to California has happened to America. Bigness. And all that goes with it. Bigger money, bigger profits, bigger white- and blue-collar crime, bigger farms, bigger global economy, bigger corporations and bigger problems.

I liked it that we had individual farmers, small businesses, “manufactured in the USA” products. Up here on the Oxnard plain you should see the farm equipment running around, every shape and size and high cost: $100,000 tractors and on and on. John Deere tractors, green and yellow, created in the U.S. and now made overseas. Go out to the Port of Hueneme and watch the American-named products come off ships from all over the world that used to be made exclusively in the United States -- with the jobs that fed American families.

If Didion’s California was a myth, so is her/our America a myth. Tell her to get over it.

Jerry Lefler

Camarillo