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    Uncle John's Plunges into California: Illustrated Edition
    Uncle John's Plunges into California: Illustrated Edition
    Uncle John's Plunges into California: Illustrated Edition
    Ebook458 pages3 hours

    Uncle John's Plunges into California: Illustrated Edition

    By Bathroom Readers' Institute

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    About this ebook

    California here we come! Uncle John is taking a full-color plunge into the land of freeways, fun in the sun, cable cars, and movie stars.

    From the redwood forest to the Mexican border, the Pacific coastline to the Mojave Desert, California is the most populous state in the Union and the eighth-largest economy in the world. And what better way to honor America’s most influential state than by devoting an entire Technicolor compendium to the cause? Inside this book, readers will discover obscure history, learn fascinating facts, and meet the unique people who make California so great. So grab your sunglasses, hold on to your gold-miner’s hat, and plunge into the Golden State!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2014
    ISBN9781626860919
    Uncle John's Plunges into California: Illustrated Edition
    Author

    Bathroom Readers' Institute

    The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

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    • 5/5
      Great book to have in the car when you have to commute & might be caught in traffic jams.

    Book preview

    Uncle John's Plunges into California - Bathroom Readers' Institute

    Intro-duck-tion

    California, Here We Come!

    Welcome one and all to the greatest book ever written about the greatest state in this land or any other! It’s true: Living in California is a dream of people the world over, from Maine to Mexico to Timbuktu.

    Uncle John knows that dream well. He’s had a love affair with California ever since he was a wee lad (and bought his first Beach Boys album). So when the BRI decided to publish an illustrated book series dedicated to U.S. states, doing one on the Golden State was a nobrainer.

    Our biggest challenge: How, in one book, do you sum up a state that is larger and more diverse than most of the world’s countries? Easy—we just started at the top and worked our way down the coast. What did we find? Plenty!

    The Nature: Learn why the redwoods grow so tall, witness the rebirth of the condor, discover the state’s singing sand dunes, and find out when and where the next Big One will hit.

    The Destinations: Say hello to the giant Paul Bunyan standing outside of the Trees of Mystery (he just might say hello back). Get your kicks on Route 66. And climb the rocks at Vasquez where Captain Kirk bravely fought the Gorn.

    The Valleys: Explore the stark beauty of Death Valley, the sheer cliffs of Yosemite Valley, the rolling hills of Napa Valley, and California’s backbone the Central Valley, full of oranges, olives, cows, and a hundred other staples that help make the state one of the world’s largest economies. (And don’t miss the silicon chips in Silicon Valley, and the silicone…implants in the San Fernando Valley. Like, totally!)

    The People: From Ronald Reagan to Hunter S. Thompson to Paris Hilton, Californians are as diverse as their politics. You’ll meet a few of the region’s original inhabitants—along with the 49ers, the cowboys, the farmers, the immigrants, the hippies, the techies, the entertainers, and the visionaries.

    The Culinary: Merlot, sourdough, Cobb salads…the list goes on! You’ll read about the birthplace of Taco Bell, and the 1948 Artichoke Queen herself (Miss Norma Jean Baker…who later changed her name to Marilyn Monroe).

    And the Bizarre: Did you know California has the coast with the most…ghosts? Our reputation for weirdness is well deserved. Read about the suicide cult known as Heaven’s Gate, the mythical race of transdimensional beings that live inside (and above) Mount Shasta, and the not-so-mythical Kinetic Sculpture Race in Humboldt County.

    But before you dive in and hang ten, Uncle John would like to give a California-sized thank you to the dedicated team who worked so hard to bring you this book: Tina, Damien, Sean, Liz, Adam, Sue, Derek, Jack, Carl, Stephanie, Jenness, Ryan, Terri, Michael, and Laurie.

    Have fun on the pages ahead!

    And as always…

    Go with the flow!

    —Uncle John and the BRI Staff

    California Dreaming

    Putting such a culturally and geographically diverse state into a few words is difficult, but we’ll give it a try.

    Everything is just better in California—the wine, the food, fruits and vegetables, the comforts of living. Even the instrumentalists are generous and curious. Everything is wonderful.

    —Beth Anderson

    It shone on everyone, whether they had a contract or not. The most democratic thing I’d ever seen, that California sunshine.

    —Angela Carter

    Victoria Principal

    I arrived in California with no job, no car, and no money, but, like millions of other girls, a dream.

    —Victoria Principal

    As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit southern California to observe the future.

    —Alison Lurie

    Bill Clinton

    California has become the first American state where there is no majority race, and we’re doing just fine.

    —Bill Clinton

    Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

    —Frank Lloyd Wright

    Oscar Wilde

    The mountains of California are so gigantic that they are not favorable to art or poetry.

    —Oscar Wilde

    Henry James

    The days have been mostly of heavenly beauty, and the wildflowers…which fairly rage with radiance are worthy of some purer planet than this.

    —Henry James

    Helen Hunt Jackson

    The wild mustard is like that spoken of in the New Testament. Its gold is as distinct a value to the eye as the nugget gold is in the pocket.

    —Helen Hunt Jackson

    You haven’t lived until you’ve died in California.

    —Mort Sahl

    In a way, California has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It’s sort of crazy-sensible.

    —D. H. Lawrence

    The rugged California coastline is bathed in sunlight.

    Cali-Folks, Part I

    Computers, Hollywood, surfing, politics—the look, feel, and personality of California culture has been shaped by some very influential people.

    Steve Jobs with iPhone

    Steve Jobs

    In 1976 Jobs sold his car for the $1,300 necessary to cofound Apple Computers. Working out of his parents’ garage in Los Altos, Jobs and engineering whiz Steve Wozniak created the first successful, mass-produced personal computer; Jobs then went on to create companies and products that changed the world, among them the Macintosh (1984), the first commercial personal computer that allowed users to run programs without typing commands at the keyboard; NeXT Computers (1988), instrumental in the invention of Web browsers; Pixar Animation Studios (1986), home of Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated movie; and the iPod (2001), iTunes (2003), iPhone (2007), and iPad (2010). Jobs led consumers into the computer age with products that changed their music, movies, phones, and relationships with computers. When Jobs started Apple, California’s Silicon Valley—though already a center for electronics production—wasn’t well known. Today, it’s a high-tech leader.

    First-generation Apple Macintosh computer

    Toy Story

    Mary Pickford

    Mary Pickford

    Sixteen-year-old Gladys Smith changed her name to Mary Pickford just before she arrived in California in 1910 to act in Hollywood silent movies. Starring in nearly 200 films over a 25-year career, she also became one of the industry’s first female producers, cofounding United Artists. During her lifetime, Pickford was Hollywood’s most beloved and highest-paid actress and was nicknamed America’s sweetheart. The public was mesmerized by her glamorous Hollywood lifestyle, which included a palatial estate in Beverly Hills where she lived with her husband, the actor Douglas Fairbanks. In what would also become a Hollywood tradition, Pickford kept many scandalous secrets. She and Fairbanks had both been married to other people when they began a clandestine affair. Pickford also hid her struggle with alcoholism and depression, along with the pain of a seemingly glamorous, but very unhappy, marriage that ultimately ended in infidelity and divorce.

    Mary Pickford’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

    John Steinbeck

    John Steinbeck

    Steinbeck wrote 27 books, most of them set in Northern California’s Salinas Valley where he grew up. His best-known works include Of Mice and Men (1937) and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Steinbeck used his stories to represent life’s struggles, and his sympathetic portrayals of the poor and oppressed made him one of the world’s most famous authors. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. The Grapes of Wrath exposed the plight of California’s Okies, dust bowl migrants who arrived during the Great Depression. Many traveled to California to pick crops and get a new start, but they ran into prejudice, low wages, and frequent layoffs. The homeless workers lived in migrant camps, where many died of starvation despite decent harvests.

    The Grapes of Wrath was a controversial best-seller about the fictional Joad family from Oklahoma who endured hardship and tragedy as they worked the California farms. Readers sympathized with the Joads and wanted to do something to ease migrants’ suffering. The book angered many of California’s agricultural leaders, but also inspired congressional hearings that improved migrant housing and labor laws in the state.

    You Know You’re a Californian If…

    • Your monthly mortgage payment is higher than your monthly salary.

    • Your first-grader’s teacher has an orange Mohawk, multiple piercings, and insists that the children call her by her first name: Willow.

    • You feel bad for anyone who doesn’t have access to an In-N-Out.

    • You can go surfing (in a wetsuit) and snow skiing (in shorts) on the same day.

    • You would never call it Cali.

    • You’re always forgetting: Is pot legal?

    It’s a Truth-Quake

    The big one is coming…and your dog knows it! Better hide in a doorway! And a lot of other common beliefs about earthquakes that are mostly just plain wrong.

    Big earthquakes always hit in the morning when it’s hot and dry.

    Not true.

    Earthquakes are the result of tectonic plates shifting deep below the earth’s surface. Neither the weather nor the time of day has any effect on them. Big earthquakes have been recorded at all times of the day and night, year-round.

    The San Andreas Fault is more than 800 miles long.

    Scientists know when the big one’s coming—they just don’t want to tell us.

    Not true.

    So far, no one has ever been able to predict when an earthquake will happen. Groups like the United States Geological Survey (USGS) can identify which areas are most likely to have an earthquake at some point, based on an examination of underlying fault lines. For example, the USGS estimates that, in the next 30 years, there is a 67 percent chance of a major earthquake in San Francisco. But exactly when is anybody’s guess.

    The safest place during an earthquake is a doorway.

    Not true.

    In many houses, the doorway is actually the least safe place. The doorway is only the safest place if you live in an unreinforced adobe house, where the doorway is the strongest frame in the building. If you live in anything else (like most people do these days), you’re better off sheltering under a sturdy desk or table because the walls and door frames of modern buildings are usually reinforced equally and will fall (or not) together.

    Many people believe that animals can sense when an earthquake is coming.

    Animals can sense an earthquake coming.

    Possibly true.

    Over the years, there have been numerous anecdotes about animals sensing earthquakes—including reports about animals at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., sounding the alarm before the 2011 Virginia earthquake. But there’s never been any consistent or reliable data to prove it.

    Lots of little earthquakes mean that a big one is less likely.

    Not true.

    The Richter scale, which measures the magnitude of earthquakes, is logarithmic. That means that for each digit increase on the scale, an earthquake lets off about 30 times more energy. In other words, to equal one 6.0 earthquake, you’d need 32 5.0s, 1,000 4.0s, or 32,000 3.0s. And it would take 729 billion 3.0 earthquakes to release as much energy as a single 9.0. There just aren’t enough little earthquakes in the world to alleviate the need for a big one.

    One good earthquake, and Bakersfield might be underwater.

    Possibly true.

    A dirt embankment called the Lake Isabella Dam is all that prevents Lake Isabella from engulfing Bakersfield and its outlying areas to a depth of about 30 feet. That might still be okay, except that the earthen dam sits atop a fault line. In 2007 the Army Corps of Engineers elevated the dam to the twin status of highest risk and highest priority to fix. However, as of the end of 2011, the Army Corps was still looking at ways to fix the dam.

    The Northridge earthquake on January 17, 1994, caused severe damage. The shaking lasted just 10–20 seconds.

    Someday California will fall into the ocean.

    Not true.

    Most earthquakes in California are the result of the Pacific Plate and North American Plate rubbing against each other along the San Andreas Fault, which runs from the Mojave Desert to the San Francisco Peninsula…and the movement is horizontal. This means that Los Angeles and San Francisco are grinding toward each other at about 46 millimeters a year. So someday, your great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren might be able to see the Golden Gate Bridge from the Hollywood Hills, but California will never fall into the ocean.

    Aristotle’s Folly

    The belief that earthquakes typically hit when the weather is hot and dry began with Aristotle, who theorized that earthquakes were caused by air trapped underground. Before one hit, he thought, so much air would be trapped that the air above ground would be hot and calm. (Aristotle was wrong.)

    Ruins after the huge 1906 San Francisco quake

    Heroism After the Quake

    At 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday April 18, 1906, an earthquake rocked San Francisco. For the next four days, fires ravaged the city, and city officials, police, firefighters, and even the army all worked together to put them out. But the city might not have survived without the extraordinary efforts of ordinary people who stepped up and helped. Here are some of their stories:

    • The post office remained standing after the quake but was threatened by the growing blaze. Many postal workers risked their lives beating out smaller fires with wet mail sacks. When the danger had passed, they began sorting the thousands of pieces of mail city residents wanted to get out to worried relatives. Survivors scribbled messages on boards, newspapers, even shirts, and as long as a piece of mail had a legible address, it was delivered—no stamp needed.

    • The Southern Pacific Railroad Station depot was saved by brave men with one pump, a single stretch of hose, some wet gunny sacks, and a few buckets. Volunteers carried water from the bay three blocks away.

    • The Hopkins Art Institute held thousands of dollars’ worth of paintings and statues. All day after the quake, teachers and students removed hundreds of pictures, which were then carried in wheelbarrows, wagons, and on shoulders to safe spots around the city. Navy men arrived to help that night, and a young lieutenant used his service pistol to encourage other people from the passing crowds to assist.

    Condorama

    The California condor is the largest flying land bird in all of North America. It’s also one of the most endangered.

    Home on the Range

    The California condor’s range used to extend up and down the West Coast, into Mexico, and all the way across the continent to Florida. But today, that area has been cut significantly. In the wild, the birds now live almost exclusively in the mountainous areas of California, Arizona, and northern Baja, Mexico.

    Conservation programs have increased the number of California condors in the wild.

    An expert at the San Diego Zoo’s conservation project checks condor egg development.

    Rebound

    The California condor’s numbers declined so severely during the 20th century (due to poaching, habitat encroachment, and the condor’s own naturally low birth rate) that by the 1980s, only 22 wild birds were known to exist in the entire world. Those birds were all captured so they wouldn’t die off, and then they were cared for and bred at the San Diego Zoo and the Los Angeles Zoo until 1992, when they and their offspring began to be released back into the wild. Today, there are about 180 free-flying California condors. Another 200 or so live in zoos and at other conservation sites.

    Mother and chick

    Hi, Mom!

    Condors are extremely attentive parents. Their gestation period lasts about 56 days, and most females lay just one egg at a time. The adults then provide their young a lot of attention and care—chicks begin flying when they’re about six months old but continue to live with Mom and Dad for a few months after that.

    At up to nine feet and ten inches, the wingspan of the California condor is greater than that of any other North American bird.

    An Aging Population

    The California condor is one of the longest-living birds in the world. On average, they can reach about 60 years of age. Some live into their 80s.

    A condor scavenges for food.

    Dinner Time

    The condors are scavengers. That means their diet is made up mostly of carrion (dead, rotting animal carcasses). Their favorites? Deer, sheep, and cattle, though rabbits and rodents will do in a pinch.

    A condor appears on the California state quarter, along with John

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