Topic 164: On Outgrowing One's Family

Carol:

The Lure of the Golden West

The 1930 census lists two transplants in Maywood, California, a tiny Los Angeles suburb  that had grown from a population of 1000 in 1924 to 6000 by 1930.  Winifred Fike from New Jersey lived at 4637 58th Street.  Texas-born Ed Scott lived a few blocks away at 5645 59th Street. What brought them to California?  Why did their parents uproot themselves from large, close-knit families?
 

In 1880, the population of Los Angeles was just above 33,000. Easterners had already been reading about California in Overland Monthly and Out West magazine   By 1876 the Transcontinental Railroad was completed and by 1887 the trickle of immigrants became a flood when 120,000 people came to Los Angeles in a single year, “drawn by the promise of pure air, warm sunshine and prosperity” (source: The West). By the time the Fike and Scott families arrived, the population of LA County had climbed to almost one million, and it would increase by another 135% to over 2 million by that 1930 federal census (source: Los Angeles).
 

Thousands of families headed West, pulled by a desire for a fresh start, the universal story of immigrants  seeking  a Promised Land of opportunity. To overcome the inertia  of habits and family connections, there must have been two forces at work, both a push and a pull.   The  private circumstances that pushed them out of the family nest are not told in the statistics of a federal census or a city’s population tables. But looking back to 1920 Fike and Scott census reports gives  a hint as to what catalysts set them on their journeys to California.   

There is no 1920 census report for Winnie Fike’s family. But  January 1920 death records show that her maternal  grandmother died after living with the family in Plainfield, New Jersey for almost 5 years. Did Grandma’ death release the family to pursue a secret dream? What conversations took place that led three neighborhood families to pack up their Model T’s and caravan to California that spring of 1920, a six-week trip that left them out of both the New Jersey and the California census reports?

Winne with Grandma, New Jersey

 Ed Scott’s 1920 census report shows him, his younger brother, Texan mother and step-father in New Mexico, the childhood home of Ed’s father, who had died in 1915.  What dream was Ed’s step-father following that took them to California? Or were they just trying to distance themselves from the ghost of a dead husband and the influence of his extended family? 

Ed with Grandpa, New Mexico

 

Did my father Ed miss his grandparents in New Mexico, did my mother Winnie feel homesick for her cousins in New Jersey and Pennsylvania? What about their relatives that stayed behind, who watched  loved ones ride off to pursue the lure of the West? Did they envy their intrepid son or daughter? Perhaps, they felt resentment that their brother or sister had let  wanderlust outgrow the families left behind?
 

Home is so Sad   (Philip Larkin)

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Sources:
“Los Angeles.”  Wikipedia.
Larkin, Philip. “Home is So Sad.” Poets.org 

Burns, Ken. The West. PBS.org 
 

Megan:

My brother and I were the only kids in our neighborhood when we were growing up. We lived too far from town to spend much time with other children (aside from at school and at the sitter’s house), so we explored every inch of our wild back yard. We used to dig through the bushes, playing and screaming and running and fighting. Our 1.5 acres has never been tamed, despite occasional attempts. A collapsing fence still outlines the area where we kept the goat that came with the house. A sandbox stands empty in cactus and catclaw. There is half a tetherball pole, cemented into the dirt – the consolation prize after the guy who replaced our deck failed to complete the promised basketball court, itself a consolation for the pool I’d always begged for. My mother is the only person on her side of the family not to have a pool or a hot tub, and I think she should be ashamed.

But now, 20 years later, our neighborhood has changed. The number of houses has tripled at least. The elderly neighbors have been replaced with loud and active families, with trampolines and forts and 4-wheelers. Our middle-aged neighbors are now elderly. 

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to escape from here – from what I considered a dry and dull backward place. I loved my family, but I was eager to move far away from them, start out a new life, like my parents had when they were in college.  Until my grandparents moved to Prescott in the late 80’s, we had always lived hundreds of miles from anyone else in the family.  When I was in high school, a cousin moved to the area to go to college. Then came an aunt and uncle,  and then another cousin. The cousins married (not each other), had kids, and I moved back to Arizona last summer to find myself surrounded by family – with some still  far enough away to take vacations to visit.

I was so afraid that I would hate being back here that I didn’t even notice when I started to love it. If my MFA plan works out (or I find a job), I’ll likely be moving hundreds of miles away again, but this time I won’t be telling myself it’s forever.  There’s a lot of value in living close to family.  You learn a lot about yourself observing how people with the same blood can turn out so many different ways, have different values, take advantage of different opportunities. 

I’m still waiting to see how I turn out.