As the old saying goes, Stockton is a great place to be from…far from. I knew that I wanted to be somewhere else as soon as I knew there was somewhere else. It’s not that it was a horrible place…there are far worse places on the planet…it was just godawful boring with a tinge of bleak. Mind numbingly average and they liked it that way. A Norman Rockwell veneer painted over a canvas of relentless tedium.

The Stockton of my youth was in the latter stages of transition from a quiet farming town to a small industrial city, struggling with the challenges of urbanization while still clinging to it’s rural culture. Stockton, which in the early days was known as Mudville…some claim it to be the locale of the famous poem “Casey at the Bat”…and later Tuleburg, had experienced four distinct migrations in the 19th and 20th centuries which had shaped it’s identity. And each of the latter three being vehemently opposed by the previous immigrants. It had it’s roots as a trading post and transit point for miners heading for the Sierra Nevada gold fields in the 1850’s. When the gold petered out a wave of settlers began farming the land around the young town, which proved exceptionally fertile. Italian immigrants in particular found the valley ideal for growing tomatoes, grapes, and almonds while Asian immigrants found the delta region favored rice and root crops like sugar beets and onions, at least until several racist laws…such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882…banned them from owning property. In the 1930’s the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression drove a wave of migrants, mostly from the South and the Midwest, west seeking better opportunities. This sudden influx created friction between the mostly white immigrants and the more diverse local population. The new arrivals were derisively called “oakies”, causing a resentment that lingered for decades. Soon after the onset of WWII resulted in a manufacturing boom to meet the war effort. Factories and shipyards drew a new wave of migrants, including a large African-American contingent, looking for work. This created racial tensions, both among the recently arrived southern whites and many of the locals as the city dealt with the issues of segregation and discrimination that would culminate in the Civil Rights era. In addition the pall cast by the Cold War and the rise of communism, along with the growing threat of nuclear war, led to a national sense of unease and helped inflame divisions between New Deal progressives looking to move the country forward and those that saw that the changes being advocated as a threat to their way of life. Stockton also suffered, as almost all cities do, with the stench of corruption among it’s civic leaders which tended to widen the gap between the haves and the have nots. Community and business leaders along with the local media, which they controlled, tried to gloss over these issues and present the image of Stockton as a model modern All American city. This did little to dispel the underlying atmosphere of dissatisfaction that pervaded the city.

The city was generally divided along racial and economic lines. The upper class, mostly white, lived on the north side of town around a neighborhood called Lincoln Village. An area of newer, larger homes and even their own school district. It wasn’t gated but it might as well have been, as any outsiders were closely watched and viewed with suspicion. The south side was the poor side of town where most of the black population lived. It was a mix of older houses and light industrial, which lent the atmosphere of chain link and dirty air. To many of the white residents of the town it was an area where you didn’t go after dark, if at all. The east side of town, where I mostly lived through high school, was a collection of blue collar neighborhoods with a mix of Hispanic and poor whites. It had a more semi-rural feel to the area. Being near the farmlands east of town it was home to much of the agricultural processing, as we were reminded every fall when the wind shifted us downwind of the tomato cannery. The west side of town was the old part of town. Lots of Victorian and Georgian architecture and tree lined streets. Solidly middle class and mostly white. Downtown was the commercial hub as well as the seat of local government in area just north of the area known as “Skid Row”, blocks of run down hotels frequented by men referred to in those days as “whinos”.

The landscape could best described as flat. The elevation was listed at fifteen feet above sea level and didn’t vary much from one end of town to the other. Standing on top of any tall building in town…there weren’t many to choose from…you could see east to the Sierras, west to the Coast Range, and north and south into oblivion. The one positive from my perspective was the juxtaposition of several highways making it easy to get out of town. Both Highway 99 and later I5 led south to LA and north to Sacramento and beyond. To the west 580 led to the Bay Area while Highway 4 went east into the Sierra foothills. Much of my young life I wondered often why more people didn’t take advantage of the exit ramp to somewhere else. It took me a while but when I was ready I got out and I pretty much never looked back. Except for now, it would seem.