I loved living in California.
I was born there in the last month of the 1940s, but my parents moved east to Chicago when I was a year old. I knew it was a bad idea and I tried to tell them. Of course I couldn’t get through to them because I didn’t know any verbs or adjectives, let alone complete sentences.
I never set foot in the state again until vacations in 1978 and 1986. and I made the 500-mile trip from Reno to Los Angeles three or four times in 1989. I finally returned as a resident in 1990 and lived there till we moved to Georgia in 2010.
During most of those 20 years, I lived in one of the most upscale, exclusive neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. That was a wonderful byproduct of marrying Nicole, who had a great job and owned a home in La Canada Flintridge.
I knew it was a good neighborhood, but I didn’t know how good until I was watching the late news one night and there was a story about the best neighborhoods in L.A. County. Palos Verdes Estates ranked first, Bel Air ranked second and La Canada Flintridge ranked third.
Beverly Hills? Brentwood? Pomona? All down the line somewhere.
Pomona?
All right, San Marino.
All down the line from the top three.
Want to know how far down? Well, the house pictured above was ours, and as of today, according to Zillow.com, it’s a 1,351 square foot house valued at $1.52 million.
Our home in Georgia is newer, nicer and 700 square feet bigger. It sells for $364,900, less than a quarter of our former home in California.
Location, location, location.
And while living an hour south of Atlanta isn’t as exciting as living an hour from Pacific Ocean beaches, there are a number of things here that don’t keep me up at night.
For one thing, barring some fluke, the house where we live now isn’t in any danger of catching fire and burning to the ground.
I should qualify that. A few years back, a house one street over and less that 200 yards away did burn to the ground. But the fire didn’t spread.
In California, the rapidly spreading Eaton fire necessitated the evacuation of the entire city of La Canada Flintridge. Our home was on the far side of LCF from Eaton Canyon, so most of the city would have to burn before it got to where we lived. A few years before we left California, a fire got within less than two miles of us on the south side.
I’m not sure anyplace is completely safe anymore. When we decided to move across the country, we wanted to avoid hurricanes, earthquakes, extreme cold or heat and tornados. We chose Griffin, Georgia, where they had been hit by one tornado 30 or 40 years ago.
Well, we’ve had two in the 14-plus years we have lived here, including one two years ago than did hellacious damage about five miles to the south of us.
It’s still better than what’s happening in Los Angeles today.
Even so, I truly loved living there for 20 years.