The California I Once Knew is Gone

By Azel Griswold

Sep 29, 2025

The other night I dreamed about living in Southern California again.

I lived there thirty years.

I haven’t been back to California since I cried uncle and bailed three years ago, moving to hillbilly flyover country, so it was weird that the dream took place in the present day. I was happily residing in Malibu or Ventura, probably a sampling of each. My wife was there, so I guess we didn’t hate each other, in dreamland.

I drove to the incredible break at Point Mugu in my old Chevy Van, and took a snooze, waiting for the tide to get just right. Putting on my wetsuit, I was suddenly twenty-six years old again, with energy galore. I paddled out and caught a few riveting waves. I watched a similarly young Glen Kennedy drop into a bomber, looking like a caveman with his longhair and bushy mustache as he tucked deep into an emerald cavern.

After surfing, he invited me over for dinner and that evening shaped my first thruster surfboard in his garage – that actually happened. Sadly, he died six years ago from a heart attack at sixty-two. I attended perhaps the biggest paddle-out ceremony ever held beside the Malibu Pier – there were hundreds circled in tribute.

Dream continuing, I drove over to see a buddy who lived at Malibu Gardens, just as I had. His condo was one of ten there that burned to the ground in the Woolsey Fire of 2018. I played with Chipaco, his beautiful white cockatoo, in actuality dead after ingesting too much smoke during the blaze.

I went up Kanan Road to visit my lawyer pal, who lived in a splendiferous Spanish style mansion with his wife and kids. He worshipped that idyllic location, until Woolsey roared down the canyon and torched his house, guesthouse, and stable to ashes, killing his horse. He sold the land. In the dream, we played pool inside his unscorched casa. We also walked through the neighbor’s vineyard with his children, with my son suddenly showing up as well, back in his cute years when we got along; long before his rigid “progressive” stances would serve as warped lenses through which to negatively view all things traditional, including me.

I then drove to the Palisades Highlands to visit my amigo Juicy Brucey, the guy who could surf Little Dume better than anybody, but only when hammered. He always had a strapped leather pouch containing his special juice, which he would never share. It was straight vodka. He lived with his elderly parents in a spacious townhouse, and they all hit the sauce. Bruce was drunk, and as always made promises he would never keep. In reality, he died four years ago from hepatitis. His folks perished when the townhouse burned down in the 2025 fire.

From Fantasy to Reality

The dream turned nightmarish when I revisited Coronamania experiences. I stopped at the grocery store beside Trancas Canyon. I walked in and noticed everyone, excluding myself, was wearing masks. The manager and security guard began chasing me. An old man pushed his cart into me, screaming, “Murderer!” I ran across PCH and started walking down Zuma Beach. A lifeguard pulled up and through bullhorn screeched, “Get off the sand: By order of Mayor Garcetti, the county beaches are closed!” I noticed a nearby L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy glaring ominously at me – the same one who’d thrown me out of CVS for being maskless.

I drove to Point Mugu. I apparently still had my job. In my dream I hadn’t been forced into taking early retirement because my supervisor, a guy I’d known fifteen years and broken bread with at his house, started punishing me for refusing to get a couple of shots, as Biden illegally mandated in his Executive Order.

I then walked out the back of the control tower hangar and jumped into the co-pilot seat of a Bell 412 helicopter. I briefed the crew that we were to join a dozen other aircraft patrolling various canyons as the Santa Ana winds were forecasted to blow. We’d be on watch for the electric company’s dilapidated equipment to start yet another fire. The media calls them wildfires, yeah right. Wildly manmade, yet predictable enough to snuff out with straightforward, offensive countermeasures in place. Are there (nefarious) reasons why Newsom never directed implementation of a similar strategic response? It’s not rocket science!

We rose and flew along the coast to Pepperdine, where we took in 375 gallons of water from one of the small lakes fronting the school. We were assigned to surveil a portion of the Santa Monica Mountains. I looked down at bustling Moonshadows – now burned down – and fondly recalled a birthday dinner there.

Gone With the Wind and Fire

Circling around the top of a canyon above Pacific Palisades, there was a gorgeous sunset. That evening, the winds began to howl. The ride got bumpy. We observed huge sparks exploding, just below some power lines. The pilot expertly crabbed the helo over to the scene, where we witnessed a brush fire just starting to flare. While the crew dumped water on it, I radioed LAX Tower to have SoCal Edison shut down the lines, which happened in scant minutes. Another chopper joined us, and the fire was vanquished before it could spread. Everybody was on proper alert. The mayor was working, not visiting Africa.

The rest of the shift was uneventful. When our relief helicopter showed up at dawn, we headed for the base. We flew directly over Bruce’s townhouse. He and his parents were standing on the roof, looking up at us with raised whiskey glasses and smiles.

I awoke, wrestling again with the thought of returning to California, just for a visit. I remembered saying many times something along the lines of “I will never set foot there again.” Think I will stick to that.

The California I knew is gone.

Azel Griswold is a California native now living in Appalachia. He has worked a vast array of jobs without mastering any. He is author of the literary fiction novel “Swim a Crooked Line.”

The California I Once Knew is Gone

By Azel Griswold

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