California Dream Essay

California did not only promise prosperity for those who came searching during the Gold Rush in the 1800s nor did it simply provide security for those who fled the Great Plains to escape the Dust Bowl in the Dirty Thirties, but it offered a fresh start to those who were ambitious enough to arrive decades, centuries after; for ones who craved the California Dream just because they desired more. As Joan Didion, author of memoir Where I Was From, stated, “They did not come west for homes and security, but for adventure and money.” (23). My grandparents, both born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a small Canadian town over North Dakota, illustrate the classic teenage couple of the 1950s; think Sandy and Danny of “Grease.” Married in 1954, they would go on to have four children in “The Peg,” my mother being number three. My grandfather was a plasterer in the summer and, due to the

My grandparents, much like Didion implied, put a lot on the line for themselves and their children when then decided to move to California. When the promise of a new beginning dwindled away after the death of Winnek, the idea of the California Dream became almost nonexistent. However, my grandfather’s plastering job was enough to support his family and three more children were added to the mix. They began to realized that a larger house was necessary and in 1974 moved to new home on Park Street in Cerritos, a sky-blue two-story featuring a red brick porch that sat parallel to a dairy farm that housed hundreds of cows. Just minutes away from the Cerritos Mall, a frequent destination for my mother and her sisters as teenagers, this new home signified the true meaning of “success” to my grandparents. They had made it; they left all that they had known, family, friends, their entire lives, and started a new life on the Gold