The Southwest was Paradise Lost. California was Paradise Regained, an alter-Eden. From rutted, dustblown land outside Tulsa, Little Rock, and Topeka, California appeared epic and opulent: orange groves, vineyards, an eternal now of seasonless calm. Just to dig your heels into El Centro, into Bakersfield soil could change your life, turn your luck.

“I sat there for 30 minutes. No one helped. Finally, some guy comes along in a pickup, Confederate flags all over the windshield. He stops, gets out, says, ‘Let me see if I can help you.’"

"I begin to see that this [U.S. involvement in Vietnam] was not cool, and I shared that with my father and we had a parting of the way. But not for long. He came around."

The camps published weekly newspapers — Migratory Clipper, Pea Pickers Prairie, The Tow Sack Tattler. Beneath the disclaimer, “Neither the Farm Security Administration, nor its employees accept ‘Editorial Responsibility,’ the papers were written and edited by the migrants and typed onto stencils and mimeographed.

He takes it for granted that suburbs are great. “We built these freeways, and they’re not generating less trips, they’re generating more. More freedom. People want to live out away from the city and drive in to work.

“Country Dick was a Glory fan during the old days, back when he was in high school. As a matter fact, he was student-body vice president at Grossmont High and hired us to play a dance there.”

I nod in silent greeting to the grim-faced sentry as he checks us out through the gap in the crisscrossed pattern of barbed wire. His lips move as he counts to himself. Fourteen of us …

The following audition material won a stand-up comic/philosopher a paid gig at the Green Peak Restaurant and Comedy Club in East Dorset, Vermont, last September: • Revelation! God is androgynous — but chauvinistic! • Here’s …

Each urchin is worth about 75 cents to the divers, and by the time it reaches a sushi bar in San Diego, the five pads of sex organ from a single urchin are worth 15 to 20 dollars.

Okay, let's start from the top: The ugliest unit eyescape in Horton Plaza, and I mean the ugggliest, is the view straight on with your back to this kid store called Gymboree on the topmost …

Molly, my friend Jerry's cocker spaniel, met me on the patio. Blond Molly wagged her stub of a tail, jumped up, danced, rolled onto her back. I petted her warm stomach. She turned to her …