I’ve been playing “California Girls” in my head now for a couple of weeks. Sometimes I play the classic Beach Boys version and sometimes I hum the David Lee Roth with those lascivious leers added to the chorus. I’m just glad after all that ear-worming that I still like the song.

“California Girls” started playing because tomorrow we go to Northern California, north of Redding. I’ve been to California quite a bit, but I’ve never been north of the Wine Country, and I’ve never fished anywhere.

If everybody had an ocean
Across the U.S.A.
Then everybody’d be surfin’
Like Californ-i-a

Did you know that “Surfin’ USA” is actually Bryan Wilson lyrics set to the tune of “Sweet Little Sixteen” by Chuck Berry? I didn’t, but it seems an apt metaphor for California. The state is this amazing thing in and of itself, with the Pacific on the left and the Sierra Nevadas on the right, beautiful, interesting, and grandly diverse, both geographically and culturally. In the far south there are the deserts and beaches. In the far north there are redwoods and mountains and trout.

But a big part of California seems imported from elsewhere: Joni Mitchell, “Sweet Little Sixteen,” the Gold Rush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Dodgers and the Giants, the movie industry, surfing, Tom Joad . . . . Even its geology is a mash-up from the ocean floor and marauding island crescents. You may not recall this, but until geologists invented tectonic plates in the 60s, California was completely flat. There wasn’t any elevated ground in the whole state, and it was number 3 on the list of our flattest states. Then the geologists got creative and overnight California had all those mountains. Tectonic plates are really what made California what it is today.

Lucille Lloyd, detail of Queen Califa Mural, 1937, California State Capitol.

Even California’s name is borrowed. It’s the name of an island of black Amazonian women described in the 1510 Spanish novel, Las sergas de Esplandián. The Californian amazons fed their males to the gryphons that they rode into battle.

All of California’s geological shifting still left the Central Valley flat as a pancake. It extends from Bakersfield in the south to Lake Shasta in the far north. About half of the fruits and vegetables produced in the United States are produced in the Central Valley. I’m not aware of any trout in the valley, though I’d expect there to be some bass ponds, and almost certainly some carp. We’ll be fishing north of there, just a bit up Highway 5, within sight of Mount Shasta, elevation 14,179. Mount Shasta was formed in 1967 by a group of geologists from Stanford.

Geologic Map of California, California Geological Survey. Red and green are tall, yellow isn’t. The blue off to the left is sea level.

California makes me wish I knew something about geology. Obviously I don’t.

California has approximately 39 million people, about 10 million more than second place Texas. The largest centers of population are coastal, centered on Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, and in the Central Valley. There aren’t a lot of people in the deserts or the mountains.

There’s no dominant ethnic group. About 35% of the population is white alone, 6.5% black, 16% Asian, and 40% Hispanic. About 35% of the population is college educated, and 84% have high school degrees, which is pretty close to the national average and close enough to Texas to make no difference. The median income is about $84,000, ranked number 5, and 12% of the population lives in poverty. That poverty rate places it in the solid center of states.

Cost of living in California is roughly 135% of the national average, and only Massachusetts and Hawaii are more expensive. There are earthquakes, fires, the decline of San Francisco, droughts, and the Dodgers. In only a few 100s of millions of years the California coast will slam into Asia, and no one seems the least bit worried.

Alta California, one of the names for Spanish and Mexican California before it was ceded to the States, was first settled in 1804, but wasn’t really ever much of a thing. In 1840 before the Mexican-American War, the non-native population of California is estimated at 8,000. There had been a sizable and diverse Native American population before the Europeans, with as many as 200,000 Native Americans, about 12% of the total estimated population for the U.S. There were more than 100 tribal groups. By 1870, because of death and removal, the California Native American population had declined to about 12,000.

California’s population boomed with the Gold Rush, reaching 379,994 by 1860. In some ways the Gold Rush seems nothing but a footnote, but it really is the seminal event in California history. The state hasn’t stopped growing since.

California has a reputation of left-leaning politics, but that’s shifted back and forth over the years. Ronald Reagan, after all, was from California. Since World War II, there’s been a Democratic governor for 32 years and a Republican governor for 42, but currently the state is very Democratic. All of the elected state officials are Democrats, Both Senators are Democratic, and only 12 of the 62-member congressional delegation are Republican. The California State legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried California 61.7% to 31.6%, and in 2020, Joe Biden carried 63.5% of the California vote. Trump’s percentage increased to 34.32%, but the total vote in 2020 increased by about 3.9 million. In 2020 most of the urban and coastal areas voted for Biden, while portions of the Central Valley and the far north voted Trump.

2020 California Presidential Election Map by County, Wikipedia.

Besides surfing (which was an import from Hawaii), California gives us our movies, a lot of music, our wine, and our computers. It is the largest economy in the U.S., and would rank 5th in the world if it were a separate nation. Oil production, defense industries, agriculture, solar power . . . The Port of Los Angeles imports approximately 20% of the cargo coming into the States, with the most imports coming from Asia.

To prepare for our trip to California, Kris and I came up with a list of movies set in California. It’s an endless list, and we’ll catch a fish long before we run out of movies. We watched Vertigo, but we didn’t get around to The Birds. We watched Clueless, but never got around to re-watching American Graffiti. We watched The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but not Chinatown.

Wasn’t Back to the Future set in a California suburb? I think I’ll stop this and go watch Chinatown. Or maybe Big Trouble in Little China.