Joyce McNair

AHHHH STOCKTON!

I first visited Stockton, California the summer of 1982. Like many other gullible recipients, I took advantage of a mail advertisement that guaranteed that I would win a prize--everyone would win something, said the ad--if only I would look at a recreation development on a lake just outside of Stockton. Of course, I was not obligated to buy anything, continued the ad.

So on a warmish, early summer day, I hopped into my two and a half year old car and headed for a spot on the map that had accompanied the mail ad. I knew that I would have to listen to a sales pitch, but so what. For my efforts, at least I would get a grandmother clock.

As I left the urban East Bay past Castro Valley, Hayward, Pleasanton into the Livermore

Valley and up through Altamont Pass, I began to sense that I had entered a different world. I had lived in the East Bay for many years. I had vacationed in Mexico, The Caribbean, Hawaii. I had even lived in Europe as an "army brat." But my knowledge of California was limited to the urban areas of San Diego, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Sacramento.

While driving through Altamont Pass I experienced my first indication of change. The streamlined windmills that covered the rolling hills surrounding the freeway seemed like butterflies on an open field. Driving through the pass as the road descended to the valley, I entered farmland on the outer edges of the San Joaquin Valley where Stockton serves as the urban center.

As I approached the valley, I felt that I was leaving the California I knew and was entering another world, unknown but with a trace of familiarity. That sense of the familiar was a major part of the attraction that Stockton immediately had for me on that initial brief passage through its environs.

I continued north on Interstate 5 pass the city limits, turned off the freeway at Charter Way, crossing the southern sections of the city and drove and drove for another 40 miles until finally, I reached the Camanche Reservoir, where the recreation area was located.

Feigning interest, I sat through an intense one hour sales pitch given by an earnest salesperson who included a personal tour of vacant lots where dream vacation homes could be built. (A lot of imagination was needed to envision anything on the parched, treeless terrain surrounding a featureless reservoir.) I left immediately afterward with no intention of signing a sales agreement. (Several months later, I received by mail a package containing an unassembled electric grandmother clock with detailed instructions on how to put it together.)

I did not return to Stockton until the following year. But that short first journey across town the previous year had stirred something deep in my consciousness that continued to draw me year after year. For the next several trips, usually once or twice a year, I would drive into Stockton, take the Charter Way exit, proceed to a nearby MacDonald's for a snack, then drive immediately back to the Bay Area.

Once I came with a friend. As we drove into the downtown area, my first trip that far into the city, I experienced a very strong sense of deja vu. I kept repeating to Elsie, “I've been here before. This feels so at home." She looked at me as if I were crazy.

At that time downtown Stockton was a mixture of medium-rise office buildings built during the 20's and 30's, a few post-modern structures, and several fairly contemporary buildings easily identified as government bureaucratic enclaves. The area surrounding the old Fox theater and plaza had the feeling that the movie "The Sting" attempted to evoke, a little seedy, a bit run down, but somehow comfortable and familiar. The movie should have been filmed there instead of on a studio lot. Kress', Newberry's, and Rosenthal's still held on, although the suburban malls had begun to lure away many of their customers. There was even a used book store, Harvard's, that specialized in military books. Nearby stood the Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1850, a testament to a black presence since Stockton's 1849 Gold Rush-inspired founding, along with ample evidence of significant settlements of Mexican, Chinese, and Filipinos,all present in Stockton from its earliest days. Often I stopped to eat at On Lock Sam, a popular Chinese restaurant originally located in Stockton's now razed Chinatown. On Lok Sam first opened in 1898.

California is a very young state in a young country. Compared with some cities in Africa, Asia, and Europe, Stockton is an infant. But in terms of the American West, Stockton is a city with history. Somehow I had absorbed that sense of history, and it enriched me. I've been through other Central Valley towns, Modesto, Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield, Sacramento ( near where I live now). None of them, not even Sacramento of which I have become very fond, could hold a candle to Stockton for me at that time..

Driving north on San Joaquin Avenue past the barrio toward downtown, I sensed the vitality in the air that fairly crackled as I approached the corner of San Joaquin and Sonora Avenues, a neighborhood spot that looked as if it could be dangerous at times. I was always very careful not to stare as I passed by. Sometimes the light changed and I had to stop. I remember feeling a little uncomfortable waiting for the light to turn green.. When the light changed, I would glance casually at the busy intersection where some people lounged and others strolled as I drove away. It seemed like a place where trouble might happen at any moment. I would not want to be there on a Saturday night or any night for that matter.

People in the downtown area looked like they had such stories to tell. Often traveling in family groups, they were the people you see on cross-country Greyhound buses, at rodeos, or at Kress' lunch counters. There were many gas-guzzling land cruisers from the 60's and 70's, battered but still running. Compact, sub-compact, and mini-compact cars from Japan were the exception. The cars, the people, the buildings all added to the feeling that in Stockton time moved a lot slower.

Sometimes I felt that I had been caught in a 1950's time warp. I saw young black men with "conks;" worn white men in old lumber jackets; pale, overweight women in faded, nondescript dresses; mischievous little boys with dirty faces darting through slow moving traffic like characters from "Spanky and Our Gang."

The tales they might tell would include hardships, disappointments, even danger. For these people were aware and alive. People who are truly alive have not been protected from all that life offers, its trials as well as its comforts.

Many people who come to California comment that it lacks a sense of permanence, a sense of place. These remarks are directed particularly to California's urban areas. Some of these people continue their journeys elsewhere.

What Stockton represented to me was a sense of place. There was something very real there. It was not trendy. It had what any city could have that does not have an inferiority complex about itself regardless of how others define what makes cities great. It was far enough from other metropolitan areas to resist the need to pretend to be something that was not. Stockton was Stockton.

Stockton had the same negative features other cities have. The same stereotypical images of different ethnic groups toward each other existed there, I am certain.. The same lack of imagination and true creativity needed to make the city a real community was there. Unemployment, the unavailability of free or affordable basic health care, the intrusiveness of drug sales and use, mass murders, gang-related violence, homelessness, the unchecked greed of those who control the resources that could make the community work, the persisting image of poor people as somehow responsible for their condition--all of this could be found in Stockton, I’m sure..

Yet there were neighborhoods where small modest homes coexisted with large, obviously expensive dwellings. The notion that more money requires distance from those with less money held by many affluent people is an idea that prevents people from different income groups from living in proximity to each other. The practice of segregation by income was not always as well-defined in Stockton at that time. What resulted was a variety that allowed a drive through the city to be quite interesting. In some of the most stimulating and exciting cities of the world, people from diverse income groups often share neighborhoods, a concept that has flourished perhaps thousands of years.

Whenever I needed to resolve a problem in my life, I headed for Stockton. Sometimes as I drove through the city, I had the unmistakable feeling that I was home. Usually I dido not spend more than a couple of hours there. I drove down now familiar streets, sometimes in residential areas, other times through downtown. Sometimes I would stop for a meal at On Lock Sam or a diet soda at MacDonald's.

By the time I left Stockton, I felt much better. Once home, within a few days, I had resolved my problem. I believe my perception of Stockton as an unpretentious place where I experienced reality allowed me to think clearer. Stockton served as the place for me to stay in touch with reality.

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Cover Design: Joseph McNair