Oh My Lovely Fresno!

My favorite view of Fresno is when it fits neatly inside the driver's side mirror in my car. When those moments come, I am usually blazing down the highway on my way back to that blue state known as "The Bay Area."

I should say that there could be no greater misnomer for California as when people call it a "Blue State." A cooler shade of violet (in aggregate) than say, Kentucky? Perhaps, but all one needs to do is hop in the car and head southeast for about three and a half hours, exit at Herndon Avenue off 99, and you are finally in the city of William Saroyan. Of course, I hear Saroyan always hated the place.

There is little one can call "blue" about Fresno. These days, Fresno is populated by a special tribe of folks waiting for the Rapture which will bring Jesus returning to Earth in a 1976 Chevy Corvette, ready to do battle with all the moral relativists who have attempted to turn the world into a Six Flags Marxist Hell. I can't remember how it goes, but I think Jesus will press the little red button in the middle console inside his car and a giant hole will open up in the ground somewhere near Deadwood, South Dakota. At that point, everyone who voted for John Kerry in 2004 will be sucked in.

Had you picked up Sunday's edition of the Fresno Bee, flipping between the Values/Religion and Business sections, you would have found a quite comprehensive wrap-up of the ever-popular week in high school sports. You see, when not attending sub-mega churches on Saturdays and Sundays, people run high school sports through their veins like it was the last junk on the streets of Philladelphia. The can't get enough. This weekend last, I learned that Clovis West, my very own high school, lost in the state championship game held the night before in Sacramento.

Sports is the prince to King Jesus in Fresno. Beyond high schools, there is always Fresno State....the Bulldogs. In fact, the Red Wave boasts itself as the nation's largest community sports booster organization. Of course, under ex-basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, the Bulldog Foundation perfected the art of turning itself into a first-class money laundering operation for the basketball players. They did quite well for a while, until they were brought down by a few player scandals involving sexual battery, rape, armed robbery, and grand theft auto. Rumor has it, however, that Fresno State will rise up one day out of the ashes and become once again the San Joaquin Valley's premier sports juggernaut, surpassing even the hapless Golden Eagles of Clovis West.

No one can doubt the taste of the average Fresnan. Growing up in the city William Saroyan wanted to explode with a giant bunker buster shit bomb, I noticed that when it comes to the latest fashions and trends, Fresnans love a good thing when they see it and don't give up easily. For example, most pop culture observers and sociologists agree that disco officially died in 1979. In fact, they point to the "Disco Demolition Derby" at Commiskey Park during a Chicago White Sox game that same year as the defining moment in the downfall of disco. In Fresno, most would agree that disco was around until about 1984, but correctly add that it survived in certain pockets in and around Clovis well into the Nineties, fighting a longtime insurgency against Cyndi Lauper and the Macarena (did I spell that correctly?)

But I digress. Politically and socially, there is absolutely nothing even remotely blue about the place. There are two political parties in Fresno: the Republicans and the Dixiecrats. The mayor of Fresno is a man known quite affectionately as "Bubba" and had starred with Carol O'Connor in the TV classic, "In the Heat of the Night." Mayor Bubba was elected back in 1922 to bring about a cultural renaissance in Fresno; to make all those city folk in Loz Angeleez and the "Gay Bay" stand up an start inveen' the place. I think the jury is still out on that.

As sure as the clock strikes 4:16 in this office of mine, I shall continue this landscape of the country's largest city that does not have an interstate highway running through it. Until then, I bid you all a good day.