The sneaky path of assimilation

My hubby grew up in Southern California. We hang out there at least a few times every year so we can visit large portions of his rather large family (and I mean quantity, not girth. To the contrary, I often feel like I gain 10 pounds down there just by comparison. Ugh.). Although SoCal has never felt like home to me, it does feel very familiar after 25 years of visits.

It usually takes me a day or so to adjust to the warm glowing orb thing in the sky and all the brown and cement and retail opportunities (we have one mall in our entire county…one). But then I eventually settle into the familiarity of who sits where in the family room and stories about my father-in-law’s days in the world of ketchup and cooking oil and pudding cups. I focus on the family time and chats and (hopefully) my mother-in-law’s lasagna. For at least a little while, my life and world at Woodhaven fades into the background.

And this is exactly as it was during our most recent visit. Until my two worlds collided with the simple reading of a newspaper.

When we first moved to Woodhaven over 11 years ago, it wasn’t long before I was heeing and hawing at our free weekly local newspaper. The editing was so bad and the letters to the editor so deliciously small town, I quickly took to calling it The Local Rag. There were stories about horses and taxidermy and ATVs. Topics completely unfamiliar to me, serving to highlight every week how very not-from-these-parts we were in our new home.

But then the paper was sold and a new editor was brought in. The spelling mistakes disappeared as did the lengthy Corrections section apologizing for the prior week’s multitude of reporting errors. The letters to the editor no longer railed against too many stop lights on Main Street or the unsightly trash collecting in a local park. Instead the letters took on a less provincial tone with concerns about politics and the economy and such. In other words, the paper became much more professional and thus much less entertaining. It lost the quirky, small-town, rural, decidedly not-the-SF-Bay-Area feel it once had.

Or so I thought.

On one of our last nights in LA a few weeks ago, I decided to read the latest issue of The Local Rag that I had tucked in our suitcase.

As the pages fluttered in the conditioned air (in January!), I read the news with new eyes. Or rather, old eyes of 11 years ago. Having immersed myself in the trendy suburban Californianess of Orange County for nearly a week, I had unknowingly distanced myself from Woodhaven just enough to discover my newspaper hasn’t actually changed much.

My Local Rag hasn’t lost its quirky, cowtown appeal at all. It is me that has changed. Me that no longer thinks twice about seeing a story about concealed pistol license applications being on the rise, or a 12 year old in camo proudly showing his first elk from a recent hunting trip, or a rather sizeable paid ad titled “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”

11 years ago, I would have gasped at the publication of such a picture
These days, I see much more graphic hunting pix in my Facebook newsfeed
(Yes, I'm referring to you, Kayleigh)

All of those stories are expected, typical stories to me now. They no longer scream how big a change we made when we left the San Francisco area for a new adventure. It no longer strikes me as amusing or confusing to find a story about a local Mounted Shooting Junior Champion. Sure, I still need to Google “mounted shooting” but I no longer get all itchy and twitchy about the celebration and intention of riding horses while shooting at stuff.

I just realized I have been writing this blog while wearing a pink camo shirt. A shirt I bought about five years ago because it’s warm and looks cute with my jeans. Don't worry, though, the jeans aren't Wranglers.

Yet.