The Town Where I Live.

The other day, one of my friends on Face Book had an address of a blog that was a photo a day from around our town. I have visited several times just because I enjoy each of the photographs. The one for today, happens to be one of my favorite places to eat, and when I was in high school my friends and I would dress up on Friday nights and go eat there and order Shirley Temples to drink because we thought people would think we were over 21 and we could drink. I know but that is how we thought. The Blog is called, Our Bakersfield: A 365 Collective Photography Collective.


One of the pictures in this collection is of a building made to look like a giant shoe. In the picture it is boarded up and every time I am going to the library I am going to take a picture to show you but I never have my camera. There is one in that collection, but when I was a little girl, My mom stopped and we went in and she let me talk to the cobbler that owned it. All I remember is he had an accent.


I thought I would tell you a few things about Bakersfield. Lots of movies get filmed here. Lots of books have been written here. John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath and the city officials burned the book down at what is the police station now but then it was city hall. The farm labor camp that Mr. Steinbeck wrote of was really called TheWeedpatch Camp and my Dad and his family lived there.
There was also a movie and a book written about a terrible thing that happened outside of town by Joseph Wambaugh called the Onion Field in 1963.
One of the Supreme Court Justices came from here, and his name was Earl Warren. He was our governor and was who President Johnson had head up the famous Warren commission who was supposed to look into the assassination of JFK His own father was murdered here in Bakersfield and the case remains unsolved.
Last year we were in the news because of our Governor and his housekeeper how she owned a house here in town.
Hollywood makes fun of us because we are a Conservative town in the land of fruit and nuts. Buck Owens and Meryl Haggard grew up here. I went to high school with their kids. When Buck was getting started, he played in my Grandpa's band. The day my nephew was being born and I was in the waiting room with my parents, Buck walked off the elevator with his sister and my Dad talked to them, and they told us that their mother had just passed away.. I remember thinking that even famous people cry.
Lots of things have happened here. George Bush senior and Barbara lived here when George Bush junior was young. It is a family place that people come too. It is a melting pot. I was third generation and my children 4th my grandchildren 5th generation
It is a place you don't do anything wrong because everyone will know by night fall. Yet is has become such a big place but feels like a small town. We have one of the largest oil and gas pools in the world. If you buy a bag of carrots in the store look at the label, it might just say, packaged in Bakersfield California. The largest shipper, packer, growers of carrots are here. The baby carrot, called shortcuts was thought up here at Bolthouse Farms. For all of the funny things that do happen here, I love this place I live.

I just wanted to share this with you today. I hope you enjoy the photographs of the place that I live,
~Kim~