Coconut's Journey

I cannot imagine a more idyllic childhood than growing up on the California Central Coast. Rolling hills filled with one-hundred-year-old oak trees, beaches wrapped in the hot rod and surfer cultures of the time, Beach Boys music in the background, and weather like no other place on earth. Childhood summers filled with adventures that sometimes involved running through green lawns and sprinklers. Adolescence was a real life "e;American Graffiti"e; existence. But as I approached my preteen years, I was introduced to the town's dark underbelly. A blackness concealed under the Norman Rockwell veneer. My memories struggle with this paradox; a loving, beautiful place, together with sometimes overwhelming intolerance. After the Army my work took us throughout the United States, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The racism of my youth was seldom seen, until we found ourselves in the Heart of the Confederacy. I found that decades of hard work and preparation meant nothing. I was met with what amounted to the shrugging of shoulders and a raised middle finger; my government career was dead. In the end, there is no redemption, no comforting justice, only the quiet echo of inequality. I longed for the simple times and simple things of the Central Coast.