California: Promised Land

I sat across from Vitaliy with hunger in my stom­ach and a feel­ing of home in my heart. I was miles away from my home­town of St. Louis, but I was moments away from get­ting a bite at one of its leg­endary restau­rants. The smell of the thin steak­burger pat­ties on the grill and the antic­i­pa­tion of my home­made milk­shake reminded me of all the rea­sons why I miss the Mid-West. Cal­i­for­nia is bust­ing at its seams with Organic salad greens and fat-free lattes, but some­times a girl just needs a steak­burger and a milk­shake. Well, at least this girl does! And there is just noth­ing like the Frisco Melt at the famous Steak-N-Shake of the Mid-West.

Our wait­ress was an adorable 18 year old girl with long, dark black hair swept over her shoul­ders, choco­late brown eyes, and heavy black eye shadow that sur­pris­ingly com­ple­mented her fea­tures quite well. Who knew you could even rock the “smoky eye” while serv­ing burg­ers at Steak-N-Shake! She was the face of the Mid-West for me – a big smile and friendly per­son­al­ity. There was some­thing intrigu­ing about her; I was as fix­ated on her as I was on my choco­late milk­shake. This hap­pens to me some­times, I meet some­one and I can’t stop day­dream­ing about what their life might look like. I had three pos­si­ble life sto­ries about our wait­ress before I fin­ished my meal. I had to know at least one thing about her before I stepped off the path that led me to her table. She was a high school grad­u­ate get­ting ready to go to col­lege the fol­low­ing year. In her friendly per­sona, she responded and asked about us. We told her how we were vis­it­ing Ohio for our best friend’s wed­ding but that we were from Cal­i­for­nia. She responded, “You guys must be so bored here com­ing from Cal­i­for­nia.” I assured her that she was from a beau­ti­ful state and that we had a won­der­ful time vis­it­ing it.

I left the restau­rant with my thoughts on some­thing other than the life of our wait­ress – why does every­one have this sen­ti­ment that Cal­i­for­nia is some­how supe­rior to the other states? What hap­pened to home­town pride? These ques­tions were heavy on my heart because I had received the same response the wait­ress gave us from many dif­fer­ent peo­ple. I absolutely love the Bay Area but I will always have pride for St. Louis. You can take the girl out of the Mid-West but you can’t take the Mid-West out of the girl! It’s where I came from and it helped shape who I am today. There are so many mem­o­ries and spe­cial places that Cal­i­for­nia could never replace. Every city, state or region has its own fea­tures that are unique and spe­cial to it. After going back to St. Louis this past week, I have decided that the weather is NOT one of its spe­cial fea­tures. That is def­i­nitely unique and spe­cial to the San Fran­cisco Bay Area. After watch­ing Vitaliy sweat enough in St. Louis to fill a 2 gal­lon milk jug, I’ve decided the weather alone is rea­son enough to call Cal­i­for­nia the Promised Land.

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Here is a favorite pic­ture Vitaliy took of a sun­rise in California.