The Chicans

("Chicans" is pronounced "CHEEK-uns.")

In California people living in the blazingly hot Central Valley often have a favorite summer town on the coast to vacation in.  Chicans often head to Fort Bragg, which is far off the main roads and not considered a destination by anyone else. Chicans come from Chico, of course, a city of 100,000 and home to a state university. Research shows that about 9% of Chicans are living in sin, and Jackson Pollock grew up there. 

I suppose there must be naysayers who view Fort Bragg as unsophisticated, but you have to admire a town  named for an incompetent jackass loathed by both armies in the Civil War. To be fair, the town was named by fellow who detested Bragg and the town and believe they deserved one another. It was an early version of naming sewage treatment plants for Donny Trump. 

The naming occurred before Gen. Bragg lost his Civil War battles and destroyed his own army, anticipating the fate of Gen. Lee, but Fort Bragg has had the guts to retain both its name and the vacant, strip-mall drabness that lure Chicans to the Pacific. (The nearest neighboring town is Mendocino, a ritzy spot, quite New Englandy, where the wells have gone dry in the current drought. If you go there, take water.)

I mention this because I heard recently that the Forters don't like the way newly shod Chicans stroll along on their sidewalks wearing MAGA hats. I've been told this by an insider. These encounters may illustrate one of America's lasting internal wars, that between the coast and the interior. It's like the larger war between the city and the countryside.