Birth of the California Dream

Above are photographs of my grandfather and grandmother camping on Santa Cruz Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Los Angeles. After John Fremont and his wife Jessie Benton secured the West Coast for the United States of America, they came, the Poets and their beautiful Muses.

The first three images are of Mary Magdalene Rosamond who rode on the back of her boyfriends motorcycle all the way from Iowa to Los Angeles. In Ventura she fell in love with the poet and writer, Roy (Royal) Reuben Rosamond whose poems and short stories appeared in Out West Magazine. The bathing beauty lying on Ventura Beach, is my mother Rosemary. Rosemary dated two Hollywood Stars that I know of, and is dressed the part. Here is the Genesis of the California Dream, that would launch the greatest real estate deal of all time, and attract Bohemian non-conformists from…