Hemet
'My mom bought some property in Hemet and I went with her and I was like, 'Who the hell lives in Hemet?' I thought it was the weirdest little town …
About the only certainty: the creator of the Rancho Bernardo style never considered him- or herself an artist in the traditional sense. The designs — so abstract, schematic, intricate — look like nothing in nature.
Hemet remains stuck in the ’50s where I grew up, Pleasantville ferried to the new millennium. Driving home from teaching at San Diego State, I am charmed into a nostalgic trance by the Everly Brothers.
“I there was such a woman as Ramona, the odds are that she was married not here but in a little chapel on Conde Street. Father Yubach said he seemed to remember marrying a woman by that name.”