My hometown couldn’t be that bad…I still live there. (Unless everybody ELSE thinks it’s bad BECAUSE I still live there…hmmm.) I suspect that Stockton, CA, isn’t that different from a lot of towns that find themselves struggling with transitions. Stockton is in the middle of one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world, so the economy was historically driven by the crops. CPoI, I’m sure you remember seeing the farm reports on KCRA-3, just before the afternoon cartoons, don’t you?
What has thrown Stockton for a loop is that our part of the world now has such a more diverse economy that Stockton is having trouble keeping up. It’s trying to be Big Time, but a lotta folks here still have that ‘small town’ mentality.
I left to go to college, worked for a couple years in the big city, and ended up coming back. Dorothy Gale ain’t got shit on me.