If you drive north from Santa Cruz this time of year, the hillsides along the Pacific Coast are a beautiful site. You pass two lighthouses, wonderful surf, and spectacular rock formations. Then you round the bend at about Half Moon Bay or Pacifica, and the once-beautiful hillsides are covered with those ticky-tacky houses that Malvina warned about. I suppose those little houses are worth $750,000 or more apiece nowadays, but they were affordable GI no-money-down pastel stucco tract houses when they were built.

Now we're seeing lots of those San Francisco people moving here to the Sierra Foothills, a hundred miles to the northeast. They collect their windfall from their tiny stucco houses, and then they come here and put up fences, bright lights, and "McMansions" - and they pull out the Valley Oaks and Ponderosa Pines.

And they buy big trucks and SUV's and drive them like race cars.

-Joe Offer, Applegate, California-