California Dreaming

The song behind the title was written in New York in the winter of 1963 by John and Michelle Phillips, who were homesick for California. The Mamas & the Papas recorded it in November 1965, released it that December, and it reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1966. The official title drops the g: California Dreamin'.

The dream in the song is somewhere else. This picture is what it looks like on arrival, and it is not the postcard. It is the working California: the shoulder of a freight route, a row of palms, tractor-trailers rolling by, orange cones, and the yellow concrete lane divider that Californians call K-rail.

Palms along a highway mean Southern California to most people, and the heat shows in everything: the sky is flat blue, the sun is high and the pavement is pale.

A young woman leans against the barrier with her hair loose and a slice of watermelon in one hand, in a cropped white tank with a worn motorcycle logo and a stars-and-stripes print below. Behind her two trailers pass under the clear sky. The color and grain have the look of a 35mm snapshot taken at midday.