WHEN GROWTH GRINDS TO A HALT
I WAS BORN inside a growth machine.
California in 1968 had a population of 19.4 million, double what it was at the end of World War II, which was itself triple what it had been at the end of World War I. My north Long Beach neighborhood was mostly alfalfa fields in the late 1940s; by the end of the ’50s, it was part of the biggest suburban subdivision west of Levittown. The numbers confound the modern mind: 50 tract houses built per day, 107 homes purchased in a single hour, a city that went from zero to 70,000 residents in just three years.
Relentless, exuberant expansion, along with the salesmanship it requires, was baked. Worthington, too, had made a separate fortune in radio broadcasting, helping midwife the region’s country-western music scene.
