A Confederate General from Big Sur

When I first heard about Big Sur I didn't know that it was a member of the Confederate States of America. I had always thought that Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Texas were the Confederacy, and let it go at that. I had no idea that Big Sur was also a member.

Big Sur the twelfth member of the Confederate States of America? Frankly, it's hard to believe that those lonely stark mountains and clifflike beaches of California were rebels, that the redwood trees and the ticks and the cormorants waved a rebel flag along that narrow hundred miles of land that lies between Monterey and San Luis Obispo.

The Santa Lucia Mountains, that thousand-year-old flophouse for mountain lions and lilacs, a hotbed of Secession? The Pacific Ocean along there, that million-year-old skid row for abalone and kelp, sending representatives back to the Confederate Congress in Richmond, Virginia?

I've heard that the population of Big Sur in those Civil War days was mostly just some Digger Indians. I've heard that the Digger Indians down there didn't wear any clothes. They didn't have any fire or shelter or culture. They didn't grow anything. They didn't hunt and they didn't fish. They didn't bury their dead or give birth to their children. They lived on roots and limpets and sat pleasantly out in the rain.

I can imagine the expression on General Robert E. Lee's face when this gang showed up, bearing strange gifts from the Pacific Ocean.

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