<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Caliphobia Ferments in Opinionated Oregon

They hate us! They really hate us!

Oregonians, who are rumored to heave pine cones at cars with California license plates, describe themselves as charitable, trustworthy, law-abiding, considerate, cooperative and neighborly. Californians, they say, rack up these personality traits: superficial, competitive, impersonal and unconcerned about the environment.

A UC Riverside doctoral student named Glenn T. Tsunokai heard tales of Caliphobia after his parents bought a house in Brookings, a short distance north of the California border.

As a good sociologist, he decided to codify these attitudes. His poll of 319 Oregonians took questions from studies about prejudice toward blacks, homosexuals and other groups, and instead used the word “Californians.”

Besides those adjectives--impersonal, calculating and the like--Tsunokai found that 68% believe Californians would make for negative change in their towns, and 53% think more Californians in Oregon would mess up the environment. (In contrast, the polled Oregonians thought much more highly of their neighbors to the north, the Washingtonians.)

Still, they wouldn’t favor policies keeping Californians out.

Well, of course not. Then who would they have to beat up on?

*

The unfiltered truth: Now that the smoke of the election has cleared, it has revealed the identity of Butt Man, that 7-foot-tall, foam-rubber cigarette who trailed GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole like secondhand smoke in California:

Visalia’s own nonsmoking Mike Altschule, of the Clinton-Gore staff in Los Angeles.

Dole’s televised ruminations on whether tobacco is addictive prompted someone in the campaign’s Northern California office to suggest that someone get “a giant cigarette costume and follow Dole around.” That someone was Altschule, whose father, Visalia attorney Joe Altschule, brags, “My son the cigarette!”

*

Bottoms up: In the dregs of the faux Kona scandal, in which a Berkeley man allegedly sold non-Big Island coffee to such haute cafe outlets as Starbucks under the Kona label, a Hawaiian roasting company is proposing mandatory certification for all Big Island brew. They could regulate it as the French do the word “champagne,” or follow the M&M; route and stamp each bean with a genuine K.

*

Scar trek: The return of the ‘49ers will be delayed by Area 51.

A historical group retracing the pioneers’ steps from Utah to Death Valley in 1849 will have to take its trek an unhistorical extra 30 or 40 miles around the classified site about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the military has tested such aerial spy exotica as the stealth fighter and the U-2 spy plane . . . and where UFOs are rumored to loiter.

The original expedition, whose eight survivors bestowed upon Death Valley its deathless name, traveled 375 miles through bad terrain and worse weather on a disastrous shortcut to the California gold fields.

The current group will make use of contemporary journals, books and photos to record evidence of the long-dead travelers. And any UFOs that happen to turn up. . . .

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Turkey Time

California ranks sixth in the nation when it comes to producing the main meat we’ll eat next Thursday: 22 million turkeys were raised here in 1995, accounting for 7.5% of all the birds produced nationwide. Here are the biggest turkey-producing states:

*--*

State Turkeys % Nationwide 1. North Carolina 61.2 million 20.9% 2. Minnesota 40.5 million 13.8% 3. Arkansas 26.0 million 8.9% 4. Virginia 23.5 million 8.0% 4. Missouri 22.5 million 7.7% 5. California 22.0 million 7.5% 6. Indiana 14.2 million 4.9% All other states 82.7 million 28.3%

*--*

Source: California Agricultural Statistics Service

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

*

One-offs: A San Bernardino appellate court has fined an Orange County lawyer more than $5,900, plus the other side’s costs, for filing a frivolous lawsuit against a ski resort after he broke his leg on a ski slope. . . . An antiabortion Fairfield appliance store owner has refused to sell two $500 refrigerators to Planned Parenthood, even though they were intended to store vaccines for children. . . . Stanford University is seeking volunteers for a test of nicotine patches on tobacco chewers from Shasta and Tehama counties, where the rate of chewing tobacco use is more than twice as high as in the rest of the state. . . . After a campaign spurred by writer Nicholson Baker, San Francisco has agreed to save its august library card catalog files--but in a civic center annex room, not the new main library. . . . A New York company is offering a signed postcard of Reginald Denny for $40--not the Reginald Denny of the L.A. riots, but the English actor of the 1920s.

EXIT LINE

“Who Killed Glamour Puss?” “Who Killed Rex?”

--Signs on California 160 near an Antioch-area roadside produce stand. Owners Mary and Ron Terry were on vacation when someone slaughtered their two cats, 12 rabbits and 44 chickens.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.