As you are reading this, I am vacationing with my wife and mother-in-law in Southern California, staying at a resort just south of Orange County.

For my mother-in-law, this is a bucket list trip to dip her toes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time. For my wife, this is an opportunity to visit Disney Land and see Hollywood. For me, it is about reconnecting spiritually with my biological mother’s side of the family.

My mother, Ethel Mae Glee Adams, died in 2019 due to complications from lung cancer, being a lifelong smoker. My grandparents on my mother’s side have been dead for some time. And her two sisters could be dead for all I know. I’m not entirely sure, as they both went off the grid some time ago.

But my mother and her family hailed from the Santa Ana/Irvine area of Southern California near Los Angeles. She met my father – whose family hailed from St. Marys, W.Va., by way of the backwoods of Marietta, Ohio - when he was stationed at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station El Toro.

I was born in the summer of 1982 at University of California Irvine Medical Center. I have a bilingual California birth certificate. There are photos of me as a baby on Dad’s base. When Dad was honorably discharged from the Marines in 1983, he drove us back to St. Marys, where I was raised.

When I was a kid, I had the California look. I had natural beach blonde hair and a dark tan. As a precocious pre-teen I used to tell the girls I was from California before my blonde hair faded to brown, the tan went away and I got glasses.

I never did return to Southern California. My Grandpa Austin moved to just outside Sacramento. He flew my Dad and myself out to Northern California when I was in middle school, where we went to the giant redwood forest, boated on Folsom Lake (driving past the famous Folsom Prison made famous by Johnny Cash), and taking an RV trip through the Sierra Nevada mountain range. He died in 1998.

I never knew my mother’s mother, Ethel Mae Joyce Floodstrem, as my Grandpa Austin had remarried. I can only recall one phone call with her when I was young. I had met my Aunt Shirley on a visit to see my mother’s other sister, Sharlene, in Boise, Idaho, when I was 5. But she disappeared some time later. The last I’ve heard from Sharlene was when I sent my mother’s ashes to her back in 2019.

Sharlene has two adult offspring whom I’ve long ago lost contact with. The closest thing I have to a relative on Mom’s side of the family is a cousin of hers who lives in Huntington Beach, Calif. I’m hoping I can meet her in person while I’m in California. I’m also hoping to visit the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, which has since become a park.

I’ll be 43 in July and will have lived in West Virginia for 42 years of my life. I’m a West Virginian through and through, albeit from the Yankee part of the state. But I do sometimes have California on my mind despite having only lived there for the first year of my life.

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I was a little taken aback last week when U.S. Sen. Jim Justice sent out a late-night press release with the headline “Senator Justice Highlights West Virginia’s April Tax Revenue Numbers.”

I was about to go to bed and couldn’t figure out why Justice, now several months removed from being governor of West Virginia, would waste his time commenting on the state’s tax collections. But apparently Justice might have been more upset at Gov. Patrick Morrisey for beginning his first term as governor in January claiming he was left with a $400 million hole in the fiscal year 2026 general revenue budget.

“I love the great people of West Virginia. I will never tell them anything but the truth, and I will never forsake them,” Justice said. “The doom and gloom of a $400 million hole in the bucket was never right. Not then and not now.”

Of course, we’re not going to have a $400 million budget hole beginning in July because the Legislature passed and Morrisey signed a budget bill that balances the general revenue budget as required by the state Constitution. But just because we ended April with $237 million in fiscal year-to-date surplus tax revenue doesn’t mean that suddenly Morrisey’s projections were wrong.

As I said before, it’s not that Justice was lying to me in November about a budget hole, and it’s also not that Morrisey’s projection of a hole was exaggerated. It’s simply a matter of how one chooses to craft a budget. Justice tended to rely on a lot of one-time monies. Morrisey has had to do the same in the short-term, but in the long term his budget guru – Mike McKown – doesn’t like to craft budgets reliant on one-time monies.

But Justice’s statement does make one wonder where his head is at. Rumor has it that he has some interest in running for governor again in 2028. But also, he’s going to be two years away from 80 by then. It’s natural for a former governor to long for their old job. But also, based on my interactions with him at the U.S. Capitol Building two weeks ago, he seemed as happy as a clam.

What Justice’s statement does show me is there appears to be bad blood between the former governor and Morrisey. Expect that bad blood to rise up again soon.