I grew up in Bakersfield, California.

Bakersfield is a desert that has been force-irrigated into something slightly less than a desert.

It is, like most of California, brown.

The lawns are brown, the buildings are brown, and the people are brown.

It is occasionally also beige.

This occurs after the hot winds have kicked up to spread a thin layer of carcinogenic dust - made that way because of the huge amounts of toxins spread on the almond, cotton and fruit groves located around the place on all sides. Insect death-camps surround Bakersfield, and sometimes the crop-duster-dust crawls into an incestuous relationship with the dust-dust resulting in a dry, hacking cough among the human population, similar to the sound of a dog choking on a chicken bone.