Uncle Patrick’s Secessionist Breakfast

The far-flung Mahoneys, who first arrived in California by shipwreck, are having a family reunion on their Central Coast fruit ranch—and it’s already more than anyone wanted.

There’s one thing that might unite the family’s many generations, and that’s the idea of California seceding from the United States. This eighth installment of The Forgetters series—originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle—examines the sanity of the Golden State leaving its unhappy union with a nation drifting away from democracy.