About the Book

They call California the Granola State, where everyone is a fruit, a flake, or a nut. They don’t get any fruitier, flakier, or nuttier than the deviants, crackpots, and losers profiled herein by David Kulczyk, the dean of offbeat California history.

With stories both hilarious and heartbreaking, California Fruits, Flakes & Nuts catalogs 48 misfits, eccentrics, creeps, criminals, sickos, and failed dreamers who exemplify the Golden State’s well-deserved reputation for nonconformity.

California Fruits, Flakes & Nuts will introduce you to such stellar Californians as:

•Marvel “Jack” Parsons: This honest-to-God rocket scientist was both a scientific genius and a lunatic who dabbled in black magic and kinky sex. Along the way, Parsons taught L. Ron Hubbard everything about running a cult.

•John “Grizzly” Adams: Far from the gentle animal lover Dan Haggerty played on 1970s TV, the real Grizzly Adams was a failed businessman and frontier lunatic whose head was one massive wound after multiple bear attacks.

•William Frawley: He played the lovable curmudgeon Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy, but in real life Frawley was a not-so-lovable racist, misogynist, foul-mouthed violent drunk.

•Ed Wood: A decorated Marine combat veteran, Wood liked to wear ladies’ underclothes and won wide acclaim as the worst film director in movie history.

•Plus, you’ll get the inside scoop on Nick Adams, the 1950s TV star romantically linked with most of Hollywood — male or female; phony psychic and Ed Wood crony Jerome Criswell; wife-killing country star Spade Cooley; and numerous other nutjobs, oddballs, and dangerously violent freaks.

The perfect book for everyone who likes feeling superior to losers, California Fruits, Flakes & Nuts is a side-splitting, salacious, and shocking salute to the people who made California the strangest place on earth.