The average price for a five bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom home in Newport Beach, Calif., is $2,291,764, making it the most expensive U.S. city to purchase a single-family home, according to the 2015 Caldwell Banker Home Listing Report. Waterfront homes can easily be in the $14 million range. Pictured is the Newport Channel in "June gloom," i.e., early in the morning before the coastal fog has burned off. While living on the water in Newport Beach costs dearly, the pelican and seagull poop is free.

I was born in Baltimore. Not my doing, of course. While the city was home to such notables as Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Babe Ruth, Billie Holiday and H.L. Mencken, being raised in Baltimore is apparently seen in some quarters as a disadvantage. A recent episode of "The Good Wife," for example, depicts a young black woman from Baltimore applying for a job with the program's prestigious Chicago law firm. Hearing that she's from Baltimore, each of the partners reacts with a kind of "Oh, you poor thing" cringe. She, of course, doesn't get hired.

My family lived on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay, whose waters, tree lined borders and snapping turtles were only a short walk from our brick row house. Many adventures ensued in those woods. In the winter we skated on the bay. By the time I was six years old, however, my family headed west to the mountains of Colorado, then, six years later, to the West Coast.

I bring this up as background to the recently released the Coldwell Banker city rankings of the average price of four-bedroom, two-bathroom home across the U.S. (excluded New York City because of "volume of single-family homes"). The long list https://tinyurl.com/ne896p4 ranks communities from #1 (Newport Beach, Calif. $2,291,764) through #2,722 (Cleveland $75,402). The top 12 ("Top 10' is too trite) struck me, because I realized I had lived in or spent considerable time in many of those cities, yet today could definitely not afford to buy a home in any of them.

• Newport Beach, Calif. $2,291,764 (Lived there for 4 years.)
• Palo Alto, Calif. $2,066,600 (Lived there for 12 years . . . parents bought our Palo Alto home for $20,000 in 1962.)
• Saratoga, Calif. $1,979,218
• Cupertino, Calif. $1,659,297
• Los Gatos, Calif. $1,569,615
• Arcadia, Calif. $1,541,406
• San Mateo, Calif. $1,463,455
• Sunnyvale, Calif. $1,447,411 (Worked there.)
• Orono, Minn. $1,384,270
• Redwood, City, Calif. $1,367,350 (Worked there; sister lived there.)
• San Francisco, Calif. $1,360,189 (Frequently visited; another sister lived there.)
• Santa Barbara, Calif. $1,328,700 (Attended college there.)

You'll notice that 12 of the top 13 are in California. I live in Orange County, Calif., now. LASN magazine is based in Tustin, Calif., Orange County (near Santa Ana and Anaheim). Living in Southern California, I can attest to a number of verities: fifth year of drought; summers that extend through October and into November (104° Oct. 9; 100° Oct. 10; 82° Nov. 7); too much traffic; and inflated home prices. Full disclosure: The price of my home in Westminster, Calif., places me on the list in the 220s.