Quotations and Literature Forum

I am trying to track down an obscure quote that says (roughly):
"The United States is like a table that someone bumped into and everything that was loose rolled into California."

My first hunch was that O'Neill or Wilde said something to this effect (or even one of their characters in a play), but it could also be Twain. Can anyone help? I urgently need to secure the attribution and the precise quote.

My best

Wil
aka Maxitman

I've always heard this as "loose screws," as in the following:

"God tilted the United States toward the west, and all the loose screws rolled down to California."

The only source I found on the Internet attributes it to Saul Bellow.

Ironically, I've just returned from three weeks in California, up in thenostromo's neck of the woods, and found most folks there pretty laid back and cool.

Ah, Luna; I had to grin at your use of the expression "neck of the woods."

This saying, quote, whatever, also gets associated with:

Frank Lloyd Wright once observed that the United States must have been tilted and all the loose nuts rolled into California.
http://www.jitterbuzz.com/losang.html

"It's as if someone tilted the continent to the west and everything loose slid into Los Angeles": Frank Lloyd Wright supposedly said that…
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/classics/Fear/