Michael Shannon

If you grew up here in the once Apricot Capital of California you might recognize these.  I’m sure, you remember the sweet and juicy taste when popping them in your mouth. There was a time when this valley abounded with Apricot trees. The Royal Blenheim. A great name for a great tree.

The tree was first planted here in the late 17th century and early 18th by the Franciscan mission padres. In those days the row crops you see today were nonexistent. Vegetable growing was local, not national as it is today. Fresh fruits and vegetables couldn’t be shipped very far because the transportation system as we know it did not exist. In the late 1780’s, the apricot tree was first planted at the mission asistencia (sub-mission) in Santa Margarita. This assistant mission, Santa Margarita de Cortona, parts of which still exist, is on the Rancho Santa Margarita.  The Santa Margarita was located about ten miles northeast of Mission San Luis Obispo and about 30 miles south of Mission San Miguel. Padres from these missions as well as from Mission San Antonio de Padua sometimes met at Santa Margarita to visit and to discuss religious matters.

From its beginning as a rancho, Santa Margarita was a success. It covered 17,000 acres with grain fields, orchards and pastures for cattle, sheep and horses. As an asistencia, it had a chapel, priests’ quarters, storage rooms, a mill, and tallow vats. It was a stopping place for travelers on El Camino Real.

ASISTANCIA SANTA MARGARITA de CORTONA TODAY

The California missions were established in a chain along the coast line, none of them far from the ocean. The only way to transport large quantities of goods and materials was by sea. The Franciscan padres realized that there were many Native Californians living inland, away from the coast, who were not being brought into the missions. They wanted to establish more missions inland, but the government officials did not agree with this. As a compromise, the padres were allowed to build sub-missions, or asistencias, in places where there was an Indian population that was not coming to the main mission. The asistencia served as a sub-mission or branch of the “mother” mission. The asistencia was much smaller than the main mission, though there were living quarters, workshops and crops in addition to a church. Many missions had large ranchos or estancias at some distance from the mission compound. More than 20 of these estancias had small chapels for the use of the people who worked and lived at the rancho. A padre would come occasionally to conduct services at the estancia chapel. These chapels were sometimes referred to as asistencias, but were not considered as sub-missions according to church records. Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa had at least two estancias. The Corral de Piedra ( stone corral ) in Edna valley which was later granted to the ranchero Jose Villavicencia in 1840. In the Arroyo Grande, Los Corralitos ( little corrals ) was located in the eponymously named little valley in the upper arroyo. It was also part of the original Rancho Corral de Piedra which encompassed 30,911 acres or just over 48 square miles.

After the mission system was abolished and the rancheros were granted the old mission lands, the apricot trees remained and as the Arroyo Grande was slowly cleared of cienegas and tulares, the rich soils beneath were exposed and planted. As with all farming, crops were planted which were in demand by consumers and were only limited by the mechanisms by which they went to market. In the early days only crops which could be dried or eaten when fresh were grown. By the time Arroyo Grande became an established township in 1862 only a few small areas of ground were planted with crops as the primary economic concern of the Rancheros such as Don Francisco Branch, Capt William Dana and Don Juan Miguel Price, was cattle which had long been the only export from California. Vast herds of cattle were trailed north to the gold country in the 1850’s and 60’s. During the great drought which began in the late 1850’s and lasted off and on until about 1903 the cattle industry was destroyed and the old rancheros gradually sold off their land giving rise to the nascent vegetable industry.

Francis Branch died in 1874 and his property was willed to his children and the great Ranchos he owned were broken up and sold to speculators and farmers who completed the final clearing of the Arroyo Grande. In 1882 the little narrow gauge Pacific Coast Railroad connected the little towns of San Luis and Northern Santa Barbara counties and for the first time crops could be shipped long distances by sea. Between San Luis Obispo and the coast was a spur to Port Harford  where large ships could be loaded. Any vegetable or fruit that could survive the trip to San Francisco, San Pedro and San Diego by sea could now be grown in quantity.

Apricots, apples and walnut orchards sprang up all over the valley. Apricots were dried and shipped by sea to customers all over the world. The particular tree grown here was the Blenheim. Small, freckled and juicy, it was ideal for drying.

THE PARRISH ORCHARD ON THE OLD SANTA MANUELA.

The apricot tree likely originated in eastern Armenia and was said to have been imported into Greece by Alexander the Great. The only problem with that story is, he never returned to Greece. He died in Babylon in what is now Iraq in 323 BC. It’s funny to think of old Alex being yelled at by his wife Roxana for dropping the bag of cots when riding his horse Bucephalus back to the palace after his trip to the store.

Whatever the story, the tree was introduced to Italy by the Romans and later to Spain. The Spanish conquistadors brought the cot to the new world where it made its way to Alta California, carried and planted at the missions by the Franciscan fathers who built and manned them. Trees may have been introduced to El Canon de Los Corralitos in the 1780’s by the mission fathers and Apricot trees still grow there.

The Blenheim variety was cultivated and perfected in the greenhouses of John Churchill the 1st Duke of Marlborough, a british peer and the head of the ennobled family which produced Sir Winston Churchill and Lady Diana Spencer. Known now as the Royal Blenheim it is the variety that was and is grown here in our valley.

BLENHEIM HOUSE, WOODSTOCK, OXFORDSHIRE, GREAT BRITIAN

My grandfather John Shannon lived on Printz road on 13 acres of orchards planted in Apricots. He grew Cots, Plums and chickens for eggs which he sold downtown as you can see in the advertisements printed in the back issues of the old  Arroyo Grande Herald. When I was young, in the nineteen fifties, old man Parrish had one of the last of these orchards on the property next to our farm. He grew several varieties of apples, apricots, peaches and walnuts.  By the time I was in high school it was all gone. Ripped up and burned and replaced by the row crops that are familiar today. The only surviving orchards were a few walnuts along Valley road and the apricot orchards of the Greibs, along lower Arroyo creek where the hospital is now and “Coot” Sevier’s orchard out on Branch Mill and Huasna roads. It was, for many kids a right of passage to work in the orchards in the 1950’s and 60’s. Boys picked and worked the dryers and teenage girls and their little sisters worked in the cutting shed where the apricots were sliced in half and pitted, set on trays and moved by little carts on rails into the sheds where sulfur was burned beneath them to complete the drying process. I worked one summer for “Coot”and did all these jobs, my favorite being the sheds where I could flirt with Carmen Baca’s sister Allegra and eat my fill of the most delicious fruit ever. All for a dollar an hour.

Today, we have two of these trees in our back yard. Our problem is that we eat them as soon as they are ripe so it’s rare to even get them in the house. We never consider the long road they have taken to get here next to our little house. The bowl of fruit pictured at the top has the last of this years crop. All gone. Too soon. Wait ’til next year.

DRIED BLENHEIM APRICOTS

Life time in a box. Each of us have them. Those old shoe boxes in a closet, a seldom used drawer or behind the linen in the guest bathroom. My grandmother Annie Gray Shannon had them too. As a child, when I stayed over I would pull them from the shoeboxes she kept them in and wonder who those people were and where the places were.

When she died my dad and uncle sold her ranch and moved out, cleaning the house and emptying the barns of three generations worth of accumulations, most of it to the dump.

My dad was not a sentimental man. His heart was focused solely on his family. People were everything, things meant little to him. The only personal items he kept were his Cal Berkeley beanie and a small bar of gold he used for a paperweight. One he earned and one he purchased, the only thing I can remember that he bought just for himself.

I’m different that way I guess. When we went to clean out the house things were just as they always had been, my grandfathers little toothbrush holder on his dresser, Annie’s clothes still in her closet. Her dressing table with its hair brushes, hand mirror and powders just as they had always been. The room still smelled of her. White Shoulders. The memories of her were overwhelming and I found myself sobbing for all I had lost, never to  touch or hold again.

The cleanup was fast and furious, my dad and uncle Jack just wanted it to be over and the pickups were loaded and made their trips to the landfill. Few things were kept, my grandmothers sterling and china made the cut as did the little teacup my grandfather had salvaged from the debris of the Red Front store on the day of the great San Francisco earthquake. The shoeboxes disappeared.

Years later my Uncle Jackie collapsed on his ranch in Creston and was hospitalized with a lung infection which would ultimately prove fatal. Again the move out. The house and grounds needed to be cleaned in order to rent the property and pay the bills. Jackie didn’t have much, some old clothes, the bed he had slept in for three quarters of a century and two old John Deere tractors. On his dresser, a photograph of his mother and another of his parents wedding day.

But, in the back of his closet buried under a heap of old worn out clothes, a square, black cardboard box. Inside were the old photographs and letters that had so fascinated me as a child. An unintentional gift for sure but one of inestimable value.

The problem, how to interpret the things in it. As grandchildren we knew little about the real lives of our grandparents and as with most young people never really thought to ask. Almost none of the photographs had anything written on the back. Who were these people? Did we know them? What occasion demanded the taking of a picture? In going through the contents the first thing you notice is that the photographic paper can be quite different. Some is heavy stock and others are so thin as to be very fragile. Formal photographs taken for graduations or school class pictures may have the name of the studio printed on them or perhaps the schools name, teacher or the year in which they were taken. That’s a help.

Just like tracking any story, clues have to be organized into an understandable narrative. The photo below was at the bottom of the box and though I’ve had it for some time  I just recently scanned, cleaned it up and really viewed it for the first time.

My grandfather is on the left, Annie Gray and an unknown couple on the right, or perhaps not so unknown that I won’t figure it out. We have enough old family photos from this time which feature both the same boy and girl.  The building is a post office somewhere. What can we deduce from what we see. My grandfather, Jack wears a morning coat, or Jaquette, with a standing, detachable starched collar and tie. Beneath the coat you can just see a waistcoat, or vest as we would say today. He wouldn’t be wearing a belt, but suspenders to hold up his cuffed trousers. His is wearing what looks, at first glance to be pointed cowboy boots but what were, instead high button shoes. The hat is a straw derby which means that it’s summer time. To drive the point home, the other man wears a straw boater which was never worn in spring or summer. So far, so good.

This photo is quite small and printed on very thin paper stock. I remembered that there were other similar pictures somewhere in the collection so I pulled them out and began comparing them and sure enough there were more than one in which one or all of these people appeared. The  photo was taken at the end of Main street in Pismo Beach. The old Pizmo Inn is in the right background.

The three on the left are the same people as the preceding picture. The girls wear the same clothes as before except for the white hat, and the boy laughing is certainly to same though he has a different hat this time. Same day? We can suppose but we don’t know. We do know that the clothes she wears are the same as in the photo below complete with the umbrella, hat  and gloves

A little more research finds that the building pictured in the first photograph is the first Pismo Beach post office which burned to the ground in 1905 which puts the pictures around 1904. That would make my grandparents 17 and 20 years old, still four years before their marriage in 1908. My grandfather lived in San Francisco then and my grandmother was about to start her first year at Cal Berkeley. He must have been home on a visit and being a nice day, they went to the beach.

One of the fun things about this little photo is that our family story tells us that there was never anybody else for the two of them, ever. If you take the time and period into account they are standing just a little to close to one another. There is, perhaps a little touching of hands behind the back. I’d love to think so.

He wrote in her little autograph book that she kept for parties and special occasions. “Friend Annie, The flowers of the forest may wither, the lilies of the valley may decay, but friendship shall blossom forever, when all other things fade away. Your friend, John Shannon  December 7th, 1898.” He was 16, she 13.

This picture is their official portrait when they were the Grand Marshal’s of the Harvest Festival in 1961, their second time as such. They had been married for 53 years. They would make it to 68 before he left her. They are still standing close enough to touch. Sweet.

Epilogue: The other boy pictured turns out to have been Arch “Archie” Harloe. He was a life long friend of my grandparents. He married Margaret Phoenix from another local pioneering family. Maggie, as she was known in those days is memorialized by having a local elementary school named for her. The girl is Grace Lierley known as “Tootsie” she and her family lived in the old two story house found at the end of “Pig tail” Alley.

Annie Gray Shannon

My grandmother was a Lady. Raised by a wealthy family, educated at the University of California, Berkeley graduating in 1908, the first woman from Arroyo Grande to do so, she carried herself with a certain faith in the things that defined her character and made her world go around. Things in her home were just so. She always used a table cloth on the kitchen table. She kept the milk in a yellow Fiestaware ceramic pitcher, I remember that somehow that made it colder and better to the taste. I can’t remember her without her apron. She put it on when she entered the kitchen in the morning and kept it on ’til after supper. She sent her clothes out to be ironed and starched. She wasn’t a kisser or a hugger, when you greeted her it was a little hand squeeze and a kiss on her cheek. Just so, as I said.

She was a 19th century girl in her beliefs and habits. As grandchildren, she taught us how to set the table at Thanksgiving, fold napkins correctly and when at the table,  to be polite and speak when spoken to. Don’t interrupt the adults and always pass the dishes to the left. Never chew with your mouth open and keep your elbows off the table.

She had a trick she used to compel the no elbows rule. It was a diabolical device used by Irish families and handed down from generation to generation. Most of the year it resided in a cedar lined sideboard, carefully folded in the bottom drawer with it’s brethren.  Lurking there in the darkness, redolent of cedar fumes, just for a taste of little boys errant elbows.

When we boys were old enough, it was our pleasure to help with family dinners, doing what we could in small boy ways. Darting around my mother and my aunts, Sadie, Eva, Nan and my cousin Iva Jean, we were assigned tasks befitting our age. Setting the dining room table, though it took two for the job, was one of the first. There was nothing to break, after all, which was just our speed. Carefully taking the Damask table cloth out of the drawer where it was stored, placing it on the table and carefully unfolding it to reveal the beauty of its silken weave. I didn’t know  at the time but Damask cloth was woven of silk and satin thread that came over the old Silk Road from China to the Islamist cities of Byzantium in the early 1st century and eventually into Europe by 14th century. The long floats of satin-woven warp and weft threads cause soft highlights on the fabric which reflect light differently according to the position of the observer. Running our palms over the soft, slick surface of the cloth was a special treat. Because the cloth was almost pure white, it needed to be protected. Grandma used place mats, each diner had a napkin, serving dishes all had plates or saucers to collect any errant splash or dollop of gravy. And to protect the beautiful fabric of the tablecloth from the flailing hands and arms of boys, The diabolical device, known as the Irish Lace tablecloth. Made from knotted linen thread in beautiful laced patterns,  the lace tablecloth was thought to be an indicator of social standing in 18th century Irish households. They were thought by some to differentiate between the shanty Irish and the lace curtain Irish.

Of course, as kids we were far removed from its history, believing that it was crocheted by young orphan girls in dark and dingy workhouses, presided over by withered old crones in black habits, ever ready to institute a solid rap on the knuckles should there be any levity or the slightest indication of happiness. This caused the young women to use very large knots at every opportunity in order to pass their unhappiness on to the three little Shannon boys. My dad told me that in his day the knots were even more pronounced and an inadvertent swipe of an elbow might require the ministrations of Doc Brown.  Was it possible that each knot held a portion of fractured basalt from the Devils’ Causeway in county Antrim? It was just infernal. Little boys can’t sit high enough at the table nor reach for the water glass without forearms and elbows touching the table. I suppose this particular torture was created by families becoming more inclusive after the war, where kids no longer sat at the children’s table but were allowed to eat and converse with the adults, which made us feel much more grown-up.

Observing them first hand gave us our entry into their life, a peek at, perhaps what ours were to be. That is, of course if we had survived with our forearms reasonably intact.

Michael Shannon grew up in this very proper Irish atmosphere which has served him well in life. These stories are written to inform the children of wherefore they came. He lives in Arroyo Grande California where these deeds took place.

By Michael Shannon

Yaaaahr, we be pirates mate and we’uns be seekin’ treasure and a flagon of grog to wet our’n whistle. We’uns come off the brig Nancy’s Revenge, Cap’n Flint commanding’ Sor, and’r looking to spend our share of the loot from divers ships we’ve took on the Spanish Main.

Such are the dreams of boys. My grandfather, my uncle Jack and my dad told us stories of pirates gold and the places where it resided here in the Arroyo Grande. Stolen from Spanish Galleons on the run from Manila to Acapulco, the west coast port where it was to be shipped overland to Monterey, Mexico and on to Spain to fill King Phillips coffers. Gold pieces of eight, bars of silver and precious jewels by the handful, stashed in the caves of Mt. Picacho. Protected by the skeletons of the pirate rogues who buried it there. Dead men tell no tales mate. Beware the Black Spot.

When we were little boys, my uncle Jackie took us to this mysterious place on the southwest side of the distinctive hill known as Picacho. Clambering down the side of the hill, he led us to the dimly perceived opening of the pirate cave hidden below an overhang of ancient rock. A very small cave it was, you having to be just boy size in order to crawl back into it. Along the walls and ceiling were names of intrepid explorers who had visited it before us. Carved with jack knives were the names and dates of boys going back long before my father and grandfathers time, each one searching for the long lost treasure of Francis Drake and Hippolyte Bouchard, or perhaps the gold and silver deposited there when the padres were forced to abandon the missions in 1833. Delicious tales to enliven a little boys imagination. Tell me a story Daddy, like you said you would.

Raised on Frank Merriwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Hardy Boys, it was no stretch to begin reading adult adventure novels, “The Captain from Castile,” and in the eighth grade discovering on my mothers bookshelf, a book borrowed from Gladys Loomis, “Beat to Quarters,” a Horatio Hornblower story. Then, Joseph Conrad and I was hooked on the sea.

As a lifelong surfer and seaman, I’ve learned many lessons about sea keeping, having been a merchant mariner and long distance sailor. Sad to say the experience has taught me that there never were any pirates hiding treasure along our California coast. Dreams of little boys are mostly dashed by the practicalities of life.

Golden Hinde, Length, 102′-Beam, 20′-Draught, 9′-Speed, 8 knots, Burden, 100 Ton.

Sir Francis Drake, El Dragon, sailed the coast of California in 1579 on his way around the world. Sad to say, his logbooks, accounts and maps were burned in a fire at Whitehall in 1698 so the exact sequence of events is mostly unknown. What is difficult to understand is how remote California was at the time. Mexico was still in the process of subjection by the Spanish, it only being 60 years since Cortes landed at Monterrey, Mexico. The destruction of Tenochitlan, the Aztec capitol three years later began the total destruction of the various indigenous tribal empires of central america. In Drake’s time, the spanish were in the midst of a bloody, protracted war with the Chichimeca people in Zacatecas and had not yet settled on the  northern Mexican, Baja or the California coast.

The state of navigation during the 16th century was such that accuracy of position was chancy at best. Most of the time mariners used a compass and a Log* to determine position. This was called Dead, for deduced reckoning, and with a knowledge of currents, or drift and, an Astrolabe,* position could be estimated with a certain degree of accuracy, particularly in measurement of latitude. Latitude was the measurement of position either north or south of the equator. Longitude, or the distance from a fixed point on earth was largely impossible to determine until the invention of extremely accurate chronometers (clocks) that would stand up to a sea voyage. These were not perfected until the late 17th century and weren’t common on ships until the 1820’s, two and one half centuries after Drakes voyage.

Here, where we live, any idea that Drake landed here is so unlikely that it bears no credence. The site at the old Cave landing could hardly be more dangerous to a ship of the type that he sailed. The Golden Hinde was a square rigged ship, which in his time, were largely unable to sail any closer to the wind direction than roughly 50 degrees. This means that if you sail into a north wind, the best they could do was  about 5 degrees off northeast or northwest. Easy to sail in, very difficult to get out.

COMPASS ROSE SHOWING DIRECTIONS IN DEGREES

The 22 mile distance from Point San Luis to Point Sal which comprises San Luis Bay is what is known as an “Open Roadstead,” meaning that there is little or no protection from the prevailing winds, no protected harbor, and has a sea bottom that won’t hold anchor in a storm or heavy sea. Each year, boats anchored in San Luis harbor go on the beach because they drag their anchors in heavy surf and it would have been much worse before the breakwater was built. The Masters Mate, who normally did the navigation in Drakes time would have been extremely reluctant to put in at a place such as Cave Landing. He could certainly sail in but would have been well aware of the difficulty in getting out. From the sea, the central coast is indistinguishable from most of the west coast. There are no outstanding geographical features to be seen from even a few miles out and with the nearly constant Northwest trade winds no sailor would likely come to shore here.

Map of California, circa 1590

As for Drake’s treasure, what would be the point of landing, and hiding it. It belonged to  Queen Elizabeth I and thats where it ended up. 80 pounds of gold, 20 tonnes of silver, 13 cases of silver coins and divers cases of pearls and gems, it paid off England’s national debt, and made Francis Drake and his crew rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Much the same as the Golden Hinde began its 7,000 mile journey west, across the Pacific to the Philippines, leaving California behind forever, we leave the dreams of our little boys in the secret places they belong. Or maybe not.

Voyage of the Pilgrim, Honolulu to Newport Beach, 1969

Even today, I can look out my studio window and see Picacho in the near distance and I still wonder, what if it was all true?

Footnotes:

Log: a piece of wood attached to a line knotted at uniform intervals. A sailor heaved the log from the stern of the ship and let the line pay out freely as the ship pulled away. When the sailor felt the first knot pass through his fingers, he shouted a signal to another sailor, who turned a one-minute glass. The first sailor counted aloud the number of knots that passed until the sand ran out. A timer of one minute (one-sixtieth of an hour), knots spaced one-sixtieth of a nautical mile apart, and simple arithmetic easily gave the speed of the ship in nautical miles per hour (“knots”).

Astrolabe: By the Elizabethan era it consisted of a large brass ring fitted with an alidade or sighting rule. The user held the astrolabe by a loop at the top, turned the alidade so that he could sight the star along its length, and read the altitude off the scale engraved on the ring – difficult tasks to perform on the deck of a heaving ship. The consequences of imprecise measurement are serious (a latitude reading just one degree off produces an error in position of 60 nautical miles), so mariners often used the astrolabe in pairs, one to sight along the alidade, the other to steady the instrument and take readings. On shore, however, the astrolabe was easier to use and more accurate.

Michael Shannon writes for his pirate children accounts of his travels in the Pacific Ocean.

Written by Michael Shannon

The rain was coming down in buckets, pounding the tin siding of the quonset hut I lived in like a thousand little hammers. Nearly an inch a minute, completely deafening those of us who lived there. The water rising toward the floors set nearly three feet off the ground. The neighbors on Achiu Lane who had houses set on the ground had already been evacuated by the Hawaii National Guard, hauled away in huge canvas topped trucks to the nearby Haleiwa Recreation Center. No electricity; so with nothing for light but a kerosene lantern, the only thing to do was to ask my neighbor Jim Kraus to come over for something to eat and then…… [Pause: Fanfare with trumpets.] Ta Ta Ta Da.

Whip out Recipe Roundup, the little cookbook my mother and her friends had written and published in 1953 which I have carried with me wherever in the world I have lived. Not only for the recipes in it but for the pure pleasure of sitting down with it and reading the names of the people from my little town who made it. A reminder of home and the people who once lived there. For there is much more to little books like this than just the paper, the type and binding.

Cookbooks have been written in almost every literate society. One of the most famous is the Banquet of the Sophists, written in the 2nd century BC by Athenaeus, a well known Greek gourmet. It contains the first known recipes for cheesecake, or rather many cheesecakes, which seems great to me. It also has one which which is still a staple of the Greek diet, stuffed grape leaves.  The Important Things to Know About Eating and Drinking was written by Huou, the master chef of the imperial court of Kublai Khan 1215-94. Marco Polo may have partaken of the  soups made from it when he lived at the Great Khans court.

One of the first French books was called the Menagier de Paris, and, not surprisingly had recipes for frogs and snails. The first printed cookbook, 1485, was written by an Italian, Bartolomeo Scappi. It had recipes for Marzipan and many other types of Italian sweets. One of the most successful and famous cookbooks ever written was published in 1896 by Fannie Merrit Farmer, the editor of the Boston Cooking-School cook book, which, was the first to introduce standardized measurements and methods which guaranteed reliable results to its readers.

Recipe Roundup is a community cookbook, still a popular type in America. They are unique  in that they focus on home cooking, documenting regional, ethnic, family, and societal traditions and local history. Conceived as a fundraiser, the Women’s Club worked on it for two years, collecting recipes, not only from members but friends and families. They used recipes from other cookbooks too, such as the ones below.

My grandmothers Minerva Club 1951, my great-grandmothers church 1901

According to my mother, one of the most difficult thing to do was to write down recipes that had been passed from one generation to another. Most of the women prepared their tried and true dishes from scratch. What exactly is a pinch of salt, or a dash of baking soda? She had to cook each of her recipes several times to get the amounts correct. You can imagine how difficult this sometimes was, just look at how vague some recipes are. You can try and make my mothers biscuits or pie crust but if she didn’t show you how wet the dough needed to be or how to cut in the Crisco, you will fail as often as not. Note: substitute butter. If you are making strawberry short cakes, there are none better. MMM MM.

When you look a the list of names above you might notice something curious. All of the names feature the given name of the husband and not the name of the wife. Kids like me never called a woman by any other name than Mrs or Miss, a habit that seems quaint today. If she was a close friend of the family you could use her first name if you knew it but in church or school it was formal. Miss Holland and Mrs Brown, Elizabeth and Edyth taught us at Branch. Mrs Harloe, Margaret or Maggie to her closest friends, at Arroyo Grande Elementary and Miss Walker, later Mrs Sullivan, who taught elementary also, was Gladys. Even widows still used the late husband’s name. It worked the opposite way for men. There was Ace Porter, Toots Porter, Hooky DaLessi , Beanie English, Mutt Anderson and I had no idea that Buster Loomis’ real name was Clinton. This didn’t mean that the women were walking three paces behind their husbands because they certainly weren’t. Some owned and ran their own businesses. Louise Ralph, Peggy Porter, and Marylee Baxter owned their own stores. Hazel Talley was bookkeeper for Oliver’s farm. My grandmother did all the business end for my grandfather  on their dairy. Edna Rowe was a school librarian, Gladys Loomis and Frankie Campbell were teachers. Most of these recipes came from families where both husband and wife worked. As with today, working families had no time for elaborate meals.

Just putting a recipe together was different. Moms kitchen was small, just and old dry sink with a wooden countertop and a tall cabinet at each end. The sink had been fitted for hot and cold water in the 20’s. There were just two drawers for utensils and to the side an enameled metal cabinet that had been inherited from my grandmother Shannon. We had a shiny sunbeam toaster and a Mixmaster that sat on top with her cookbooks. Basically everything else was done by her hand, or my brothers and I.

Mom didn’t buy hamburger, she made it. Cole Slaw was made at home too and carrots were grated by hand for carrot salad. We used the sifter below, she didn’t use pre -sifted flour and the nut grinder is still in use today because it’s easier than using and cleaning the Cuisinart.

Few of the recipes she used would make Sunset Magazine but she and many mothers like her fed their families on simple fare and everybody grew up OK.

Grind the clams with this and tenderize them with this.

Above is my grandfathers recipe for clam soup. What I remember most about it is having to beat the clam’s tongue to death with a homemade two pound hammer to make it soft enough to eat. Good though. The most interesting thing about this recipe is the fact that its even in the book. Jack Shannon is the only man who has a recipe in it. I asked my mother why this was and she told me that he was highly respected by woman for his kindness. She said he genuinely cared for people and was one of the last of the “Old School,” gentleman. He would always tip his hat to women when he saw them, a certain graciousness that is long gone from our society. Quite a compliment.

As you may have noticed, the illustrations were all done by my mother. She sat at our kitchen table and worked on them for many, many hours, carefully sketching with pencil and then finishing them with pen and ink, a medium that is notoriously difficult.

As with many of the best things, it was a true community effort and is still used and cherished today. If you have one you are fortunate, there aren’t any available anymore and you must inherit one, which is kind of a nice thing. So, if you have one, look through it and remember the people who made it, it will make you smile.

P S: I have heard that the Arroyo Grande Women’s Club is considering reprinting the book. You can contact them at P O Box 313, Arroyo Grande, CA 93421,  or google womensclubof arroyogrande.com. The president is Karen Lujan.  Email is womensclubof ag@yahoo.com

P P S: The recipe for the best mayonnaise cake ever! My favorite.

Near the end of the film “A river runs through it,” Norman Maclean tells his friend Jessie Burns that he has been offered a job as an english professor at the University of Chicago. Jessie’s whole face lights up and she says “Oh Norman, that’s the berries!” For the first time you know she is in love with him. The delightful rendering of this simple phrase is one of my favorite movies scenes because, to me, it not just a scene in a film, but a fully rendered and perfect example of a phrase no longer used by anybody but my Uncle Jackie.

John Patrick Shannon was born of John William “Big Jack” Shannon and Annie Gray, nee Shannon in 1909. Little Jackie was their first child and remained for the rest of her life, Annie’s favorite. Not to say she didn’t love her son George, for she surely did,  but the love of a mothers heart goes to the needy one and George was never that. Raised on the ranch the boys never lacked for something to do, for a ranchers life is one of constant work. Cattle and crops do not respect the days. Milking and feeding is done relentlessly, twice a day seven days a week. Church and school demand time but the work swirls around them and draws you in. The land and its needs create a universe of its own.

Annie Shannon and little Jackie in 1910

Jackie was 9 when my grandparents moved to their ranch south of Arroyo Grande and he was introduced to a life he would never leave. He and George grew up in a world that is hardly remembered today. They lived, until High school in a four room house that had no electricity, and for the first part of their time there, no inside plumbing. Cooking was on a wood stove in the kitchen. Bathing was done Saturday night, once a week in a washtub filled with water heated in the reservoir of that old stove. My grandmother bathed first, then my grandfather and the two boys in order of age. Same water for all.

The Old House in 1919

I suppose today you might call that old house just a shack and if you judge by todays standards it was, but my family never saw it as such. There were nicer houses in town but the size of a house has nothing to do with with whether its a home or not. In the early part of the 20th century boys were pretty much on their own to find things to do and I still remember the old cages the boys built to house their collection of animals they trapped and raised. They had squirrels, raccoons, mice and almost any other varmint they could trap or catch. They roamed the ranches of their neighbors looking for adventure as little boys will do, digging in the caves of Mt  Picacho for pirate treasure, visiting the Fernamburg boys who lived where the Leticia Winery is now or seeing the Buss kids who lived on another ranch up behind the mountain.

Jackie and George went to the old Arroyo Grande Grammar School on Bridge Street.  Every day they caught a ride with the Buss kids and rode in the back of the buckboard. Its not as if there were no cars, for of course, there were, but a horse on pasture and an old spring wagon did just as well and was far cheaper. The old school had horses tied up until well into the 1920’s.  Other times they walked the 2 miles to school. When the highway was paved with asphalt they had roller skates to get to school. They would wait for Fritz and Shorty to race down Shannon Hill, meeting them where the old ranch road met the highway and then skate to school.

As it is today, much of the persona is shaped by the experience of youth. Jackie started high school in in 1923. Though Arroyo Grande was a very small town, far from anywhere, newspapers and movies brought the culture of the Roaring Twenties home. My grandfather paid to have electricity extended from town to the ranch in 1922. He needed to be able to operate the new machines that enabled him to operate his dairy more efficiently. Interestingly, he didn’t pay to have the wire strung to the house which was several hundred yards away. I once asked my dad what my grandmother must have thought of this, seeing that her household chores would have been lightened and my dad said, “She was used to doing things the way they were.” The most influential thing that electricity brought was the radio. Of all the changes radio brought to the Shannon’s, live music, drama, instant news and a much more expanded world view, the one thing that ultimately was passed down to me was the language of the time.

The twenties was one of the most socially revolutionary in our history. Skirts were going up for women, morals, down.  Popular music began to reflect the beginnings of Jazz, and F Scott FitzGerald and Ernest Hemingway were giving voice to a new age. The art world, couture, and nearly all aspects of popular culture were reacting to the events of the World War. A generation  was inventing its own language and customs.

Uncle Jackie Shannon’s HS graduation picture 1928

I graduated Arroyo Grande in 1963. My dad in 1930 and although I thought at the time that my dad was hopelessly old fashioned he told me stories that taught me that the more we seemed different the more we were the same. There might, and I stress the might, have been one pregnant girl in my high school class. There were several in my dads class. Thank goodness they are all gone now or I couldn’t say that without getting myself in trouble. Those girls seemed hopelessly staid in the old pictures but my dad told me that girls wouldn’t wear “shimmies” under their dresses and when they stood in the sunlight you could see right through them. He claimed that imagination was the sexier thing and short skirts left too little to the imagination. Theirs was the first generation to have automobiles and all that meant. It was prohibition and it was in full swing here. Remember both my uncle Jack and my dad “ran the milk wagon” delivering to homes and all, and I mean all the businesses from Shell Beach and throughout what is now know as the five cities. They delivered to the speaks and the “houses” where the working girls lived. My dad told me  how the girls used to tease my uncle Jackie. No one thought too much about a 14 year old boy driving the milk truck with his 12 year old brother standing on the running board. Except the state of California.

When I was born my uncle Jack was 36. When I was old enough to know him well he sprinkled his conversation with words and phrases that I was unfamiliar with and it wasn’t until I was more educated did I begin to realize that what I was hearing was the sound of a time gone by. Both he and my dad would describe something unusually good as the “berries.” I was pleased to hear the phrase spoken in the film because it was delivered with such enthusiasm and delight, exactly the way it was meant to be. “If you knew your onions, it didn’t take cheaters to spot a four flusher. You could ankle down to the bakery and put up the mazuma to buy your tomata a sinker and a cuppa joe. If a sheik tried to fork over a wooden nickel you’d know it was bushwa.”

He peppered his speech with words like those all of his life and we learned them because as a lifelong bachelor, my brothers and I were in a way his children. He loved us and took us exploring all over the county. We climbed Eagle Rock together, explored the Nacimiento and the creeks all around. We explored the pirates cave on Mt Picacho, swam in the pool at big falls and had divers other adventures. We learned about his life.

My uncle Jack never married. Perhaps time stopped for him. He lived at home with my grandparents until my grandmother Annie died in 1977. The ranch was sold in 1980 . When he retired and I went to visit him I noticed an old photograph on his bedside table. It was a girl dressed in 20’s style. I asked him who it was and he said, “Oh, you don’t want to know about that.” I should have insisted. I wish I had.

The phone rang. Nancy was still at work, I told the caller. She explained that she was calling from the rest home where Nancy’s aunt Edie had lived her final years and she needed to know where to send her personal possessions. With no one at home , I told her it would be fine to send them here and we would take care of them. She thanked me and rung off.

Not thinking too much about it I let it slip my mind until two weeks later a small box about the size of your kitchen toaster arrived on our doorstep. Seeing by the address it was the promised package, I set it aside for Nancy to open.

Aunt Edith Green, or aunt Edie as she was called was the sister of Nancy’s grandmother, Hilda. She was one of those semi-obscure maiden aunt’s that used to populate families, particularly in the decades after WWII. I had my own aunt Iva Jean Fee, my aunt Anna and my Uncle Jack Shannon, all of whom never married. I’ve always thought that in small towns, if you don’t marry young, the pickings are slim to none as you grow older. Spinsterhood becomes a habit, not by choice, but by lack of opportunity.

After our little boys were snug in their beds we sat down at the kitchen table and slit the tape holding the box closed and looked inside to see what might be the accumulation of a long life. Sorting through the box we found some old costume jewelry, a hand tatted lace handkerchief and at the bottom a pack of old and yellowed letters and post cards bound up carefully with a narrow maroon ribbon tied in a neat bow.

Today, no one writes personal letters and written communications has devolved to emoticons, tweets, less than 140 characters if you please, and the occasional e-mail. Phone calls are quick but are lost to history upon “hanging up,” a phrase itself soon to disappear from our lexicon. So why would a person  who was 97 years old, keep letters in a small box and carry them from London, where she was born, to Vancouver Canada in 1919 and finally to Santa Monica where she spent the rest of her life.

“Luck that takes the form of finding valuable or precious things that are not looked for.” That definition of serendipity perhaps explains how aunt Edie’s precious letters ended up with me. Of course, they had to be given to Nancy’s mother as the closest living relative. Anne  was momentarily  interested  in them but soon confined them to a remote and seldom opened drawer where they were to reside for another 25 years.

Those letters are a treasure which has been  the key to unlocking one of the many threads that make up the generational stories that bind a family’s history together. What about this and how about that; and why?  For the letters, so carefully preserved were written by Edith’s younger brother Edgar who served with the Australian Imperial Forces or AIF in WWI. His Battalion, the 4th of the 15th Regiment fought throughout the Dardanelles campaign, or Gallipoli as it is more commonly know in the United States.

In the penultimate scene,  the movie Gallipoli portrays the horrific battle of the Nek fought against the Turks on the Gallipoli peninsula. The Australian and New Zealand troops, in attempting to close on the turkish trenches are sent forward into  withering machine-gun fire and are slaughtered. The letters from Edgar connect us with this singular event as he was there and wrote of it to his sister.

The letters and post cards connect us to Edgar and that family. They chronicle events. from his enlistment in 1915 until the end of the war. This little event, the opening of a postal parcel has opened a window on the life of our entire family. Things unthought of, things unseen and an opportunity to look back on events in our family lost for a more than a century.

Port Said, May 31st, 1915 Edgar’s port of embarkation

Off to Gallipoli.