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How To Live Forever

Michael Shannon.

For a good start, be sure to be born on Easter Sunday. You might want to be the only child, a boy child at that, born that day. You should be born at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital, better known as Sisters Hospital.

Staffed with The Poor Clares an austere Roman Catholic religious order of nuns, co-founded in 1212 by Saint Clare of Assisi and Saint Francis of Assisi. The order is dedicated to a contemplative life of prayer, and poverty. They were all good Irish girls. Many of them spent their entire working lives in Santa Maria and when they retired they returned to Ireland from whence they came.

They delivered the newborn to my mother with a blue bow tied in my blond locks. They told my mother it was an omen from God. It must have been because Dr. Case had given my parents some very bad news the year before, he said, “Barbara you will never be able to conceive.”

Born on Easter Sunday? Perhaps a subtle message to Harold Case. Who knows.

So thats a good start.

Now be sure your parents are from Farm and Ranch families. There are scads of reasons for this. The first is general health. To build a child’s immune system it’s important for them to drink from the irrigation ditch and the hose. In my case we drank from the kitchen faucet too, even when the water tank had dead Screech Owl chicks floating in it. The hard water in the valley had coated the inside of irrigation and all the other water pipe with a whitish hard scale that eventually caused the kitchen faucets to close up to the point where you could not stick a pencil in them. A soupcon of fertilizer in the irrigation pipe was good for kids too.

We learned that planting Roly-poly bugs does not grow snapdragons but that Nasturtiums are pretty tasty. We had oodles because they grew insanely lush over the septic pit behind the house. Leaves of three. let them be, we learned that the hard way and that Horse Nettles could be touched in the center of the leaf but not on the edge. We learned to remove our socks in the presence of foxtails and cockle burrs, that is if we happened to be wearing them and that there was only one kind of bad snake. If we saw one in the yard we just told mom, the woman whoo was terrified of spiders and she would come out and dispatch it with a shovel something she learned growing up in the oil fields. Mice in the house were pretty OK; Dad said they didn’t eat much anyway.

Kitties were tolerated for their mouser abilities but seldom coddled, dogs were loved beyond any reasonable amount. Dogs went everywhere we did, showing us the way.

I learned to swim in the creek and the watering ponds on the cattle ranches. I could throw tomatoes, bell peppers and dirt clods with deadly accuracy. It was a mile walk through the fields and a dirt clod fight could and did last the whole way. My friend Kenny and I stalked Old Man Parrish’s apple orchards with our Red Ryders. Everything we did was a made up game of the imagination.

Every old building, corn crib, horse barn, tractor shed harbored an army of spiders. The dark places were home to Black Widows. There were Tarantulas living in holes in the ground, The Daddy Long Legs, so delicate and harmless, the Orb Weaver who weaves those delicate circular webs that can be so striking in the morning when dripping with the morning dew that are so striking that we used to duck under them so as not to harm them. Besides they were natural born fly killers. The nasty brown recluse which, if it bit you it was a sure trip to Doctor Cookson’s office.

When Warners came to dust the crops with clouds of sulphur and DDT filled the air. Not unpleasant odors went you sniffed it floating on the breeze. Sulphur was sprayed on Tomatoes and peas to fight mildew and DDT. It just killed everything but kids. We could imgine WWI watching those old Stearman biplanes zooming ten feet off the ground and then pulling nearly straight up after flying under Lester Sullivan’s power lines. He flew a Chandell and came right back the way he came and did it again. Dad said he was WWII fighter pilot and wishes he still was. He would call the kitchen phone to say when he was leaving Santa Maria so we knew when to rush out and get as close as possible to the crop he was dusting.

When we were big enough we stood on the cultivator bars of my dads tractors to hitch a ride into the fields. This wasn’t thought of as any great danger. Two of us would jump up and down on the bars to make the tractor buck a little which dad never seemed to mind much. Falling, losing your grip or footing and being dragged to death seemed a small price for some adventure.

We dug in the dirt, wallowed in the good rich mud of our adobe fields. Mom said the clogged pores in our skin prevented germs from entering. Being hosed of on the front lawn wasn’t such a bad thing in the summer.

The families ranches introduced us to livestock, “Bob” wire fences, the wonderful cow flop, cows must have the biggest bladders on earth. Have you ever seen a steer pee? My goodness! We knew what a salt block tasted like. The smell of new mown hay, used all the time in poetry but I think seldom experienced by most, the feel of the curly hair on a Hereford calf’s head and the rough feel of a cows tongue when she gives you a kiss.

My mother made sure we had a good clean shirt every day but Levi’s were worn until they were dirty and greasy enough to stand on their own. I mean, she had an old Westinghouse tub style washer with a wringer on the top which we were warned about but that hardly mattered and the occasional fingertip was squshed, carefully, so just to see how it felt. No one minded hanging out the wash because the clothsline was a great place to run through when the clothes were till wet. Had to be careful though, that was a switching offense. If you ran though and made good your escape mom soon pardoned you with a hug and a promise not to do it again.

Kids did get sick though. We got infected from the other kids at Branch school. In the winter. Mrs Brown’s lower grade classroom could at times be fogged with microscopic beads of snotty goo and desk tops were glazed with phlegm from sticky fingers.

Mom and dad took disease very seriously. We had all the modern doctor mom tools, the humidifier that chuffed a fog of Vicks Vapo-Rub mist, A bottle of Iodine, Aspirin and band-Aids. She kept a handy rubber hot water bottle and if it was serious you might repose in their bed during the day and simply be cured by that treat and the smell of them as you slipped in and out of your fever dreams.

Our parents grew up in an age where the death of children was an omnipresent occurrence. When my father was born, one in five children died before their fifth birthday. Smallpox still wasn’t eradicated though the vaccine had been around for more than a century. My dad nearly died from Scarlett fever when he was seven. There was no cure. Children died from Whooping Cough, Measles, Influenza, Pneumonia, and infections from ordinary cuts and scrapes. A broken bone could become septic and a child would be lost. If you lived in the country there was little access to medical care, schools did not have nurses in attendance. The life of a child was precious but there were few ways to protect them. My own aunt was infected with polio when she was just nineteen. She survived but had a game leg for the rest of her life. Did I mention he was married with two small children and pregnant with a third when it happened.

Today we seem to have lost the institutional mamory of what pre-antibiotic medicine was like. My parents never did and neither have I.

No one asked me if I wanted to be stabbed by the nurse from the County Schools Office as we lined up at the schools gate and waited in line to go up the steps of the little school van and be stuck. Nope, any squawking would have been completely ignored. Parents knew the cost, nobody complained.

We learned from our parents that most things were not crying offenses. Dad never complained about anything, neither did my mother who if she sniped about her friends she didn’t do it around us. We lived in the kids world, all of us. Adventure was something homemade. You polished your imagination with no help from television because in the very beginning it wasn’t made for you. Reading was the drug of choice. We had all the Hardy Boys adventures, The Three Musketeers, Mark Twain, Jack London, Franklin W. Dixons Frank Merriwell’s adventures which in and of itself made us want to go to college. We knew little or nothing of war or politics. Those were of the adult world.

Looking back you can see that we were free to make our own adventures. We had little supervision. We knew the rules laid out for us but they were few. We were expected to have a good time, explore, learn to swim in the creek, fish for our dinner and follow the dogs wherever they went.

It was in many ways a simpler time for kids. You had time to learn and form yourself. To put on some the armor of self before you had to inevitably step over the threshold of young adulthood. It took me a long time to catch up with the town kids when I went to high school. I wasn’t prepared for smoking, fighting, sex or any of the other thing that can bring kids to grief.

A friend once told me that he found it admirable that I went my own way. Growing up on the farm had vaccinated me so to speak. Thoughtfulness was simply ground in you by experience. We were vaccinated by the tenet that you should “Look before you leap.”

Growing up on the land and understanding that the most wonderful thing was that my parents were alway there. My dad in our fields and mom in the kitchen. We were safe and secure in the knowledge that we were loved and cared for.

Cover Photo: My aunt Patsy at 17, she of the polio. My two brothers and myself. We were one, four and six. Shannon family photo

Michael Shannon is at heart, still a farm boy. He writes so his children will know where they come from.

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The Hogger

CHAPTER ONE

By Michael Shannon

Hogger is a slang term for a locomotive engineer. Steam locomotives were referred to as “Hogs” in the early days of railroading.

My grandparents grew up when trains were the most modern form of transportation. When they were children growing up in Arroyo Grande, the steam train dominated the movement of people and goods throughout California’s Cow Counties. The big Railroad, the Southern Pacific hadn’t arrived yet, there was a promise it would but it took years for the local movers and shakers to pony up the bribes and free land that the Big Four demanded. No, the railroad here was the little narrow gauge Pacific Coast. Quite a bit smaller than the big train, it had served the area since 1868. It ran essentially from nowhere to nowhere. It huffed and puffed its little self-confident way to and fro making no apologies to anyone.

Arroyo Grande station and warehouse 1898. Historic Society.

My grandmother Annie rode it down to Santa Maria to go to High School. The high school in Arroyo Grande wasn’t accredited for those that were planning on going to Cal Berkeley. She and her friends hopped aboard, the train would actually pick you up in front of your house, to take trips up to San Luis Obispo to shop for the latest spring frocks and hats.

Nearly all the goods in the stores that marched along Branch street had to have their merchandise brought down from San Francisco by steam or sail and then shipped by rail to their destinations. The largest building in town was the PC warehouse on upper Branch Street.

Pacific Coast Railway Bridge Arroyo Grande, Ca, 1914. County Historical Society.

When my grandparent were kids the only bridges across Arroyo Grande creek were the railroad bridge and Newt Short’s swinging bridge which was only good for pedestrians. The RR bridge handled most of the walking public and all the wagons crossing the creek. It also served as an impromptu gallows at least once.

If you lived in town to train whistle and the rumble of the cars was a daily fact. My grandfather lived with the sound of that little train for almost fifty years. It’s no wonder it was planted in his thoughts.

Dad Shannon’s little house on the dairy. Family Photo

Christmas eve 1953 the family jumped in the green Buick sedan for the trip to my grandparents house where we always spent Christmas eve. It’s impossible to recall the excitment little kids feel when you are grown. Anticipation can cause you to almost wet your pants, your hair to stand on end and your head spin. The cars in those days had fabric upholstery which had a singular odor mixed with cigarette smoke and the ever present dirt and dust that farm families live with. Once in a while the car got washed but it was a fruitless exercise for my mother. Its pea soup color was always dusty in summer and muddy in winter. No matter how it looked it might as well been a golden chariot on Christmas eve with three little boys bouncing around on the seats in a collective fit of anticipation. Kids didn’t get many presents in those days. One special thing and the rest was basically utility. Shirts made by my mother probably, always socks from bachelor uncle Jack who didn’t have a clue. I got socks from him every Christmas for nearly fifty years. We really weren’t concerned about quantity. We had heard stories about Christmas past when my father got a pair of socks knitted by my aunt Sadie and a fresh Orange. He told me he was glad to get them too, especially the Orange, a pretty rare thing for those days. That was in 1920 when he was eight and he still operated on that principle in the fifties. Things were not particularly important to him. He felt that you should be grateful for what you got and say thank you because no matter what it was it was important to the one who gave it to you. The thing had no particular value, it was the love that counted.

When you know you will only receive one gift, why, it takes on a much greater importance. It was a good lesson.

We drove into town and then south on the old highway and turned off on El Campo Road where my grandparents lived on their ranch. The little red house with the white trim was down in a place I always thought of as the hole. The big bank of the highway and the old Nipomo road on the other side boxed it in and you entered downhill on the gravel driveway. Built n 1924 by my great-grandfather it was a simple board and batt sided, two bedroom with a door at each end. The backdoor led into a screen porch where grandmas pie safe stood, green with screen in the doors that looked like lace. Full of jelly jars with room for a cooling pie. There was a bench for changing shoes and some hooks screwed to the wall to hang jackets and hats on. In 1953 every man still wore one. Open the inside door and you were in the kitchen. Very simple it was. Next the dining kitchen table area and then through to the living room. Behind that was the front door enclosed in a little add on porch. This door was nearly useless because no one was ever likely to use it. Only itinerant drummers like the Fuller Brush man or his like. The custom in the country is to always use the back door. There is a familiarity and friendship involved in that like you might almost be a member of the family. Even the Knights of the Road knew this, they would come down the hill from the highway, tap on the door and stand with bowed head and hat in hand. They were not turned away. It was a vastly different time.

I only went in that front door a few times in my life, always on Christmas eve. My grandparents built a new home in 1954 up on the hill. A modern style home, yes, but we still used the back door except at Christmas .

Christmas 1949. Annie Shannon, my father and two of his boys just arrived at the old house. Family Photo.

1954, in what was our last Christmas in the old house in which the event that is the subject of this story occurred. We heaved the doors to the Buick open and ran to the door hoping to catch Santa in the act but as seemed to happen every year he had just left by the back door while we tumbled in the front. Mom and dad followed, arms full of presents, Cayce, my little brother, just three dragging mom by the hand squeaking in delight.

Grandma and grandpa met us at the door she in her print dress, sturdy shoes, old fashioned wire rim glasses and her apron, always with a hanky peeking from the pocket. She smelled sweetly of white shoulders and when you hugged her she would give you her very soft cheek to kiss. The formal and manly handshake from Big Jack as he uttered his, “The Blessed Boys,” with that big grin, his chest pushed out and his green suspenders like two vertical stripes holding his belly in. Uncle Jackie bringing up the rear, short, bald and bandy legged he sported a big grin, delighted to see his nephews. This ritual of greeting never changed as long as they lived, it didn’t matter if they had just seen you an hour earlier it was always the same.

In that last Christmas in the old house, the biggest most important thing for me was a brand new Lionel electric train. The little black engine pulling the cars and caboose in a stately manner around the Christmas tree. My grandfather got right down on the floor with me and we played with it until dinner was called. I could hardly step away. Eventually, full of turkey and homemade pie my brother Jerry and I fell asleep on the floor. Mom cuddled with little Cayce on the sofa until it was time to go home. The little train set stayed until dad could go back with the pickup to get it.

My dad visited his parents often. Sunday, which was a no work day would see him sitting at the green painted table with the checkered oilcloth cover, tacks along the edge to hold it in place. This was the kitchen of the old house where he had grown up. They would drink scalding hot coffee from the old enamel pot that sat in its habitual place on the stove. They’d be shooting the breeze, his parents and brother Jackie. They had nearly fifty years together so there was always something talk about.

After one of these visits, sometime after new years he came home and over lunch laughingly told us that after Christmas my grandfather had gone to Bello’s store in San Luis Obispo and bought himself a train set. My grandmother thought it was pretty silly for a grown man to do that. It was a silly little topic at her bridge club. Mrs. Brisco, Mrs Conrow and Mrs Jatta agreed and commented that it was just like Jack to do something like that. They said he was still just a boy at heart. They spoke the truth.

The little train lived in their living room for a bit but slowly began to grow. He added track, some trees and two small buildings. One was a church that looked similar to the one my grandmother attended. Perhaps this was an attempt to head of the inevitable grandmother “Stink eye” that was sure to come when the railroad would need to be moved for company.

By mid-January he made a trip north to buy more track, though he was already encroaching on the dining area. The next day grandma went to town to do her shopping and run some errands and when she came home he came out to help her unload the food she bought at Bennett’s grocery while she went in the house to take off her hat and gloves and put on her apron to ready supper. From outside Jack heard her raise her voice to the high heavens and quickly the sound of her voice saying, “Jack, you get in the house right this minute.”

He had finally reached her limit for what he had done with his new track was cut three holes in the walls so the train could pass through into the bedroom, make a left turn through another tunnel into the office and then turn again through the wall back from where it came. Enough was enough. She evicted him and his railroad.

Jack and Annie Shannon circa 1950. Shannon Family Photo.

Jach was a clever man so as he packed up the rolling stock and his village, carefully placing each piece in some of his old milk crates stamped with the family’s label, Hillcrest Farms Dairy. As was his nature, being a man who does nothing half way, he began to ruminate on how he could continue his railroading…….

Part two is coming on Saturday the 8th of June.

Michael Shannon is a born and raised Californian and still lives in God’s country.

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At The Table

Michael Shannon

In 1918 my grandparents, Jack and Annie Shannon came home. Home for both of them was southern San Luis County. This family event is the linchpin of our story.

When I was a boy we lived in the kitchen. Our little house, built at the turn of the century was the heart of the home. As were most homes built at the time it featured none of the devices we take for granted today. No insulation, no central heat, and no weatherstripping. Small houses were the norm before the war and ours, originally just three rooms had slowly been added to over time. To get to the back bedroom you had to pass through each of the other rooms. Porch, kitchen, living room, my parents bedroom, bathroom and finally, my room, a sunny room with large windows in which I imagined my future life as boys will do.

What my brothers and I learned at the kitchen table has shaped our lives. The Japanese philosopher Masonabu Fukuoka has said,”The simple hearth of the small farm is the true center of our universe.” This quote describes the experience of family all over the world, something we all have in common. I don’t know of any kids that I grew up with don’t share this experience and to this day I can see them as they were.

The photo above, taken in 1920 at my great-grandparents house on west Main St in Santa Maria shows my father and my uncle Jack with two friends. My father, George steers the trike on the right and my uncle Jack, his older brother by two years stands behind him. My grandparents lived with Annie’s parents for a time until they could move onto Annie’s ranch just south of Arroyo Grande.

The Samuel Gray home on Guadalupe Road in Santa Maria. Built by oil wells and many sheep. photo 1938.

We didn’t have a televison until I was eight. The most exciting thing was watching the test pattern because we somehow knew that hidden behind it were many earthly delights. We were partly right about that. There was only one available channel anyway and my parents didn’t see any need for one, the TV was for us mostly. They had the radio. They had been radio people all of their lives and it was the familiar thing. It had all the basic elements of TV anyway as television was really nothing more than radio with pictures. They read. We had Life, Look and the Readers Digest magazines scattered about. Part of my education were those old Reader’s Digests with their puzzles, riddles and a vast variety of stories. I found Bennett Cerf there and many of the great writets of the day. My grandmother belonged to the book of the month club as did many of my mothers friends so there was always a book around. We still have old Book of the Month editions with the names of friends on the flyleaf. Gladys Loomis’s heirs are probably still looking for them.

Most of my abiity to read comes from comic books. For a time we had a neighbor who rented Joaquin Machado’s house which was back by the creek near the old Evans place. The renter was a comic book distributor and each month one of his jobs was to collect all the back issues of comics not sold. Once a month my dad would come into the kitchen with a big bundle of comic books tied up with cotton string. It was a tiny Christmas. We devoured them and couldn’t wait for the next 30 days to pass. It seemed a tragedy when the man moved away.

Farm and ranch life in the forties and fifties was pretty isolated. Farm kids, for the most part spent their time either in small one or two room schoolhouses learning from books, in some case decades old taught by teachers who balanced the needs of up to four grades at one time. Kids were not separated by grade as they are today. All eight grades studied and played together. If you imagine schools today there are self-contained boxes for each grade level. We had all the kids in one box. Teachers ran curriculum and the parents were the school board members, janitors and school bus drivers. It was a family affair. A six year old had to handle a ground ball from a thirteen year old. It made little kids deal with older ages and those older ages learn to accept the little guys. Not a bad system.

4-H was the only club activity which was OK as nearly every kid’s father was a farmer or worked for a farmer and it was assumed by kids that they would do what dad did. It was not an unusual thing to see see Mrs Fernamburg working in their walnut orchard or Elsie Cecchetti out feeding her calves. I can still see Helen Kawaguchi sitting up on the seat of the old red Farmall wheel tractor slowly trekking back and forth across their fields. She always wore a big straw hat favored by the Japanese ladies when they were in the fields.

Fields were a descriptive word much like a compass and used to indicate direction. There was “Down the fields” and “Up the field.” Mom might say daddy is down the field which told you he was far away from the house. He would tell you that the irrigation pipe to be moved was up the field meaning it was away from the house too. Everyone understood this. Other directions told you he was with the celery crew or the broccoli cutters. Markers were all around. There were the Walnut trees, Lester Sullivans barn or “Old Man Parrish’s” orchard. I crossed Branch Mill Road at the old Branch bear pit behind Ramon Branches adobe house when I went to visit Kenny Talley, my closest friend. The four corners was where we caught the school bus, which wasn’t a real bus but served the purpose of getting kids to school. It had retired “Shanks Mare” in 1949. Kids didn’t have to walk anymore. The school bell which had once rung to tell moms it was time to send the kids still rang but really just for tradition I suppose.

The old Kawaguchi home. in the 1890’s

Schools were the center of social life. They were the meeting halls, the place where Halloween was celebrated, Christmas plays performed and potlucks held for no particular reason other than to get together. Mom’s made the costumes, painted the decorations and formed the audience cheering us on as we walked in our circle in Mrs. Edith Browns lower grade classroom. We might get a prize, or should I saw mom might get a prize. My own mother was a master at costumes. I was a robot, my brother Jerry and I were a horse once. as the older brother I started of as the head but was reduced in rank when I passed a smidge of gas during a rehearsal in our living room. It was worth it though, winning a round in war between brothers always was. Still is.

The world was small. A schoolroom, the little town of Arroyo Grande, which, for kids meant The Western Auto and The Variety Store, thats were the toys were. Bennett’s Grocery where Muriel and Rusty were free with the candy jar, the clothing stores where my mother worked. Louise Ralphs where all the ladies wore perfume, still the best and most fragrant place I can remember, Zeyen’s clothing store where the Levis were stacked to the ceiling and permeated the building with their peculiar new clothes odor. Mom worked there and served two generations of kids.

During the Gay Nineties festival celebration my grandfather sang in a barbershop quartet with Gordon Bennet, and Bill O’Conner from the stage of the old Mission theater. The Rotarians entertained with jokes and skits. Thats them below in all their sartorial finery doing the Lord knows what.

Vaudeville Blackouts in the Mission Theater. Harvest Festival/Gay Nineties, 1950’s. Family photo

The moms entertained too. Being shy was not too bad when you knew everyone in the audience.

1965, Women were still know by their husbands name.

The world was small and lined with soft things that didn’t sting or hurt too much. A kiss, some spit or a daub of mud cured most things. Kids felt safe there. It would be gone soon enough, mores the pity.

The kitchens in our homes weave through the narrative of our lives and form the foundation of the stories of our lives.

Michael Shannon writes and would still prefer to live in the kitchen if he could.

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