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THE SMILING HILL-TOP AND OTHER CALIFORNIA SKETCHES

The Smiling Hill-Top and Other California Sketches

JULIA M. SLOANE

Illustrated by CARLETON M. WINSLOW

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1921

Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons

Published October, 1919

MY THREE COMPANIONS OF THE ROAD ONE LARGE AND TWO SMALL THIS LITTLE BOOK IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED

CONTENTS

PAGE Introduction 1 The Smiling Hill-Top 5 A California Poppy 19 Gardeners 35 Thorns 55 The Gypsy Trail 77 An Adventure in Solitude 94 A Sabine Farm 116 The Land of "Whynot" 132 Where the Trade Wind Blows 155 Sunkist 176

THE SMILING HILL-TOP AND OTHER CALIFORNIA SKETCHES

INTRODUCTION

The following sketches are entirely informal. They do not cover the subject of Southern California in any way. In fact, they contain no information whatever, either about the missions or history--a little, perhaps, about the climate and the fruits and flowers of the earth, but that has crept in more or less unavoidably. They are the record of what happened to happen to a fairly light-hearted family who left New England in search of rest and health. There are six of us, two grown-ups, two boys, and two dogs. We came for a year and, like many another family, have taken root for all our days--or so it seems now.

The reactions of more or less temperamental people, suddenly transplanted from a rigorous climate to sunshine and the beauty and abundance of life in Southern California, perhaps give a too highly colored picture, so please make allowance for the bounce of the ball. I mean to be quite fair. It doesn't rain from May to October, but when it does, it can rain in a way to make Noah feel entirely at home. Unfortunately, that is when so many of our visitors come--in February! They catch bad colds, the roses aren't in bloom, and altogether they feel that they have been basely deceived.

We rarely have thunder-storms, or at least anything you could dignify by that name, but we do have horrid little shaky earthquakes. We don't have mosquitoes in hordes, such as the Jersey coast provides, but we do sometimes come home and hear what sounds like a cosy tea-kettle in the courtyard, whereupon the defender of the family reaches for his gun and there is one rattlesnake less to dread.

On our hill-top there are quantities of wild creatures--quail, rabbits, doves, and ground squirrels and, unfortunately, a number of social outcasts. Never shall I forget an epic incident in our history--the head of the family in pajamas at dawn, in mortal combat with a small black-and-white creature, chasing it through the cloisters with the garden hose. Oh, yes, there is plenty of adventure still left, even though we don't have to cross the prairies in a wagon.

People who know California and love it, I hope may enjoy comparing notes with me. People who have never been here and who vaguely think of it as a happy hunting-ground for lame ducks and black sheep, I should like to tempt across the Rockies that they might see how much more it is than that. It may be a lotus land to some, to many it truly seems the promised land.

"Shall we be stepping westward?"

THE SMILING HILL-TOP

No one should attempt to live on top of an adobe hill one mile from a small town which has been brought up on the Declaration of Independence, without previously taking a course in plain and fancy wheedling. This is the mature judgment of a lady who has tried it. Not even in California!

When we first took possession of our hill-top early one June, nothing was farther from my thoughts. "Suma Paz," "Perfect Peace," as the place was called, came to me from a beloved aunt who had truly found it that. With it came a cow, a misunderstood motor, and a wardrobe trunk. A Finnish lady came with the cow, and my brother-in-law's chauffeur graciously consented to come with the motor. The trunk was empty. It was all so complete that the backbone of the family, suddenly summoned on business, departed for the East, feeling that he had left us comfortably established for the month of his absence. The motor purred along the nine miles to the railroad station without the least indication of the various kinds of internal complications about to develop, and he boarded the train, beautifully composed in mind, while we returned to our hill-top.

It is a most enchanting spot. A red-tiled bungalow is built about a courtyard with cloisters and a fountain, while vines and flowers fill the air with the most delicious perfume of heliotrope, mignonette, and jasmine. Beyond the big living-room extends a terrace with boxes of deep and pale pink geraniums against a blue sea, that might be the Bay of Naples, except that Vesuvius is lacking. It is so lovely that after three years it still seems like a dream. We are only one short look from the Pacific Ocean, that ocean into whose mists the sun sets in flaming purple and gold, or the more soft tones of shimmering gray and shell-pink. We sit on our terrace feeling as if we were in a proscenium box on the edge of the world, and watch the ever-varying splendor. At night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars above, and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down the zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain below us. These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor lights in the bay. The Pacific is a lonely ocean. There are so few harbors along the coast where small boats can find shelter that yachts and pleasure craft hardly exist. Occasionally we see the smoke of a steamer on its way to or from ports of Lower California, as far south as the point where the curtain drops on poor distracted Mexico, for there trade ceases and anarchy begins. There is a strip of land, not belonging to the United States, called Lower California, controlled by a handsome soldierly creature, Governor Cantu, whose personal qualities and motives seem nicely adapted to holding that much, at least, of Mexico in equilibrium. Only last summer he was the guest of our small but progressive village at a kind of love feast, where we cemented our friendship with whale steaks and ginger ale dispensed on the beach, to the accompaniment of martial music, while flags of both countries shared the breeze. Though much that is picturesque, especially in the way of food--enciladas, tamales and the like--strays across the border, bandits do not, and we enjoy a sense of security that encourages basking in the sun. Just one huge sheet of water, broken by islands, lies between us and the cherry blossoms of Japan! There is a thrill about its very emptiness, and yet since I have seen the Golden Gate I know that that thrill is nothing to the sensation of seeing a sailing ship with her canvas spread, bound for the far East. From the West to the East the spell draws. First from the East to the West; from the cold and storms of New England to our land of sun it beckons, and then unless we hold tight, the lure of the South Seas and the glamour of the Far East calls us. I know just how it would be. Perhaps my spirit craves adventuring the more for the years my body has had to spend in a chaise longue or hammock, fighting my way out of a shadow. Anyway, I have heard the call, but I have put cotton in my ears and am content that life allows me three months out of the twelve of magic and my hill-top.

There is a town, of course--there has to be, else where would we post our letters. It's as busy as a beehive with its clubs and model playgrounds, its New Thought and its "Journal," but I don't have to be of it. There are only so many hours in the day. I go around "in circles" all winter; in summer I wish to invite my soul, and there isn't time for both. I think I am regarded by the people in the village as a mixture of recluse and curmudgeon, but who cares if they can live on a hill?

One flaw there was in the picture, and that is where the first experiment in wheedling came in. A large telegraph pole on our property line bisected the horizon like one of the parallels on a map. It seemed to us at times to assume the proportions of the Washington Monument. I firmly made up my mind to have it down if I did nothing else that summer, and I succeeded, though I began in July and it was not till October that it finally fell crushing into the sage brush, and for the first time we saw the uninterrupted curve of beach melting into the pale greenish cliffs beyond.

The property on which the pole stood belonged to a real-estate man. He was pleasant and full of rosy dreams of a suburban villa resort, the gem of the Pacific Coast. That part was easy. He and I together visited the offices of the corporations owning the wires on that pole. As they had no legal right of way they had to promise to remove it and many others, to the tune of several hundred dollars. Nothing was left them but the game of delay. They told me their men were busy, that all the copper wire was held up by a landslide in the Panama Canal, that the superintendent was on a vacation, etc. However, the latter gentleman had to come back some time, and when he did I plaintively told him my troubles. I said I had had a very hard and disappointing summer, and that it would soothe me enormously to have one look at that view as the Lord intended it to be, before I had to go away for the winter, that it was in his power to give me that pleasure, etc.

Perhaps it was an unusual method, but it worked so well that I have often employed it since. I may say incidentally that it is of no use with the ice man. Perhaps dealing with merchandise below zero keeps his resistance unusually good. I have never been able to extract a pound of ice from him, even for illness, except on his regular day and in my proper turn. I think I should also except the fish man, who always promises to call Fridays and never does; much valuable time have I lost in searching the highways and byways for his old horse and white wagon.

Next to the execution of the telegraph pole I felt a little grass lawn to be of the utmost importance. Nothing could better show how short a time I had been in California than not to realize that even if you can afford to dine on caviar, pate de fois gras, and fresh mushrooms, grass may be beyond your means. I bravely had the ground prepared and sown. First, the boys' governess watered it so hard that it removed all the seed, so we tried again. Then the water was shut off while pipes were being laid on the highway below, and only at dawn and after dark could we get a drop. I did the watering in my night-gown, and was soon rewarded by a little green fuzz. Then all the small rabbits for miles around gathered there for breakfast. They were so tame you could hardly drive them away, so I invited the brothers who kept the hardware store in the village to come up and shoot them. They came gladly and brought their friends, but were so very anxious to help that I thought they were going to shoot the children too, and had politely to withdraw my invitation. The gardener and I then made a luscious compound of bacon grease and rough-on-rats, which we served on lettuce leaves and left about the edges of the grass plot. Did you ever hear a rabbit scream? They do. I felt like Lucretia Borgia, and decided that if they wanted the lawn they could have it. Oddly enough, a lot of grass came up in quite another part of the garden. I suppose it was the first planting that Fraeulein had blown away with the hose! We often have surprises like that in gardening. We once planted window-boxes of mignonette and they came up petunias--volunteer petunias at that. Of course, it all adds to the interest and adventure of life.