Brookings, Summer 1960

Pop's father, Roy Wesley Hendrick, was born November 14, 1899 to Thomas Jefferson Hendrick (b March 10, 1861, Illinois) and Laura Malinda Fairman Hendrick (b October 19, 1865). Pop's mother, Viola Gockley, was born May 24, 1904  to Levi Gockley, Jr (b March 24, 1874 in Illinois) and Maria Cora Thompson Gockley (b November 15, 1879 in California.)

Grandpa Hendrick went to Stanford while Grandma Hendrick attended the University of California in Berkley, then just known as "Cal."   To visit each other, Grandma told me, one of them had to travel by bus and street car between Palo Alto and Berkeley, a trip that totaled two or three hours each direction.

Stanford, at that time, charged no tuition.  It did, however, cost ten dollars per quarter for room and board at a time when bread cost about a penny a loaf.  Grandpa felt that this was tantamount to highway robbery and retaliated when he graduated by taking two red wool blankets with "LSJU" embroidered on them in white when he left.  (figure it out in today's currency using the price of a loaf of bread and see why!)  I think that makes those two blankets about the most expensive ones in the world, but when he told me about it at my graduation from the same institution, 50 years later, he was still happy about liberating those two blankets. 

Stanford was a very young school when Grandpa Roy attended it.  Despite the fact that it had been established only 30 or so years, but was already a bitter rival of Cal.    Grandpa and Grandma Hendrick were married secretly in their senior year (a "mixed marriage", in Grandma Vi's own words) and spent part of it with Grandma Vi traveling on weekends across the bay to spend the weekends in Grandpa's dorm room -- all very much against university policy!

Gladys, grandma's friend and roommate from Cal was married to Roscoe Gockley, Grandma's brother.   Gla-ha, as we called her, was one of our very favorite aunts and lived into her 90's.  One of the last times I spoke with her, she told me that she had taken a new job.  She was "working with elderly people."   We had a good laugh because many of her clients were twenty years, and in one case, thirty years, younger than she in biological age!

Grandma Vi and Grandpa Roy had two children -- Gladys (named after Gla-ha) and my father, Roy Wesley Hendrick, Jr., born July 4, 1927.   When Gladys was already in college, everyone was very VERY surprised when Uncle Lee was born.  As a result of this little surprise, Lee is closer in age to me and my cousin Marie than he is to his own siblings.

Grandma Vi, Gladys, Lee, Grandpa Roy and Pop

In the early part of the century, Grandpa Hendrick had bought a square of land close to Brookings, Oregon.  It had suffered a severe fire, but the original settler's cabin and workshop (the original settler was a weaver) had been spared and were still standing.   Since Grandpa and Grandma were teachers, they were able to take off large parts of the summer and work on the ranch to fix it up.  Grandpa ran it as a tree farm, growing mostly Douglas Fir.

Gladys became a teacher and married Paul Fox, another teacher.  Their daughter, Marie Fox, was born on February 29, 1948.  For most of my childhood, they lived in the tiny town of Shoshone in Death Valley and between the two of them, were able to teach pretty much all the classes in the high school.  Many of their students were Indians and the one time I visited there with my parents, I though it was terribly exotic.  Later they moved to Egypt, where they taught for several years; they concluded their teaching careers in Happy Camp, California, teaching at another Indian school.

In the summer, Uncle Paul and Auntie Gladys, together with Marie would often go to Oregon with their camper and canoe.  They'd camp, back-pack, canoe down the Chetco river and work on "the ranch".   

Pop and Gladys with Gladys & Paul on their way to the Ranch.

Gladys and Paul had built a second, and more modern cabin on the property.   The original cabin was open, divided by a partial wall into a kitchen and living area with a loft on the top that could be reached by a ladder.  The "Fox Den" was more conventionally constructed.  It had a great room where there was a fireplace, open space for a table and the master bed, then a small bedroom with built-in bunks for Marie and a friend, a bathroom and a kitchen.   At the time, water had not been hooked up, so the bathroom was unusable; cooking was generally done in the kitchen in the main cabin.

The summer that I turned nine, I was allowed to go to "the Ranch" for the first time with Gladys and Paul.   I slept in the lower bunk of the upper cabin and Marie had the top one.   There were windows next to the built in bunks and when we woke up in the morning before the grown-ups, it was perfectly ok with everyone if we just got dressed quietly, swung the windows outwards and went out to play or visit Grandma or Grandpa at the lower cabin.  It was, in fact, desirable, because the doors to the Fox Den were very squeaky and there wasn't any way to sneak out at all!

Technologically, the ranch hadn't changed very much since the property had been settled in the late 1880's.  The property had not qualified for free connection to the power grid under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 and Grandpa did not want to pay to have the the lines run.  So there was no electricity. 

There were several excellent springs, so Grandpa and Uncle Paul had put in a gravity-fed water system and there was running water at the lower cabin.  To keep things cool, there was a mesh box at the edge of the small stream that ran by the lower cabin.   Milk didn't last more than a couple of days, which meant we got to drink Kool-ade, something strictly forbidden at home and which made me feel a little wicked and very grown up.   Sometimes there were long, interesting debates at breakfast about whether or not the butter had turned.

Lighting in the evening was provided by kerosene or gasoline lanterns and as the youngest, my job in the morning was to go round all the lanterns in the two cabins, trim the wicks (kerosene) or check the mantles (gasoline), clean the glass and refill them so they'd be ready for the evening.    The gas lantern was particularly important because everyone played bridge in the evenings and  the bright light was needed to make sure Grandpa was not cheating!   Sometimes the games were held under the apple tree in the yard of the lower cabin and sometimes they were held in the Fox Den, but there was always a lot of laughing about it among the adults.

Marie and I did not play bridge, so when we got tired, we were allowed to use our flashlights and go up the trail to the upper cabin.   I liked the trail just fine in the day, but when lit with a flashlight at night, the shadows were very scary. I worried that the owls I could hear would swoop down and carry me off like the lamb had been taken on Colgrove's property to the west of us.

Cooking was done on a wood stove (there was a TON of wood!) Uncle Paul or Grandpa made sure that there was always kindling and stovewood.  The stove was divided into two parts:  a firebox on the right and an oven on the left.  To start the stove, newspaper was crumpled up in the firebox and a few sticks of kindling placed strategically on top of it.  A match from the big box in the cupboard and scratched on the rough surface of the stove to get it to light (no safety matches here!)  When the newspaper and kindling started burning well, pieces of stovewood were added, the front of the firebox closed and the stove would start to warm.   Note that is "the stove" not "the burners."   Unlike our gas stove in Santa Barbara, where each burner could be turned on or off as desired, the entire wood stove -- top, sides and front -- got hot.  The hottest part was, of course, next to the firebox, but the rest of it was very hot as well.  It made that little kitchen very warm in the summer and we all had to learn to be very careful not to touch any part of it. 

There was a water tank on the wall behind the stove, so by the time that breakfast was fixed, there was enough hot water that people could take a shower in the outdoor shower area off the porch and next to the kitchen.  Since Marie and I weren't very large, for bath time for us, there was an old copper wash boiler that Grandma Hendrick would warm up with water from the teakettle:

Summer 1960 at the ranch -- just call me 'Bubbles'!

Grandma Hendrick was a great cook, but Auntie Gladys had a knack of being able to whip up the most amazing meals from almost nothing.   She made waffles a special iron that fitted into holes in the the top of the wood stove and baked wonderful crusty bread in the little oven.  Over many summers at the ranch, she taught me how to make bread too, but I don't think that mine has ever been as delicious as the first slice of one of Gladys' loaves!

It is well known that the child is the one that "decides" it is time to be born and I did a really terrible job of it.  Mom organized wonderful birthday parties, but to have a party, you have to have a birthday when your school friends were around and I didn't.  If I'd only managed to be about three weeks premature, everything would have been fine, but I had the poor judgment to wait and be born at the end of June.   I remember being so disappointed in second grade when I went around to deliver invitations to the girls in the neighborhood who were my age (Jill, Jill, Betsy and Judy) only to find that no one could come because they were all on vacation or at camp.   Mom always did a great job on family birthdays -- I remember her tolerantly serving a birthday meal of my favorite fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cream gravy and chocolate milk -- a dreadful combination --  but it just wasn't the same as getting dressed up and having a "real" party with favors, poppers and little paper candy cups.  Or doing any of the wonderful things Mom could think up for a party: a camping trip to Red Rock or even a ride on the train!

No one dressed up at the ranch and the thought of Grandpa and Grandma donning paper hats and tooting little celebratory horns was ludicrous.  But Auntie Gladys did something that was so great that it dwarfed the coolness of party paper goods: she baked special birthday cakes with a  layer of a different flavor for every year of the celebrant's age!   By the time anyone reached the age of eighteen, their cake was an unsteady sort of ziggurat, but even one made for a five year old was impressive:

Five-year old birthday cake, 1956 (it is very hard to see, but the holders are, to my certain knowledge, little wooden pig's heads.  Go figure!)

That year at the ranch, Auntie Gladys made me a nine-layer cake with every single layer baked in the oven of that wood stove!  We ate it with homemade ice cream and it was glorious!

With no clocks, the days seemed endless and I loved the ranch unreservedly. 

Almost.

I did not love the outhouse! 

Grandpa had dug a deep hole and constructed a shack over it, about 3 feet square.   There was a seat built into it and (in what seemed a cruel parody to me), a normal white toilet seat set on it.   There was toilet paper at least, but the equivalent of flushing was to take the shaker can of lime and dust a bunch of powder down the hole before closing the lid.

Ewwwwwww!

I hated it!

Mom had told me a story about one of her older relatives (her great grandmother, I believe) who had refused to have indoor plumbing installed when it became popular in the 1800's.  The lady's grounds were that it was a disgusting to have one of "those things" in your house.   Until I went to the ranch, I'd thought that a benighted attitude, but my practical experience with the outhouse caused me to swiftly change my opinion.  It was disgusting and she was right: no one in their right mind would want one in their home.  Or anywhere else!

We did not spend all summer at the ranch.  When Grandpa and Grandma retired, they had built a place on Pioneer Lane in Brookings and moved there from the Los Angeles area.  Although they spent a lot of time at the ranch in the summer, they actually lived in Brookings.   The property on Pioneer Lane featured a nice stand of trees, a large grassy area and a GIGANTIC and very productive blackberry thicket that Grandpa hacked paths into with his machete and from which came the makings for Auntie Gladys' delicious blackberry pies.  

The house was built in the shape of a "U".  The bottom of the "U" was a great room with a dining area and kitchen, one arm had two bedrooms and two baths and the other one was all workshop/garage because Grandpa said that in his retirement, what he really wanted was a great place to work!  The bedrooms were all in use that summer, but there was an entryway that was not used much, so I put my sleeping bag there, right next to the bookcase and I was well pleased with the arrangement. What could be better than sleeping next to books? Easy deal:  I had my trusty flashlight and when I was supposed to be asleep, I could reach out, quietly snake a book out and hide it and me in the sleeping bag, secretly reading.

One day, using a tarp and a lawn chair, I made myself a tent:

I liked sleeping in the tent even better than being close to the bookcase and the grandparents, incredibly tolerant, let me sleep in it for all the rest of my visit.

I was very sorry when I had to go home, back to reality and start school.