The Big Valley

What do Barbara Stanwyck, Frye boots and artichokes have in common?  Well probably nothing to you, but today I had flashbacks of my ten year old self as Russ and I left San Francisco and traveled down the Pacific Coast Highway to Monterey for dinner.

You see when I was ten my parents took their first big trip without the kids to San Francisco with their good friends John and Mary Anne.  It was traumatic for my sisters and me because my grandparents came to take care of us.  Granettes, my grandmother, was a notorious drinker and baby-sitting was not really her thing.

Proof of this was that one day when we were under her care my middle sister Margaret, who was seven years old, got off her school bus just as I was walking home from mine.  I took one horrified look at her dressed in a pair of Danskin tights and a shirt and asked her where her skirt was?

She calmly replied that she did not have one on, that was what Granettes had dressed her in.  This was long before the days of leggings or skinny jeans, when the crotch of tights came up only as high as the middle of your thighs, which made it a little difficult to walk and her big white cotton underpants stuck out the top of her tights for all the world to see.

My sisters and I awaited the return of our parents whiling away the hours watching Linda Evans as Audra Barkley dressed in her gauchos riding her horse on the dry brown hills of the Big Valley on TV.

When my parents finally did arrive home it was like Christmas all over again.  They had brought purple paper parasols from Chinatown, and long necklaces of hippie beads, which were way ahead of their time in 1970 Wilton, Connecticut, for us kids.

For my mother they bought a case of giant artichokes that we cooked every night for dinner for days and days and still wanted more when they were all gone.  I know that became the beginning of our family’s love affair for the green globes.

But the wildest items brought back from this very foreign land of California were the three items my father bought for himself.  The first was a pair of Frye Boots, the same kind they make today, brown with a big heel, a squared off toe and a strap that ran across the front anchored by a large metal ring on the side of the ankle.  Those boots were very cool and my sisters and I would stand our tiny feet inside them and shuffle around the playroom.

The second item was equally as cool and a little out there for my non-hippie, big bald southern father; a suede leather rust colored jacket with long fringe all around it.  We knew it was hip because Mike Brady wore a similar on the Brady Bunch.

The last item was the most disturbing and something that made such an impression of wrong on me that I vowed to always think not just twice, but three times before I buy apparel or the like on vacation.  Just because something looks good in it’s native land does not mean it will look good in yours.  The thing my bald father bought was a hairpiece.

Now when I say hairpiece, I don’t mean just a little toupee.  This was more like an auburn Little Lord Fauntleroy wig that was 1970’s long.  It looked a lot like my hair with bangs.  I think when my Dad put it on my sister Janet who was still a baby burst into tears and screamed until he took it off.  The good news was it made my Dad so hot to have so much hair where none had been for the previous 15 years that he never wore it again.

So today Russ and I stopped in Half Moon Bay and I walked past a store selling Frye Boots in exactly the same style as my father had.  We continued driving down the coast passing fields upon fields of beautiful artichokes growing right next to the road.  I ordered one for dinner and it was so tender and sweet since it did not have to travel more than a mile from its birthplace.  I know my mother will be furious that I did not bring an extra suit case to carry home some artichokes especially since I saw signs to buy them, 12 for a dollar.

After our artichoke and seafood dinner on the wharf of Monterey Bay we drove north to San Jose on the inland route of brown rolling hills with big valley’s of fruit trees and vegetable fields between the mountains.  There were horses grazing on the sides of the hills and in the twilight of the evening I was almost sure that I saw Jarrod and Heath riding home to see their mother, Victoria just like on TV when I was ten.