While it’s mathematically impossible for someone sixty-three years old to have lived in three centuries, I feel as if I have.
I remember walking through the front door of my grandparents’ ranch house and seeing the washboard and triangle hanging on nails to the right, next to the large wash-up area with abrasive soap pierced by a chain to prevent it, apparently, from being absent-mindedly pocketed by a before-dinner washer-upper.
I remember the outhouse, which was equipped, thankfully, with real toilet paper, not the storied Montgomery Wards catalogs. I recall also the several satellite cabins situated around the main ranch house. And how could I forget the separate shower building plumbed only for cold water and stocked with sadistic beige soap that felt as if it had been impregnated with cockleburs?
Four score and seven years ago my father was born into that rustic life in remote northern California, but I spent time there, too, in the wee years of my life in the late 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s.
My grandparents chose to live a spartan 19th century type of existence: An outhouse instead of “indoor plumbing,” as they called it. No telephone. A one-room schoolhouse across the vale which several family members had attended, riding to and fro on horses. The few neighbors, all relatives, scattered around the valley. No paved roads for miles. Big barns, animal pens, and a large garden at the side of and behind the main house. A chicken coop and a rabbit hutch.
None of that seemed abnormal to me at the time. What struck me as unusual was Pop’s three-legged dog who had been trained to kill on command. A “Sic ‘em, Yogi!” caused him to jump to his tripod of legs and frantically look about for the intended victim. If “Pop” (my grandfather) gave the command, it would mean a menacing animal had been encountered on a trip through the woods nearby; if it was a young boy testing whether it was really true that the normally good-natured pooch would morph into a bloodthirsty killing machine on hearing that incantation, Yogi soon realized it was a false alarm and in time learned to ignore a call to paws from that source.
When visiting my grandparents’ ranch, we all had chores to do. I didn’t care for weeding the garden, but I did very much enjoy feeding slop to the pigs. When they saw me coming, walking jerkily and ploddingly with a heavy bucket in each hand filled to overflowing with table scraps, they dropped their foraging and gossiping and came running. As it was only one hundred feet or so from the house to the pig fence, I did not wear gloves, and so the thin metal handles of the pails left temporary indentations at the base of the four non-thumb fingers of each hand. I doubled my pleasure pouring the pig fodder into the trough: the relief to my hands was one delight; the other was the entertainment of watching the pigs vie for position and nose each other out of the way of the best bits, alternately squealing in protest and grunting in delight.
Ringing the triangle at suppertime was a privilege of great honor and high prestige among us kids, delegated to the chosen one by the queen of the kitchen, our grandmother Dollie. The anointed one would strut out onto the front porch and ring the triangle as fast and loud as he or she could so that all within earshot of its clangy, metallic peals would know it was time to finish up whatever chore they were busy with, make their way to the house, come in, wash up, and chow down.
Another chore I sometimes had was gathering eggs from the hens. When Pop showed me how to do it, I was at first reticent, thinking the sitters might scratch my hands to ribbons with their claws or poke my eyes out with their beaks in protecting their property from being pilfered, but I soon learned there was nothing to worry about that way. The hens cackled at me when I disturbed them, but their objections never escalated to the point of violence. Once I realized I would not be counterattacked by the fecund fowls, I didn’t mind the chore at all. What it consisted of was taking a bucket into the chicken coop and, proceeding down the row of hay-lined nesting boxes, forcing my hand under each roosting hen, palm down, then lifting their bellies a little by arching the back of my hand up, and robbing them of the eggs they were sitting on—all while ignoring their clucking complaints at the indignity of such a young and small human unceremoniously divesting them of their labor. After retrieving the booty, I would gingerly place the warm oval zygotes in the bucket, knowing that most things break.
My grandparents’ domain was simply called “The Ranch” by us. More specifically, as the sign hanging from the archway above the last cattle guard made known, it was the Rocking S Ranch. To reach that spot far from the madding crowd—or any type of crowd, for that matter—we drove winding mountain roads, the last several miles of which were dirt and gravel. At some point along the way, we crossed an invisible boundary separating the 20th century from the 19th. And I write this from the 21st, using a device Dollie and Pop would scarcely have been able to foresee or comprehend.
The closest town, Zenia, was really just a settlement of a few scattered houses and cabins. It was only considered to be a town because there was a post office situated in the small grocery store there. Pop would periodically make the trek there in his jeep to pick up the mail. Not every day, I don’t think. Maybe once or twice a week.
I don’t recall Dollie ever leaving The Ranch for anything as mundane as fetching the mail. That would have meant untying and laying aside her flower-print apron, which she seldom did. As can say anyone else who ever had one, I certainly remember Dollie’s cinnamon rolls. Wars have been waged over lesser things. To refer to the enjoyment of them as Epicurean Nirvana sounds about right, but in the literal sense it’s all wrong because Nirvana is a lack of sensation, and those cinnamon rolls were nothing if not sensational. Dollie’s Cinnamon Rolls, we called them, to differentiate them from counterfeits produced by others. Dollie was no slouch when it came to making and baking other dishes and desserts, but it’s the giant, beautiful, sweet, buttery, delectable cinnamon rolls that I see and smell and taste in dreamlike nostalgia when I travel back to The Ranch in my mind.
The Anachronistic Ranch, Part 2 is here