Fr Bill, I seem to have misplaced the story you reminded me of last week.  It was the time I got arrested.  One of these days I'll find it and post it.  Meanwhile I hope you enjoy this one.

Salinas

The Belgian Congo, the Australian Out-back, the Amazon Jungle, the Gobi Desert, Salinas.  These words always conjured up visions of explorers and adventurers.

Salinas is a small city located about 90 miles south of San Francisco in the heart of the Salinas Valley.  Salinas is the lettuce capital of the world, and that rich agricultural valley produces most of the country's artichokes and strawberries too.

Salinas was also where Aunty Mit and Uncle Bob lived.  Not exactly in Salinas, but a few miles north, near a small bump in Highway 101 called Prunedale.

A couple of miles up country lane called the Vierra Canyon Road, Aunty Mit and Uncle Bob had a retirement home on about six acres of land.  Adjacent to their land Ed Van Rhenterghem had a large chicken ranch and a cow pasture.  This was where Lee and I, the city slickers, became explorers and adventurers.

Almost any extended school break was a good time to go to Salinas for a few days.  Many times we would spend Christmas, or New Years, or Thanksgiving, or Easter there.

But summers were the best!  Two or three weeks away from Mom and Dad, getting as dirty and cruddy as we liked, exploring the almost impassible manzanita and scrub oak woods that surrounded the valley, and playing in the water pit next to the well Uncle Bob had dug.

Salinas was a place our imaginations went wild.  It was the place I first fired a shotgun and learned about gun safety.  It was the place Lee and I got our first jobs, helping Mr. Van Rhenterghem on his chicken farm.  It was the place we learned about growing vegetables and slaughtering chickens for the dinner table.  It was the place we learned how to trap gophers, hunt quail, catch tadpoles and frogs and lizards and snakes, prime the well pump,  pull weeds, build a garage, compost garbage, and gather cow manure for garden fertilizer. 

Uncle Bob built the house himself.  It had no central heating, and every morning Aunty Mit would put some kindling wood in the stove in the kitchen and light the crumpled paper with a match.  Lee and I would get out of our beds, quickly dress, and race to the kitchen to sit by the stove and warm up.  As soon as the coffee was ready, Uncle Bob would appear, and we would move to the kitchen table and wait for breakfast.

Uncle Bob would sip his coffee and tell us about his adventures as a youth.  Uncle Bob had fought in the Belgian Army in World War I, and was a wounded war hero.  He had been knighted by the King Albert of Belgium!  After the war he went to sea, and visited exotic countries like the Belgian Congo, which I think was one of his favorite places.  

Then breakfast would appear.  Scrumptious eggs and bacon and potato pancakes.  Lee and I would fill our bellies in preparation of the days anticipated adventures.

Perhaps we would go into the garage and saw some scrap lumber into the shapes of little boats, take them to the water pit, and maneuver them around like Admiral Halsey's fleet in the Pacific.

We might go out behind the garage with our toy airplanes and tanks and build forts in the soft sand.  We re-fought the landing on Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Bulge, and the North African Campaign over and over in that sand.

On rare occasions, Uncle Bob would get out his shotgun and take us up to the wood line, where that California scrub oak and manzanita made perfect cover for the coveys of quail that inhabited the valley.  He would shoot two or three of them, and they would become a delicious adjunct to that evening's supper.

Once in a while a hapless gopher snake would slither into our area of operations.  We would catch it and put it in one of the empty gallon jugs that seemed to be everywhere in Uncle Bob's garage.  As soon as we tired of looking at it, we would let it go.  Uncle Bob told us not to kill snakes, because they were important in keeping down the rodent population, especially the gophers that terrorized Aunty Mit's vegetable garden.

As Lee and I became more familiar with the valley, we expanded our range to the next valley just over hill.  There was a narrow path through the woods that opened into another large valley, but this one was uninhabited. It was here that I saw my first deer in the wild and first hunted alone.  It was a secret place that belonged to Lee and I.  We would spend many hours there, toting a 22 rifle, eating our rations of Life Savers, always searching for the enemy; quail and rabbits and birds.

Eventually we would have to return home to Larkin Street, but it was always with new skills and knowledge we had picked up on our daily adventures.
Salinas!  How could it have been any less wonderful than the Belgian Congo, the Australian Out-back, the Amazon Jungle, or the Gobi Desert.

Noel
 

I lived in California in the 1950's. The area was still agrarian. People let us on their land and we used to explore like you and your brother. We were in heaven. I went back to visit several years ago and was shocked by the growth and the land being occupied. Bittersweet, but I still have the memories.

 

Bill W.

Great story, Noel!  No mention of Castroville....The artichoke capital??  Nothing better than getting an order of french fried artichokes! 😀

Bill, my wife and drove out to California to visit my brother a few years ago.  We came up Highway 1 from Cambria, where we stayed overnight, to Monterey.  Then we cut over to Salinas and went up 101 and turned onto the Vierra Canyon Road at Prunedale.  It was totally unrecognizable,  No open fields and Ed Van Rhenterghems chicken ranch was gone.  I would never have been able to locate the spot where my aunt and uncle's home was.

Progress!

Charlie, I should have mentioned Castroville.  My aunt and uncle had friends who lived there.  I prefer steamed artichokes where you peel off the tender leaves and dip them in lemon butter.

Noel

Edited May 28, 20215 yr by birdguy

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

 

Charlie, I should have mentioned Castroville.  My aunt and uncle had friends who lived there.  I prefer steamed artichokes where you peel off the tender leaves and dip them in lemon butter.

Noel

Steamed artichoke leaves and heart dipped in mayo, chopped garlic and lemon juice! 🧄🍋

Steamed artichokes dipped in anything! I like garlic butter, or Ranch dressing, or, or...

 Another great story Noel. Thanks.

Edited May 28, 20215 yr by Penzoil3

It's good to meet another "Salinas hunter" Noel. I spent many happy days of my youth there in the early 1950's hunting crows in the lettuce fields. The crows were a real problem for the lettuce growers so a bounty was placed on their heads. Take two crows feet and a beak to the Fish and Game office and they would reward you with 15 cents. We'd load up the .22's on Saturday mornings and one of the Moms or Dads would drive us to the fields. It was kind of like a poor kids safari every week. The hunting wasn't very hard and the rewards were great. On a good day you could make over two dollars. And that bought a lot of comic books, Hershey bars, and bubble gum.

Another benefit of the fields was the free lettuce. Back then they didn't field-pack the lettuce. Rather, it was picked and loaded onto open-air trailers to be driven to the packing sheds in town. The trailers were piled so high that many heads would fall off and lay by the roadside. On our weekly Friday-night trip to Sears Roebuck  in Salinas we'd just stop and pick up a few of the abandoned heads for the next weeks salads. 

As the man said...thank's for the memories.

 

Remember Castroville? "The Artichoke Capital of the World?" Got familiar with Salinas in the 70s stationed at Defense Language Institute at Monterey. My Syrian instructor lived there. My kids have finally convinced me that none of my stories are suitable for tender ears, though, so further affiant sayeth not.