From
infancy until I was about sixteen, I spent portions of each summer with my grandparents
at their farms in the San Joaquin Valley. When I was really young, it was at
“the old farm”. That was the one owned
by my maternal grandparents, Gregory and Katie, just west of Highway 99 in
Keyes, California. It was 20-acres of Thompson
seedless grapes and an old farmhouse that they’d acquired sometime in the
40s. By the time I was going there, the
old house had been replaced with a more modern, stucco edifice with a detached
garage. But there was still the old
windmill tower and several huge locust trees that dominated the property.
I
loved staying at that farm. I had a real
fondness for my namesake Popou Gregory, and I’d help him out in the fields with
weeding and other chores, like picking hornworms off of the tomato plants. And once a week we’d drive into Turlock where
the grands would let me roam through the old 5 & 10 Woolworth store and buy
a few comic books or toy dinosaurs that I could play with back at the
ranch. From the well-ordered vineyards
and vegetable gardens, I’d fashioned in my mind an untamed wilderness to roam
through. It was a great experience for
an eight year old with a big imagination.
My
Popou Gregory died suddenly in 1957 when I was ten years old, and after that my
summer visits happened at the “new farm”.
Which was a non-descript ranch-style home my paternal grandparents had
built off of Barnhart Avenue, about three miles from the old farm but much
closer to Highway 99, the main arterial through the central valley at that
time. I can remember running to the end
of the street when the big freight trains rolled through, and waving at the “hobos”
riding atop the box cars. This was about
the time that Southern Pacific was phasing out its old steam engines for the
much uglier but more efficient diesels.
My
Popou Gus and Nany Elenie had most of the farm planted in peaches with some
vineyards as well on their 20-acred plot.
A large dairy farm abutted the property so the smells of manure and
fresh alfalfa often wafted over the property.
I loved the freedom to roam around on my own but by this time I was
feeling less inclined to spending two weeks of my summer in the hot central
valley. For my folks, I’m sure it was a
great advantage to drop my sisters and I off at the Farm every summer, while
they went off on their own vacations, usually down to Southern California to
visit my Uncle John. But that meant that
we seldom took family vacations together.
In
any case, by the time I was fifteen I was spending most of my farm time reading
books under the grape arbor, or making comic books of my own. Once in a while I’d roam out to the edges of
the property where I could watch the cows over at the dairy farm. But just across the street from the farmhouse
was an unusual property, fronting on the main highway, that was part motel and part
residence. The large two-story house had
blue-tinted windows on its upper story, and was occupied by an old widow named
Mrs. Lazar. Occasionally my grandparents
would take us over there for a visit where she would serve us tea from a large
samovar she claimed she had saved as she was fleeing from the Bolsheviks during
the Russian Revolution. Her broken
English certainly gave her a cachet of credibility.
On
that fifteenth summer, two interesting things happened at the Lazar place. A large, above-ground Doughboy pool had been
installed, and a granddaughter named Linda was visiting. Linda had short blonde hair and was about my
age, and clearly as bored as I was with being stranded in the hot, dusty
valley. One day my sisters and I were
invited to come over and enjoy the pool with her,an invitation I was not about
to turn down. It had nothing to do with the
comely Linda and everything to do with getting wet and cool under the
unrelenting sun of the San Joaquin. But I
did notice, once we got to the house, that Linda was exceedingly friendly and
looked pretty damn good in a blue flowered swimsuit.
As
time went by, the four of us frolicked in the pool and Linda would often grab
on to me and pull me under the water. On
one of those occasions, she grabbed me close and gave me a hard and heartfelt
kiss. We were underwater so my sisters
had no idea of what was going on, and I was certainly surprised myself…especially
when she did it yet again. It was all I
could do to hold my breath and to keep the bulge in my swim trunks from being
too obvious. As naïve as I was, I
realized that something special was happening here and I needed to off-load my
siblings.
After
all these years, I’m not sure how we did it but eventually my sibs got out of
the pool and went back to the grands’ farmhouse across the street, leaving
Linda and I alone. We eventually got out
of the pool, stood against the old house, and kissed some more. I don’t recall
talking very much and, if we did, I’m sure it was quite awkward. But here I was finally able to practice a real
movie-type kiss, and having it reciprocated.
But there was also a sense of guilt as well, and a feeling that this
young woman was not only lonely but, given the circumstances, would probably go
much farther than a mere kiss.which terrified me at the time. She was clearly more worldly than I was. A yell from my Nany Elenie across the street
finally brought me back to earth, and the Farm.
For
me, what had happened that day was monumental…and I gave a lot of thought to
how I could get back over to the Lazar place and continue my amorous
activities. But the next day the Lazars
were not home. They had gone shopping in
Modesto. And the day after that, Linda
was gone….back with her parents, no doubt.
And I was left alone to ponder the incident, and write letters to my
friends to tell them what had happened.
Once my folks picked us up and took us back home to Mountain View, I
tried in vain to get in touch with Linda again but never could connect. And I wonder to this day what might have
happened to her. She seemed like the
type who probably got pregnant early and maybe went through a couple of divorces
and probably never found the companionship she was looking for.
As
for me, it would be another year or so before I could practice my kissing
skills again as I fumbled my way through high school relationships. And it would be many more years before I lost
my virginity. But I always felt that it
was Linda who pulled the little cord out from my back and wound me up for the
world of mystery, romance and heartache ahead.
I
did end up writing a little poem about it years later.
in my fifteenth
summer
I met the farmer’s daughter
who lived across the way
by
the walnut orchard
I was lanky adolescent
she was lonely young lady
sent
to draw me out of a turtles shell
and
setting my vision straight
her kiss was a fire in the magnet of August
the slow beginning
of
my long road into the light
an
overture to bottled down dreams
igniting
one day of a summer
I never saw her thereafter
wondering still if she were real
or a prophecy of women to come
later she said
later
later.
