Ruminations From the Western Slope

Ruminations From the Western Slope
Colorado River near Moab, Utah

Thursday, July 30, 2020

The First Time


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.






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