I grew up in San Dimas Canyon, in Southern California. It was an idyllic childhood. My parents were wildly in love, and the place was beautiful. I went to La Verne Heights Elementary, a K-8 school surrounded by orange groves.
A beautiful driveway lined with liquid ambers led to our house. I published a chapbook of poetry about the canyon titled Partway to Wolfskill. Because my book The Ship from Wolfskill and I began in San Dimas Canyon, it seemed important to show how a “canyon boy” like Will might feel when Freebooters threaten his home. In Members of the Cast, Maggie and Chris drive to San Dimas Canyon. I have a cameo in that chapter.
The poem “Liquid Ambers” has these lines:
In an old music book,
On page 370
I found a perfect pressed leaf…
That leaf is 70 years old and is still there—unchanging.
.
Our house was a unique, redwood-sided home under the oak trees. The living room had a large fireplace, and the West wall had four huge windows that gave a lovely view of the canyon and the mountain across the way. I was an only child with my maternal grandmother living in a little house down on one of the flats.
My morning red mountain.
In 1963 the LA County Flood Control decided they needed our land to dump silt from a small dam up the canyon. My father loved his place and was heartbroken that it was going away. All three of us, I suppose, were in shock.
We moved to San Dimas after Christmas in 1964. I was 17 and do not remember the move to town.
Here is a picture of the land as it was with grand old oaks and a second picture showing it as it is today. Thanks, LA County Flood Control.
Notice the little tree on the top of the round hill down on the old Malone Ranch. (Acres and acres of orange trees gave way to the golf course.) I don’t think that tree has grown much in 60 years.
We always drove second-hand cars when I was a kid. Lots of my parents’ friends got a new car every three years. It was a big deal to drive to someone’s house in your new car and take everyone for a ride. I remember when Ken and Connie got a ’57 Ford with the glittery gold stripe across the door. We didn’t take the ’52 Ford to our friends because we got it in 1956, and everyone had seen a ’52 Ford.
Instead of cars, my folks had land in a canyon. While everyone else lived in subdivisions, we didn’t need curtains because there were only oaks near our house. Our first new car was a ’62 Comet. It had a tiny engine, and my folks didn’t take anyone for a drive. Instead, friends came to the canyon to sit on the porch or by the fireplace and look out at the oaks.
There was a long-drawn-out struggle when County Flood control decided we should live in a tract house with curtains so they could dump 75 feet of dirt on Beckman land. During the horror of the time, my parents were offered a nearly new ’64 Buick Rivera to keep an escrow on the place open. My folks didn’t want a ’64 Rivera. They wanted their house in the canyon, but they gave in to a fellow who had been trying to buy the place. Dad told “Eddie” that the place was under eminent domain. Eddie said, “I’ll beat ’em, Jack.” A new house would be built for us in the same location as the redwood house.
So, my folks got the Buick, and the escrow stayed alive, which gave LA County Flood Control a headache because the price per acre was triple what they had in mind. (Apparently, even LA County Flood control has to file papers with LA County when declaring eminent domain—which they did, but not until after the escrow was in place.) I always considered the Buick blood money.
My mom drove the car until 1986. It was black and beautiful.
My parents are gone. Of course, the canyon place has been under dirt for 58 years. Their Arizona house has been sold. When I decided to sell the Buick, I knew that one of the last remnants of my childhood was going with it.
I sold it to Matthew’s barber, Richard, who has plans to make it beautiful again. He called one day and said he always named his cars and wanted to know my mom’s name. I said Delores, and he laughed. “That’s perfect,” he said, “Delores, it is.”
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