Cedar Slope Memories
Melinda Pillsury-Foster
We visited the Franz Family in Central Valley sometimes!
From left, Cap, Beverly and her sister, Melinda and Little Stevie.
I was five years of age the first year my family began its yearly journey from Los Angeles to the cedar pungent mountains of the Sequoias. At that point in my life the trip from our home on Colby Avenue to the heights of the mountains was an adventure itself. Over the years stopping to get gas and to eat before, “going up the Mountain,” became part of a ritual that took me from one kind of life to another one that was very different.
At home we lived on a street inhabited by an eclectic collation of families, around half of them with one or the other parent worked at UCLA; the No. 8 bus line went by on National, just two short blocks to the north of us and delivered parents and students neatly into the entrance in Westwood. Phil Silvers lived just a few houses down the street from us on the other side with a yappy little poodle and John Wooden lived next door to Mr. Silvers. Coach Wooden was a good friend of my Dad's and taught all of us to play basketball from the time we were able to bounce it once or twice. Around the corner lived the Lloyd Bridges family with a whole half basketball team of kids. Mr. Bridges and my Dad were both Scout Masters for Troop 70 when my older brother, Cap, and the Bridges Boys were working their way through the Scout Program.
The trip up the 190 took us into a different world, one that blended stories of boy boys, mountain men, and brought up recollections from my Dad of his years growing up in Yosemite. Making it up the 190 was itself an adventure in those days.
While we no longer had to wait on the hour at a pull out so that traffic could either go up or down on a one way road, we were often stopped on long, hot, waits while we heard the distant or not so distant boom of dynamite that was used to widen the path for the new road. At those times Dad would estimate by walking forward and talking to the flag man how long a particular wait would be before letting up get out and 'occupy' ourselves. We knew not to go too far afield; none of us wanted any more delay in reaching the Slope.
It was a coincidence of time and family that began our connection to this section of the Sierras; given slightly different timing we would probably have continued our trips to Yosemite, where we visited the sites of Dad's childhood, each year instead. But Uncle Chuck, my mother’s next older sibling, owned a cabin there on lot 7. Uncle Chuck lived in Oildale at that time and was in charge of the oil lines for Standard Oil in that area. He, along with everyone else, baked during the week and hungered for someplace high in the cool air of the pines, cedars, and sequoias. Through casual talk Uncle Chuck learned that one of the oil field workers, Paul Gordeuk, was building cabins in the mountains. From Paul, who was surprised to be summoned to the head office, Uncle Chuck learned about Cedar Slope and promptly bought one of the first cabins that had been built by Paul there. It was referred to as the Zumwalt cabin, for the family that had bought it originally from Les Bailey, the developer of Cedar Slope.
Dr. Zumwalt was a physician and the father of Elmo Zumwalt, the Admiral. The cabin was very cabinish, with a small bathroom off the porch with a shower that was made of metal and so sounded like a drum when you turned on the water. I liked that, actually. When I was still in the single digits taking a shower there was itself an adventure.
Naturally I did not learn the history of Cedar Slope all at one time, it trickled in through overheard conversation and then later, when I was an adult, through interviews with people who were older, for instance Paul Gordeuk. Paul told me fascinating things about all of the people who as a child I had known only from a child's viewpoint.
Les Bailey was a farmer down in the Valley and when I was a small child I thought of him as being older than God. He was different from anyone else I had every known at that point. His wife Ruth was a mine of information; she collected butterflies and had a collection under glass at their cabin above the road where she also provided Sunday School for us every Sunday Morning. Sunday School at Cedar Slope was a very different experience than it was at the little Congregational Church on the Hill in West Los Angeles.
Naturally, we started with a prayer. But Mrs. Ruth's prayers ventured into good wishes for all of us personally and for other living things. I liked that and sometimes would peek at her face as she prayed. She was usually smiling. After we prayed Mrs. Ruth read us a story about Jesus and we could ask questions. I liked this; any question was in order. After that Mrs. Ruth always had a project for us to do. Sometimes she would have had us bring things to use, like dry pine needles or pine cones or pressed flowers. Once she provided very nice forms and we poured plaster of paris in to the forms we liked and when they dried, we painted them. I still have mine to this day. After we cleaned up we got home made cookies and juice. Like I said, Sunday School was a very good thing.
At the cabin we could sleep inside at night or we could haul beds and sleep out on the porch or even bed down in a tent. In back of the main cabin there was a smaller building we called the Annex and some summers we kids would go there to sleep. Deciding what we were going to do was part of getting ready to go to the cabin every year.
The cabin itself was small and there were no doors inside, just a curtain across the doorway of the one bedroom.
One of the cupboards in the kitchen bore a map burned into surface a map of the cabins that were then in existence. There were not very many.
The fireplace was wide and inviting, formed with river rock and boasting a rough wood mantle which I could just touch if I climbed on one of the four footed stools which we kids used for chairs.
The table on which we ate had, I was told, been made by German POWs under the command of Zumwalt in the mountain camp to which they had been consigned. It was a good sized oval, surrounded by benches which matched the smaller stools. Beds were also army issue, tubing and unforgiving, springless mattresses.
In the kitchen there was both a wood stove, a real four burner with grill and a water resevoir in the back, which we managed to empty even when we were reluctant to bathe, which was the case in those early years. I learned to cook on that stove, sizzling bacon on cold mornings and cooking up platters of eggs and pan cakes as agreed to in some consensual way that now strikes me as effortless. Part of cooking was cutting the wood, outside next to the pile of ready materials.
The refrigerator was small, old and discouraged. It hummed a bright, high song thoughout the night, reminding us of its presence. But it held what we needed, producing occasional lumps of ice and enormous amounts of frost which must be hacked out before we left.
We washed our clothes in a ringer washing machine. I was eight when I was given the ominous pleasure of overseeing this process with the help of my two year younger brother, Stephen. Stephen has a way of getting his hands caught in the ringer, which necessitated my smacking the safety bar - and bring the process of cleansing to a temporary hiatus.
Wash day meant lines and lines of clothes slapping in the breeze and evenings spent folding the collection away into baskets. Jeans were the worst to clean. They came out stiff and scratchy, no matter how old they were. It generally took two days of wearing for them to recover from the process.
When we were not using the machine for washing clothes it served as a receptical for trout which had been hooked alive and kept fresh for future consumption.
There were lots of varmints that shared the cabin with us. One of these, a pushy mouse, could venture forth while lights were still on to retrieve abandoned food from the floor. One time I saw him trying to push a grape through his hole. He pushed and smacked it with his head and nose. Then, he began jumping up and down with frustration and glared at me when I laughed. We did not leave candy bars in our beds. They would be found with nips and chunks removed.
The mountains meant working. From the first year we spent there Father made it clear that vacation did not mean an endless round of entertainments. We built out ground for a sitting area, put in trails, repaired and improved existing structures, emptied the septic tank, which was, according to my father, clearly inadequate for even a much smaller building.
I was around ten when Father bought the adjacent lot from Uncle Chuck and we began leveling the place that he chose for a building site.
For the next six years our yearly duties narrowed to removing decomposed, and not decomposed granite, from the site, building out the level area and clearing brush. We had a great time. I came home every year with monumental callouses to hear about my friends trips to Hawaii. I never doubted that I had had the best of the deal.
I had worked along side Father and Uncle Chuck, who each exemplified all that adulthood ought to be. They joked and smiled through the day, scrambled together dinner at night and sorted reluctant children into chores. Mom had decided after the first year that going to the Cabin was not what she wanted to do.
To be continued......
