In those days the hill had not been hacked away to make streets, and where now is a great gash to let First Street through there was then a breezy, open hill-top, whereon grew brush and wild-flowers. The poppies in those days were eschscholtzias (the learning to spell the name was a feat of my eighth year), and were not subjected to the ignominy of being painted with poinsettias on fringed leather souvenirs for tourists. The yellow violets were gallitas, little roosters, perhaps because in the hands of children they fought to the death, their necks hooked together until one or the other was decapitated. The brodiæas, or wild hyacinths, sometimes now called “rubbernecks,” were called cacomites, (four syllables), a word of Aztec origin brought to California by people from Mexico where it was applied to a different flower but one having like this one a sweet edible root.
Between the weeds and bushes there were bare spots of ground where, by careful searching, one might find faint circles about the size of a “two-bit” piece. Wise ones knew that these marked the trap doors of tarantula nests. It was sport to try to pry one open, with mother spider holding it closed. We young vandals would dig out the nests, interested for a moment in the silky lining and the tiny babies and then would throw away the wrecked home of the gorgeous black velvet creatures that did no harm on the open hill side.
At this house Harry and I conducted an extensive “essence factory,” collecting old bottles far and near, and filling them with vari-colored liquids, obtained by soaking or steeping different flowers and leaves. We used to drink the brew made from eucalyptus leaves. The pepper infusion was pale, like tea; that made from old geraniums was of a horrible odor,—hence we liked to inveigle innocent grown folks into smelling it. The cactus solution was thick, like castor oil, and we considered it our most valuable product, having arrived thus early at the notion that difficulty of preparation adds to the cost of a manufactured article.
North of us were several houses containing children—and here I found my first girl play-mates—Grace and Susie, Bertha and Eileen. The level street at Court and Hill, protected on three sides by grades too steep for horses, was our safe neighborhood playground. I never go through the tunnel that now has pierced the hill without hearing, above the roar of the Hollywood car, the patter of flying feet, the rhythms of the witch dances, the thud-thud of hop-scotch, the shouting boys and girls defending goals in Prisoner’s Base, the old, old song of London Bridge, or the “Intry mintry cutry corn” that determined who was “it” for the twilight game of Hide-and-Seek—and then the varied toned bells in the hands of mothers who called the children home.
We played school, jacks, marbles, tag, and an adaption of Peck’s Bad Boy, and, between whiles, dolls. Even Harry played with them when we were still youngsters—say eight or nine. He didn’t seem young to me then—he was just himself. I called him “Hab.” My aunt tells of finding us once about our housekeeping, he doing the doll family washing, and I papering the house. In our menage there was no sex distinction as to the work to be done.
We girls, as we grew a little older, had a collection of small dolls, none over four inches long, and the various marriages, deaths, and parties kept us busy. I tailored for the whole group, having apparently a talent for trousers, which early experience undoubtedly encouraged me in later life to gather in all the stray pantaloons to cut over into knickerbockers for my numerous boys.
Raids on the Chinese vegetable wagon provided supplies for our cooking over a row of small, outdoor fire-places we had built in a low bank in our yard. Once my mother was much disturbed to find a little pot of squirrel meat cooking on the stove. She needn’t have worried, for I knew as well as she that strychnine, slipped into a small piece of watermelon rind, transferred its evil potency to the body of the little beast that ate it. But it was sport to hang him up as I had seen the men do at the ranch when butchering a sheep, to skin him and dress the meat, and pretend it was a stew for Isabel, the doll. I had a large collection of squirrel skins tacked up on the barn at the Shepherd house.
After a couple of years we built our own house in the same neighborhood on the south-east corner of Court and Hill Streets. It began as a seven room cottage, white with green blinds to suit father. Later the roof was raised and a second story inserted and the house painted a more fashionable all-over gray, to suit the ladies.
My mother was a happy woman when, after eleven years of married life, she moved into her very own home. A few months later she suddenly died, leaving my father widowed a second time, a lonely man for the remaining fourteen years of his life.
Mother had never been a strong woman and was unable to withstand an attack of typhus fever, contracted when on an errand of kindliness to a sick and forlorn seamstress. I often wish I might have an adult’s knowledge of mother,—my child memories are beautiful. She was tall and slender, with quantities of heavy brown hair, dark eyes, and unusual richness of color in her cheeks which is repeated in some of her grandchildren. It amuses me to recall that I had such absolute faith in her word that on one occasion when she had visited my school and a girl remarked upon what a beautiful mother I had, I stoutly denied the allegation, for had she not herself assured me that she was not pretty?