Hayward

My family moved to Hayward, CA when I was six years old. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was a small community of just under 10,000 when I first saw the "ranch" in 1954. I sat in the back seat of my parent's Chevrolet as we drove up into the hills on a winding road. My parents smoked. The worst was my mother's cigarettes. It often made me sick to my stomach when I was enclosed in a car; with the motion and the stench. It did little to complain. "Well, open your window," was all the response I'd get and it really didn't make it any better. I eventually learned not to say anything. Too bad they didn't realize at the time what they were exposing me to. Smoking was a part of the culture and you really couldn't get away from it.

On the right was a castle -- a real castle with a turret. Being a little girl with romantic fairytale imagination, it took me away to what it would be like to live in such a magnificent building; climbing up to the top of the turret to overlook my realm. There would be beautiful ponies to ride and colorful flags waving and I would wear such wonderful gowns. But that picture left me as quickly as we passed by.

When the winding road came to an end, we turned onto a dirt road for a short distance, and looking down a hill was a small house surrounded on one side with beautiful weeping willows. Behind the willows were larger old out buildings; chicken coops that were empty now. It was quite a downturn from that beautiful castle.

When we got out, we were greeted by a gaggle of geese. They were about as big as I was and I was sure they didn't like me. They hissed, opened up their wings and made threatening advances. All it took was the lady that lived there to say, "Careful, they bite" and I hid behind my daddy's legs as he and my mama talked to her. We made several more visits and finally took a walk around the 12 acres of property. Those pesky geese were still there so I kept close to daddy's legs. But once in the pasture, I was confronted with another obstacle -- cow patties. Some were dry and some fresh. I couldn't tell the difference and having never encountered such large amounts of manure, I didn't see how anyone could possibly walk out there and avoid them. My objections were the brunt of some laughter and I was insulted that they didn't take me seriously.

Next thing I knew, we moved into the little house. It had one bedroom, a small living room, a very old fashioned kitchen and small bathroom. Shortly after moving there, my mother's elderly aunt moved in with us, and my older sister was back from college. They shared the bedroom and my mother, father and I slept in the living room. My father immediately began building an addition to the house. He had help on weekends from my uncle Jim who stayed with us and slept in my youth bed and me between mom and dad.

I look back on this and can only imagine what a stressful time my parents must have had. They sank everything they owned into buying "the ranch" and building the addition progressed only when they had enough money for the next project. I can only imagine what they went through when the following year I started to get seriously sick.

That school year I came down with about every childhood disease there was, the most serious was Scarlet Fever. The doctor made plenty of house calls that year and getting me into quarantine with such a houseful of so many people was the challenge. I can remember Dr. Gunther, after having diagnosed my symptoms talking to my mother in the kitchen telling her to quarantine me, and my mother in exasperation asking, "Where??" I remember mother telling the story of putting me, delirious with fever into the back of the car and driving me to a clinic where I had to stay in the car and a nurse, gowned and masked came out to give me a shot of penicillin, the new wonder drug of the time. It probably saved my life. My mother would comment how amazed she was at how quickly I responded. She would know, since she was a nurse and had attened may people with illnesses that were once very serious and now can easily be treated with antibiotics.

But regardless of these challenges the older family members faced, I don't ever remember feeling deprived or worried. Living on a "ranch" was an adventure for me. It wasn't anything like living in a neighborhood with bicycles, skates and sidewalks where you could always go out and find someone to play with. But here there were trees to climb, salamanders to catch, and my favorite, bobsledding down the dry grass on a piece of cardboard. We had beef cattle, my father raised corn one year and I had my two rows of popcorn, which, by the way lasted us for the next decade.
This is the house I was raised in, and this is the house I inherited and raised my family. I'm still here. Every once in awhile, we look at these nice new homes building up in the hills, but you know, when you stay in one place for a very long time, it's really hard to get excited about moving on. We keep comparing what we have here and nothing else seems to measure up.