Growing Up As A Girl Child In America: Part 6
Hunting and fishing with my grandfather and his best friend
My grandfather E. Norton Sturtevant was the son of my small Southern California town’s first assistant postmaster. He played all sports and was such a good football player that he attended the University of Redlands for six years.
He had a best friend, Blackie (Clarence) Wilshire. I liked nothing better than going hunting and fishing with Bampy and Blackie. I remember drives up to Oak Glen in Bampy’s Rambler.
Oak Glen was a mountain town about ten miles from our Mill Creek house where they grew apples. Blackie’s dad had settled there and planted apple orchards. My mother and aunt had gone to school with Blackie’s daughters.
I’m not sure my grandmother Nana loved Blackie all that much, but I did. I’d sit on Blackie’s lap and drink a cold glass of apple cider while he told stories and jokes.
Then we’d go out in search of deer, quail, or dove. Sometimes we took Rebel, the basset hound who’d patiently tolerated me learning to walk by hanging on his ears.
When we went quail hunting, I remember Rebel eagerly running to retrieve the quail. He’d come back with the bird in his mouth and lay it at Bampy’s feet.
Although Rebel did most of the fetching, Bampy loved telling the other men that I was his “bird dog.”
No matter what type of game the men were hunting, I had to be quiet and still. For birds, the men used shotguns. Bampy had a .20 gauge Remington. The stock was shiny and some of the finish was worn from years of use, but he kept the barrel well-oiled. I liked the way his gun oil smelled.
When he’d come home after shooting and take off his shirt, his brown chest would be bruised on the right side.
When I was about ten years old, Bampy asked me if I wanted to try shooting the .20 gauge.
This day we were hunting dove. We were beside a stream on the far side of Oak Glen peaks, near Cherry Valley. On the far side of the stream were small oaks and tall grass.
Bampy braced himself against a big rock and I leaned against him as he sent Rebel to flush the dove from the stand of grass where they were hiding.
He held his shotgun partly in front of me and put my finger on the trigger, and his own big finger over mine.
Blackie started laughing.
When the birds flew out of the grass, he pulled the trigger, along with me.
If the rock hadn’t been there, I’m sure I would have knocked my grandfather to the ground.
When the shotgun fired, it felt like being slapped with a big piece of wood. The cartridge fell to the ground.
“Go ahead, bird dog,” Bampy said.
I already had a small canvas bag tied around my waist.
Even though my ears were ringing and nose burning from the smell, I ran across the little stream and started collecting the birds.
A few were still trying to fly. Most lay still on the ground or nestled silently in the tall grass.
I picked up about ten birds and ran back to my grandfather.
“Do you want to get them ready to take home?” Bampy asked.
I nodded, yes.
He took one of the birds out of the canvas bag and grabbed its head firmly in one hand and body in his other hand. Then he twisted and pulled off the head, and held the body upside-down. Blood drained out: not that much. Wild dove are not very big and don’t have a lot of blood.
Then he held his big hands over mine as I did it. I was shaking but he told me, “you can do it,” and I did.
After that, I was on my own. I drained all the birds of blood and put them in a big plastic bag.
That night, Nana and I plucked the small birds. She showed me how to get the shot out of their chests, but we still had some that had a few bits of birdshot in them when it came time for dinner.
Wild dove don’t taste like chicken. The meat is dark and the taste is strong. They taste like what they feed on: weeds and seeds.
Fishing With Blackie and Bampy
One day I went fishing in a mountain stream with Blackie and Bampy. Both were about the same height and weight, medium-sized men, and strong and broad-chested. They were both dark bronze from spending all of their time out in the Southern California sun. Blackie often wore overalls, like you’d see people on television shows featuring “country” folk.
Bampy had a bunch of trout flies in a tackle box in the garage. I liked to ask him what each one was good for, and I’m not sure all of them got used. Years later, I realized he would make up names for them, like “Yellow-bellied pond snapper.”
We went out early in the morning, walking quietly between the pines. I remember the brown needles feeling deep and soft under my feet.
The stream was like all Southern California streams: small, rocky, and wild.
I knelt by the edge of the stream and saw a long-legged frog. It immediately jumped away.
Blackie joked about going frogging instead of fishing.
No one caught any fish that day.
But another day, we got night crawlers and went to Jenks Lake. This was the least-pretty of the mountain lakes, but Bampy and Blackie caught a lot of fish. Even I caught a couple of bass.
Bampy taught me how to scale and gut the fish.
Nana and I fixed them for supper.
When I was young and we lived in the orange grove, we had oranges right off the trees. Bampy also had a row of lemons, some grapefruit, and blood oranges.
He kept banty hens, and we had eggs from the hens. We had a small garden and it was dark and cool back of the screen porch where I liked to play. There was a row of fig trees and I and Nana preferred the green figs, while Bampy liked the bigger, sweeter dark ones.
We ate the fish we caught and the game that Bampy shot when he went hunting with Blackie. Other friends had a turkey ranch, so we had fresh turkey for Thanksgiving, and another friend had a rabbit ranch. Unlike dove or quail, rabbit does taste a lot like dark meat chicken.
One time Blackie went frogging and I had frog legs. The little bones were see-through.
Trout was the fish we’d have most often.
This is a kind of life that people have had forever.
It seems to me that in our country today, however, it’s fading away.
Hollywood vs. Real Life
My mom and dad bought a house in the Hollywood Hills when she was working at UPA. When I watched Bonanza, I’d think how Pa Cartwright reminded me of Bampy and Blackie.
Pernell Roberts, the tall, handsome actor who portrayed the oldest Cartright son, lived somewhere around my dad’s house in Hollywood. I saw him twice at Musso & Frank’s, my dad’s favorite local restaurant on Hollywood Blvd.
My brother Sam tells the story of how he and his friend liked to play pranks at the Yamashiro Palace, a Japanese hillside restaurant between my dad’s house and Hollywood Blvd. In the 60s, the Yamashiro had small cabins on its large grounds. There were koi ponds, paths, and Japanese trees.
Sam said he and his friend tied fishing line between two trees across the pathways. They’d hide and watch to see if anybody walking by would trip.
They heard some noises in one of the cabins and peered inside, where they saw Pernell Roberts and a woman.
The boys giggled too loudly at the romantic action. Pernell came rushing out yelling, only to trip on the fishing line.
Sam and his friend took off in different directions. Sam ran all around the bottom of the hill and back up the other side to my dad’s house, a distance I know from my own experience, was at least two-and-a-half miles.
Breathless, Sam stumbled down the flight of over 100 stairs to the house. Pernell Roberts and our dad were standing there, along with his shame-faced friend.
Ten years later, there were still a few outdoor places to play in on my dad’s hill above Hollywood Blvd. And there was and is still, the Yamashiro Palace.
Musso & Franks! Never been, but it features prominently in histories of stand-up comedy, for some reason.
The kind of life you describe will be the best available to humans, soon.