Growing Up As A Girl Child In America: Part 7
Living the glamorous life in 60s and 70s Palm Springs
When I returned to my hometown of Redlands, California as a young married woman, my mother’s high school and college friends took me out to lunch several times. They wanted me to know what my mother Sterling Sturtevant was like.
We were at lunch when Luellen Wilshire, whose father Blackie had been my grandfather Bampy’s best friend, said in a hushed tone, “We were all so intimidated by your grandmother, Amy.”
“You — you were?” I said. I had been intimidated by her my whole life.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
“They used to call her the most beautiful woman in Redlands,” Luellen said.
Even Helen Harris, whose father was Mr. Harold, one of the three Harris brothers who owned Harris’ Company department stores, agreed.
My grandmother worked in Ready-to-Wear at Harris Co. for 25 years, only stepping down from her role dressing the fashionable women of the community when my mother died of pancreatic cancer at age 40.
A few days after my mother’s death, Nana drove to Hollywood, plucked me out of my nurse Nessie’s arms, and drove back with me to town. My father was at work and my brother, ten years older, was at school.
I’m now a bit older than my grandmother was when she took a premature baby away from her father and brother and embarked on her next life project.
I think, having lost one daughter, she wanted to try again to create the perfect child.
PS: I Love You
My hometown of Redlands is mid-way between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. For decades before I was born, celebrities stopped there for meals and drinks on the way to their desert hideaways. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz reportedly ate at Phil’s English Pub on Highway 99 (now Redlands Blvd.). Desi would go inside, but Lucy preferred to eat in their chauffeured car. The Rams trained at the University of Redlands in the summer. TV host and much-older girlfriend of movie star Burt Reynolds, Dinah Shore, owned a house in town as well as a mid-century getaway pad in Palm Springs.
Most kids my age spent weekends in the mountains or at the beach, and I did, too, but my grandparents loved the desert. My grandfather Bampy, a high school and college athlete, had undergone two hip replacements. The first were unsuccessful, but the second two gave him several years of pain-free life and mobility.
Bampy’s arthritis was the main reason, Nana said, that we went to Palm Springs so often. But Palm Springs only has one natural hot mineral spring and it is owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. It was a spa when I was growing up, but I was always told it was too expensive.
Instead, we went to Desert Hot Springs where there are many mineral hot spring spas and resorts. In the 60s and 70s, most spas in Desert Hot Springs were plain and simple mineral pools, trailer courts, and small motels, full of elderly people who, like my grandfather, sought relief from pain.
There was one exception: Two Bunch Palms.
We would drive up Palm Drive, the main road to the homely little town of Desert Hot Springs, and pass a secret and serene-looking oasis of palms and natural rock walls.
“Can we go there?” I’d ask.
The answer was always “no,” until one day, it was “yes.”
I never forgot entering the guarded gate to Two Bunch Palms. Back then this spa and resort was still a retreat for mobsters and film and TV personalities. Beyond the gate was the most beautiful location I could have ever imagined, with blue mineral water pools set into natural rock, and secret passageways between native palms and smoke trees that a child could explore.
The Glamorous Desert Life
Sometimes, not always, on these desert weekends, there’d be time to drive over to Palm Springs, with its endless shops and eateries on Palm Canyon Drive.
Nana knew most, if not all, of the designers and boutiques on this famous boulevard.
One day after Bampy died, she announced, “Get in the car, we’re going to Palm Springs.”
So we did. First, we ate at Louise’s Pantry, a tiny diner on Palm Canyon Drive in the center of town where the waitresses knew us. I had a salad with three little scoops of tuna, chicken, and egg salad. I knew better than to ask for any dessert although the display cases were filled with beautiful multi-layered cakes and thick slices of pie.
I tried to impress Nana by drinking my coffee black, just like her.
We walked up and down Palm Canyon Drive, mostly window shopping, but we went into the big stores, like Bullocks Wilshire and Robinsons. Eventually, we went into a designer boutique on the north side of the street. Nana had known the owner, a former costume designer for film and TV, for years.
They were talking and I paid little attention, mesmerized by the desert garden behind the shop. It was planted with agave and cholla among artfully scattered desert boulders. A little bird landed next to a small pond and began to bathe.
Nana’s friend suddenly took my hand, smiled warmly, and patted my cheek.
“Lyda,” she said. “Your daughter has such beautiful bone structure.”
“She’s not my daughter,” Nana said. She grabbed my arm and we left the boutique.
She was silent all the way home. We drove in the deepening shadows from San Jacinto, the mountain that looms over Palm Springs.
Bampy loved the desert. And there is little like a soft desert night with a mourning dove calling in the distance, the gentle caress of the desert wind on your cheeks. Draw a sweater close and breathe the crisp air, the creosote and the sand.
At the foot of the mountain was the tram station. I used to ask, “Can we take the tram?”
And once we did. It was dizzying to look down at the jagged rocks and deep canyons. At the top there was a small platform and paths through the snow.
Many years later, I’d take the tram again: a much larger, sturdier, safer-feeling conveyance. I would see the snow atop San Jacinto again.
I went with the man who is now my husband and he had never seen the desert before.
We kissed beneath the smoke tree as the mourning dove cried.
I enjoy your writing so much Amy! Your descriptive ways of making the reader feel they are there with you! The scenery of the desert for example sounds amazing. Reminds me of the first time I experienced Arizona and I lived in Utah at the time. The desert was full of breathtaking scenery!