Summers at the Ranch

My family spent most holidays and weeks at a time during the summer at my grandmother’s ranch in the California Delta town of Rio Vista. The Central Valley swelters in the summer (as opposed to Daly City and the Bay Area where the frigid summer fog regularly arrived in the afternoon--winter and summer alike). I like hot weather, and I really loved being at the ranch.

We spent time running through the sprinkler; gathering eggs from the hen houses with my grandmother; sitting in the cleaning room listening to the women chat while they wiped off the eggs; climbing in the apricot and pear trees;  exploring the sheep barn; “helping” Uncle Louie (Lewis, officially); and riding on the tractor over the rolling hills, trying not to fall onto the dreaded star thistle.

What I remember most about those hot, idyllic days is making root beer floats in mayonnaise jars and drinking them while reading comic books we bought in town-- Archie, Betty and Veronica, Richie Rich and Baby Huey.  I must have felt stuffed from so much root beer, but I just remember feeling completely satisfied.

My sister and I refused to drink the milk from my uncle’s cows—my mother had to bring store-bought milk from town. We ate Portuguese sweetbread for holidays, spinach with spicy linguisa sausage, and 1950’s jello salads. If we were visiting during the Holy Ghost Festival in Rio Vista, there was delicious barbequed lamb. Unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate the fresh figs from the fig tree and maybe ate only a handful during my entire childhood—if only I had a fig tree now!

We must have eaten the occasional chicken or two that had stopped laying, but I don’t remember doing that. I do remember once watching my uncle butcher a chicken by hanging it from a tree and chopping off its head—then tossing the head to me.  I watched in horror as the head bounced along the ground and the carcass continued to flap its wings for a few minutes after the gristly deed took place.