Part 7

Deer Springs Ranch lay five miles inland at an elevation of 1800 feet above the coast road skirting the Pacific shore. At the junction where our ranch road met the coast highway was a small family operated service station and store that sold various items including fishing equipment. Christenson was the family's name. There was a mother and father and three draft age sons, boys who later would be called up to military service as we found ourselves drawn into the war.

The Christenson family tended lobster traps close by their place. Once they gave us a freshly caught live lobster so we could try cooking one for ourselves. Instructing Mary in how to prepare and serve it, they told her to cook it alive in boiling water.

Mary thought it would be too cruel to drop it into already boiling water, so she put it in a pot of cold water and set it on the stove to heat slowly. As the water started to heat the lobster became agitated, knocking the lid off the pot and splashing water all over the place before flopping onto the floor. We never did cook that lobster. Instead Mary insisted that we take it to the beach and put it back in the ocean.

Nature worked tortuously to create the maze of canyons and ridges, meadows and streams that make up the coastal slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains. Like the backbone of some prehistoric monster a knobby rock escarpment called Old Boney raises to dominate the highest point between the ocean and the inland valley to the east. Ribs of lesser ridges cleave to that rocky backbone as they slope off west to the sea coast or east the inland valley.

Few who lived in Los Angeles, short miles away, even knew about this wild natural world so near by. Mountain sides and coastal slopes were densely covered with sumac, holly, sage, oak, sycamore, grasses and lesser undergrowth. In this wild country trails had to be cut by hand before a man on horseback could move through thickets of verdant growth.

From time to time across the decades great wind driven fires cleaned these rough ridges and canyons, leaping from ridge to ridge leaving unburned pockets in deep canyon bottoms providing refuge for fleeing animals. Black tail deer population at Deer Springs Ranch was around 25 per square mile. Herds of deer came to feed in our fields and orchards at night as well as during the day. The damage they left behind was heavy, and we felt justified and repaid in some small way when we shot and dressed out a young animal for meat.

Our nearest neighbor, "Hopalong Cassidy" lived a half mile away. His was a famous screen name in early cowboy movie making. William Boyd, the man who played Hopalong Cassidy, was a prudent business man to go along with his acting talent. He had constructed a rambling Spanish style home with archway porches and a red tiled roof. His house sat on a ridge point providing a dramatically beautiful view of the Pacific.

Both William Boyd and his wife worked in the movie industry. They were more often away from their ranch than at home. Laurence and Betty Houston lived and worked as caretakers on the Boyd Ranch. Like Mary and myself they too were newly marrieds working their first job together.