Santa Barbara has everything, the sea on one side, the mountains on the other; a downtown district metropolitan enough for any one, clean and spacious, a residential area as relaxed and friendly as a small town. The people are comfortable and easy going, the climate so perfect that you never even think about it. Flowers everywhere, and exotic trees, like palms and eucalyptus and live oak, acacia and pepper trees.
But for us it is more than that, it is a place of sentimental memories, for here our only brother made his home years ago, and here our father and mother spent many placid hours in their latter years. So we not only wanted to enjoy the things all tourists enjoy here, but the things we remembered our parents especially enjoying: like the huge gnarled fig tree with its tortured roots, down by the railroad station, the bird refuge, the place up on Alameda Padre Serra where our father often talked of buying a lot and putting up a home (but never did), the church and the park within walking distance, the magnificent court house, and all the favorite walks from which our father used to come home with a pocketful of odd seeds and a twinkle in his eye. He planted many of those seeds, either in Santa Barbara or back home in Illinois; he raised sequoia trees to be two feet high, and to this day there is a date palm in a corner of Edith's yard that he started from a seed. It is not much over a foot high now and is probably 15 years old, so it is not likely to make a problem of space for some time to come.
We had thought that with three days or so to spend, we would have oceans of time to buy gifts and souvenirs, but we never did get down town long enough to shop. There didn't seem to be any rush at any time, and we were having such a good time elsewhere. We just admired the windows as we drove through and let it go at that. The first afternoon and night of course we had to drive past all the memory-places, winding up high on the mountain side where we could see the lighted city spread out below us, cupped between the heights and the sea. And every night we looked at a few reels of the old family movies, reminding us of happy times half forgotten. Sometimes we had tray dinners around the fireplace, visiting among ourselves or with callers; one night we had a beach picnic, and it was cold, but impressive to see and hear the waves come thundering in under the moon. Once we went out for Chinese dinner, and afterward drove north to the village of Goleta and sat in a drive-in theater to see two shows that we could have seen at home that very week. It is curious how much at home a person can be anywhere in the states or in Canada, you will find the same movies, the same dime stores, the same chain groceries, the same varieties of eating houses using just about the same china and style of service. So whatever strange new factors enter in, you always have that little hold on familiarity.
One afternoon we went on a garden tour and saw four beautiful beach houses with their gardens and one mountain home with the biggest display of succulents we ever saw anywhere. In one of the beach houses we saw some really fine flower arrangements with driftwood, and that set us off on the ambition to bring home a piece of driftwood to use here. We did, eventually, find a piece but it is rather a ratty-looking one compared to the beauties we saw there. But at least it is driftwood, or we think it is.
One day we went driving up the Santa Ynes valley. Years ago on my only other trip to California, we had driven down the Ojai valley toward Pasadena. On this trip we recalled having heard of many valleys around California, and we asked, "The San Joaquin valley, for instance. Where is that?" "Oh," said Edith and Jean cheerfully, "that is about six or seven valleys over." So you see Santa Barbarans have no shortage of places to go, -- if they are tired of one range of hills they just go over beyond into some other valley for a change. But in this particular valley we had some interesting adventures indeed. For one thing we came on a beautiful town called Solvang, which is Danish and as true to its mother-land as if it had been transplanted bodily. We took time there to buy some groceries for a picnic and to browse through a gift shop where Danish ware was emphasized. My purchase was some baskets that thrilled me as being very very Scandinavian. It was not till we got home that we noticed the label on the bottom said Made in Hongkong.
After our picnic in the environs of this thatch-roofed town, we visited the Santa Ynes mission and a little farther north La Purissima mission. This series of Franciscan missions has always fascintated us, and we always had been told that they were built a day's journey apart, for the convenience of weary travelers. The padre at Santa Ynes squelched that theory, however. He said they were much farther apart than that, and they were not built in order, but were built where situations were favorable. There had to be water and there had to be clay or suitable materials for brick, and there had to be Indians for the padres to work among. The Indians in this area were the Cuchamas, and at the present time a big dam to supply water to Santa Barbara is under construction, called, after that tribe, Cuchama Dam.
La Purissima was especially interesting, although at present it doesn't seem to have any padres in residence; it is under the control of the State Park system, and has been reconstructed to look as much as possible as it did in the original days. Great crews of CCC boys (remember them, back in leaf-raking days?) actually made bricks by hand and rebuilt the mission according to plans on record. It is a huge place, still not finished, but it is complete with chapel and rooms for the padrers, but guard rooms and stables, wash-house, and a dormitory for Indian girls, and an infirmary and other buildings. To say nothing of the elaborate garden surrounded by pear trees, with four lovely pools for beauty, from which the overflow water ran into other pools for lavenderia, or laundries, and from there to settling pools from which it was guided off in canals to irrigate the fields.
From La Purissima we drove on north to Lompoc, where our sister-in-law Edith used to teach, and near which many flower seeds are produced in huge colorful fields. We were too late in the season to see the bulk of these, but we did see acres of asters and zinnias and such late flowers. They told of one big field, which we didn't see, in which the flowers were arranged to represent the American flag. And only nine miles from Lompoc stands Camp Cooke, where our own Illinois National Guard is under training. Some of our home town boys are among them, but it was too late to go out and try to locate them on this trip.
Sunday, our last day in Santa Barbara, we went to the church our mother liked so well, where our brother was so active as long as he lived and where his widow and daughter still help in many ways. Then we had several quiet hours on the sunlit beach and in late afternoon visited the Mission. We had expected it to be the highlight of the trip, so thoroughly impressed had we been on our other visit, but the effect was not the same. The towers have had to be torn down and are being rebuilt. The parking space had been much enlarged, altering the effect of the round well we remembered in the front yard: and so much construction material had to be piled about that we couldn't get the same compassionate feeling toward the graves of the Indians and the vaults of the early workers in the Mission. Even the decorations in the chapel seemed more elaborate. -- not so primitive or so typically Indian as we remembered them. However, we did find, and buy, in the souvenir rooms an exquisite carved Madonna of pearwood, only seven or eight inches tall, but so simple, slender and smooth, so truly spiritual in effect that it will be a joy forever. Perhaps when the rebuilding is all complete and the rubble cleared away, the Mission will regain some of the gentle simplicity we remember. Right now it is too busy, too modern. We were almost sorry that we went.
The last evening we spent quietly around the fireplace, visiting with callers who dropped in, and wound up with the last of the family movies; thus concluding a perfect visit. But before going on with the rest of our trip, we ought to tell you a little about earthquakes, for after all, that is the only flaw in the ointment out there, and the bad should be mentioned with the good. -- Hope.