About these earthquakes, we bring up the subject not only because it is in the forefront of interest at this time but because earlier earthquakes had a good deal to do with our family. Only a few weeks before we reached Santa Barbara this year, the city had been slightly damaged by a series of shudders, and it seemed to us people were still a little jittery. At least once in every group we were with. But as one woman remarked, "Back east you have floods and snows that last for weeks, and tornadoes that are just as terrifying and do as much damage, so why should we worry over quakes, which come and go so suddenly? They are awful, but they are over before you have time to worry, and in that respect at least they are less nerve-wracking than some other natural tragedies." Up at Bakersfield the damage this year was much more severe, they say, but we didn't see that. All we saw here was a few damaged buildings, -- a chimney down, a corner out of line. We would probably not have noticed even these traces if they hadn't been pointed out to us.
Then in going through the Missions we were reminded of the subject because both Santa Inez and La Purissima were ruined by the big quake of 1812 and had to be rebuilt, only about a dozen years after they were established.
But the earthquake that affected our family especially was the fairly big one of 1925. Edith showed us dozens of pictures of the Santa Barbara buildings at that time, -- but just the negatives. Our brother had taken the pictures himself, but the chamber of commerce or some officials had decreed at the time that no prints of such pictures should be made or distributed, as it would be bad publicity for the town. Our folks laughed at the idea then, but as years went on, their loyalty to their adopted hometown induced them never to have prints made. Some day these negatives will be collectors' items, -- for the day will come when Santa Barbara (if it is like most towns) will want to prove that it had the biggest and best of something, even if it was only an earthquake.
The way we happen to be connected with the 1925 earthquake was this. After the first World War, my brother and three or four of his buddies, when they got out of the army, went to South Dakota to homestead, and while they were proving up on their claims, they taught school and ran small businesses of different sorts in town. Teaching in the same school with our brother was the charming young woman whom he eventually married, another homesteader. After they both proved up on their claims, they decided that while they were foot-loose and fancy-free they would take a year or so to see their country, stopping where they liked when they liked, for as long as they liked; and if they didn't find a town that appealed to them any more than home, they would come back to Illinois and settle down. They swung down southeast, and up to New England, across the great Northwest, down into Texas and finally got into California. On the way they had many amusing adventures that they wouldn't have missed for worlds. One that Edith told us this time, which we hadn't heard before, was the time they picked cotton for a day somewhere, and she earned eighty-five cents and our brother $1.25, while the regular pickers were making eight and ten dollars a day; and she overheard the overseer say, concerning the row she had picked, "It looks like a cow had gone down that row, and licked it." She is very clever in many ways and wonderful at teaching school, but from then on she never claimed to be an expert at cotton-picking.
Anyway, they arrived at Santa Barbara soon after the big quake, where dozens of business houses and homes were wrecked and ruined. My brother's line in college had been architecture and his practical experience had been working summers with our father, who was a contractor and builder. Here was a place needing the kind of help he could give, and he couldn't keep his hands off. By the time the place had been made presentable again, Wilbert and Edith had fallen in love with the town, its climate, its people, its natural advantages, so they built themselves a home and settled down. There their first child was born, my namesake, in January, 1936, and died three days later and is buried. There our brother was laid to rest in 1943 when he was stricken on Father's Day with coronary thrombosis, two weeks after the second and only living child celebrated her fifth birthday. The last pictures we have of him are the birthday-party movies of that June.
This Jean is the youngest of the twenty cousins, while our Ruth is the oldest. Jean was born in June of 1938, the very month that Ruth finished college and as her graduation trip had a trip to California. (It had been our idea to make a tradition of a California trip for each child's graduation. But by the time Wilbert finished, the war was on and he went into the army instead. The next year the war was still on, so Ernie went into the navy the day after commencement. And this year, when Joe would have finished, he was about mid-way in his army services. So our "tradition" didn't get past first base.) Jean is also called the "golden wedding baby" because she was born the year our parents celebrated their fiftieth anniversary.
So it was an earthquake that induced the folks to settle in Santa Barbara, but a lot of other things kept them there. It is impossible to mention all the advantages, but one of the most interesting phenomena is the vegetation. It is a cross between the tropical and the temperate zones. You see lots of palms and eucalyptus, lots of desert cacti and succulents, and yet you see many plants more familiar to us, only they grow so big. The things we grow in pots grow here as shrubs. For instance, outside the breakfast window and reaching up to the top of it, is a lantana in bloom. And by the walk is a red geranium three feet wide and three feet high. And remember those oleanders our grandmothers used to have in tubs, indoors in winter and out on the porch in summer? It seemed to me they were considered very rare and precious and took a good deal of care. Here they grow outside the year round in great profusion. Some are in hedges clipped to taste, some are shrubs, some are actually trees.
On my previous trip, which was in December, the poinsettias amazed me, growing as tall as the one-story houses, vivid against the plaster. This time the bougainvillea is predominant, growing on houses and walls and fences, tall luxuriant vines with cascades of blossoms. You see all colors: fuchsia, magenta, scarlet and crimson, blue and purple, lavender, pink and white. Well, maybe not white. But they are plentiful and beautiful and different from anything we have at home. We reveled in it all. But we must confess that when we got out of California, and saw some of the good old trees we are used to, they looked good. The lawns there are green and thick, but of course everything has to be watered daily, to keep them that way.
But this is enough about Santa Barbara, our only real stop on the trip, -- except for a day in San Francisco which we must tell another day. -- Hope.