(1872-1879) Charles Palache's Earliest Memories

	Charles Palache. Undated photo. Courtesy of Judith Palache Gregory.

I seem to see a garden with a big oval bed and a path about it on which we played. A big dark tree grew in the bed (Second Avenue between Guerrero and Valencia Streets).

A Christmas day in Guerrero Street.

Double doors open and I see under the tree the team of horses and dray which became my dearest possession.—A dark back hall under the stairs where I kept my toys in very definite order. I seem to remember being very angry or at least troubled if they were disarranged by anyone else.—Playing field hockey and baseball on the big filled-in lot between 15th and 16th Streets. I must have been too small to really play but have no mental picture whatever of myself as small—I seem to have been one of a crowd of boys all equals.—Flying kites from this same lot.—Watching the windmills go round in the market garden on Guerrero Street, learning how the chain and ball pumps worked to pull up the water—seeing the carrots washed for the wagons in the morning.

The Brewery across the street (Was it the Wilmot's). Washing bottles and making my first collection of beer labels mostly from foreign bottles; working the corking machine; pasting on labels and putting the gilt paper on the tope; the huge copper vats in which the brew was made; the malt house and the smell of the fermenting barley; the taste of the first and only glass of ale that was given me and which I hated. (I have never since been near a brewery so any memories I have of these things must be authentic.)

Mushrooming on the Mission Hills with Father. We got up when it was still dark and went off with a lantern (it must have been in the fall after the first rains). The mystery of the dark and the coming of the dawn. Little else remains of these incidents.

What was the name of the sailor who worked for us and made the ship model? [Alfred.—W.P.] I recall vividly how he worked on it up in the little room in the stable where he lived next to Son. The joy that came with its completion is still vivid. I learned what little I know about ships from him as he worked—the names of the masts and yards—especially the small boats each named and each with its peculiar characters.

Walking with father when he started for the office. Along Guerrero and up the hill at the end over “Green Grass Mountain.” Watching the men digging in what became the big cut on Market Street where it went through this hill.

Drives to the beach through the sand hills and collecting shells on the beach, especially sand dollars. Do I remember or only think I do seeing Mother on horseback at this time? [Yes.—E.P.] Father of course I can see on horseback from earliest times.

The day we were taken to Berkeley for the first view of the Farm. It must have been early summer for I recall walking up the reservoir hill through poppies high as my waist and picking apples in the orchard or maybe it was cherries. The long ride on the ferryboat was probably new but I do not recall it. Only remains the memory of pure joy at the thought that we were going to live in that heavenly place.

Gilroy memories.

Not so very definite for the most part and not to be dated. Almost always I was with Grace. Picking the earliest June apples; bringing vegetables from the garden patch in the lower field; swinging on the weeping willow at the spring there and was it Grace or I who fell out of the tree and broke an arm? Of course riding on the hay and on the mower with Clint or Walter. Taking my tin cup to the corral to be milked full from a cow by Jake (generally) and always drained on the spot. The cheese house-curds to scrunch in my hand and eat— the cream in great soup-plates full that we had for breakfast—watching the cheese-press and seeing the whey come pouring out when the screw was pressed home. That was generally with Walter. Blackberrying in the woods at the base of the foothills. Hunting eggs in the great hay mows; feeding the chickens with Aunt Hattie and with Fanny. Watching Clint split oak wood—I can still see him worrying the hard knots and know how he felt about it. The dining room with big fireplace and the crowded table—the rawhide bottomed chairs, guns on the walls and Aunt Hattie always too busy to more than barely sit down and eat. I can still smell the wooden sink and feel the cool water from the pump outside the back door when we washed our hands and faces in a tin basin before meals. Weekly baths too I remember in the room off the kitchen where Aunt Hattie did her enormous fruit preserving. The bath was in a round clothes tub, filled from the kitchen kettle. Nights in the garret so close under the roof and the sound of the oak tree rustling against the house in the night wind. Hearing Clint and Jake get up before dawn to go out after the cows.

Grandmother's room in Vine Cottage. Bringing in her wood. Little else in detail except watching birds nesting in the vines on the porch.

Uncle Dwight and the joy of seeing him at his bench. I suppose it was there I got my first notions of using tools. I can still feel the excitement of seeing a tire put on a newly made wheel; the circular fire when the tire was heated, the hammering on to the white wood, the smoke as the wood was scorched, and then the sizzling as the heat was quenched with water and the tire drew everything tight and snug.

Of his and Aunt Julia's garden my chief memory is the blackbirds which nested in some pine trees and of course the fruit, especially blackberries.

Of the train journey to Gilroy I remember little. But the ride to the Farm seemed a great journey. I recall the great Rea dairy where sometimes we had to wait for hundreds of cows to cross the road before we could go on. Then the Furlong place with the great Sycamore trees growing along the creek and then the big turn in the road and the Ferguson place and then the familiar narrow lane and the gate made of split redwood and the big weeping oak trees. Aunt Hattie always ready with open arms to greet us.