Big Sur

Wendy Smith	9:41 AM (2 hours ago)
to me, Daddy

Hi Dad and Carol,

I received this regarding a gorgeous print this morning and have always longed to go to Big Sur. It's unforgivable I never got there during my 12 years in San Francisco. Do we have any lore / roots / connection there?

Thank  you for everything you've sent thus  far. I'm relishing the journey you are allowing me to take via your knowledge and memories. 

xoxoxooox.w

Graham Smith	10:52 AM (1 hour ago)
to Wendy, me

A quick search of my archives did not recover any information about Smith-Davis in Big Sur. We drove up Ca Highway 1 several times, once with Carol and Trent, but just stopped to sightsee. Lots of contacts in Santa Barbara and the Rebstocks in Cayucos, 

-- 

to Graham, Wendy

I remember the trip up the coast with your parents, Wendy.  As Graham said, we were traveling up Hwy 1 in our vw van.  I think we picked up your parents in Santa Barbara where they were for a medical meeting.  Drove up, visited Gail and Mel in Cayucos, and kept on driving up Hwy 1 through Big Sur and ending in Carmel. 

But let me think, we did take other trips up there when the kids were younger.  We had one overnight trip up there where we stayed in a nice resort/camp style cabin in Big Sur.  There was a favorite restaurant there too, which I think had a gorgeous view of the coast. But I can't remember the name of it. I bet it is still there.  And maybe it was on this same trip we found ourselves coming back from Monterey/Carmel to Big Sur on that freaky, scary Hwy 1 at night in the FOG!!  Had to go back because we were spending the night there!

Those stretches of Hwy 1 are spectacular but scary.  Very narrow and winding with massively steep drop-offs hundreds of feet into the Pacific Ocean.  It's fabulous, but don't wait until you are too old.  You will be too frightened.  I remember one of the last times we visited Gail in Cayucos, she told us she absolutely would not drive up that road any more.  And I remember times driving up there with Trent, we would run into big slides of earth down on the roadway--cliffs above and below.  

Oh, one other thing--you have to go to Clint Eastwood's restaurant in Carmel for Sunday brunch!

So that's my story for now, my dears.      Carol

Part One of Answering Wendy's Questions

                                                                                             May 13, 2020

Wendy Smith, Graham's youngest daughter, has taken an interest in family history.  She is now living and working in Austin, Texas.  Specifically, she is looking for information relating to geographical locations in California where her father Graham and I grew up.  She plans to compile the information that Graham and I give her and connect it to sites on a map that she is going to construct, so when she goes out to California she can visit these special places and read about her family past that occurred at each of those locations.

It was decided during our hour-long Zoom session this morning, which included myself, Graham,
Ann and Wendy that for my contributions, she would send me questions concerning her subjects of interest and I would send her my answers.  Hence this new blog that I thought would be the best format for me to give her my info.  And as well, the information can become part of our other family history records.

I decided this would also be a good opportunity for me to record some of the family stories that I have been told over the years by elder family members (after all I took care of my mother through the end years of her nearly 90 year-long life) as well as some of my own experiences.

So here it is for all to read--my new blog Family Reminicsings.

Here is Wendy's first set of questions to me, her aunt!!

Hi Carol,

So wonderful  to  see and hear from you  this morning! I am so excited about  this  project and can't  wait to capture the many special sites relative  to  our   families and link them to  all the existing  photos—and  stories!

For now, please see the questions here:

1. What was the name of your high school? What year did you graduate?
2. What  years were you  at Stanford? And your degree? 
3. Where did you and Trent meet?
4. Any important sites to your courtship—if  you can remember!
5. Where did  you and Trent get married?
6. Where was your  first home / apartment together?
7. When did  you move  to  Anaheim?
8. What  was  the address of the house there that I remember?

Let's just start with those. And take your  time!

xoxoxo.w

And so here beginneth my answers.  Wendy's first question: What was the name of your high school?           1.  The name of my                       The name of  my high school was Anoakia School for Girls. It was located at the corner of
Foothill Blvd. and Baldwin Ave. in Arcadia which is a suburb east of Pasadena.  I graduated in 1956.
Wendy, I say the name of this school WAS Anoakia, because if you go the corner of Foothill Blvd.
and Baldwin today, you will see a walled community of homes!

The story about the location and name and physical make-up of school is interesting.  A man by the
name of Lucky Baldwin was a large landowner in that area of Arcadia/Monrovia around the turn of the
twentieth century. He was probably a rancher.  He had a daughter named Anita to whom he gave this
good-sized piece of land on which they built her quite an elegant estate which they named Anoakia to
signify her first name Anita and that the property was covered with oaks.  Our school was actually in the
buildings of that estate.  The offices and a small population of boarding girls occupied the main house.
Our classrooms and a gym and a lovely swimming pool and pool house comprised the outbuildings on
the property. The grounds were spacious and lovely and it really made a very nice setting for a small
girls school.

But push came to shove, and the ownership of the property fell into the hands of people who did not,
IMO, know how to run a girls' school very well, and besides, maybe Mr. McCaslin just wanted his
money out of it,  so I am going to say that some 3 or 4 years after I graduated, he sold to developers,
and BOOM, now it is a housing development.