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The Awakening of Paredon Blanco 69

only one window each. They were like the other windows,
with the addition of heavy iron bars, painted green. All
of the woodwork on the outside of the house was painted
green. The east door opened into the dining room, from
there to a large corridor. At the north end there was a
capacious pantry, next to it a baggage room. The house
had a brea roof. Many houses in the town were roofed
with brea (pitch) brought from the site of the Hancock
Park pits, where the prehistoric animals were found. One
day, after visiting the County Museum, I went to see my
very aged Uncle Geronimo, who used to have oxen for the
hauling of the brea. I told him among the anti-diluvian
animals, I saw the heads of two oxen. With disgust, he
exclaimed, “Before the flood, indeed! What will those
scandalous gringos say next—those are simply the heads
of the poor oxen I lost in the brea, the heads of my Pinto
and my Hercules!” Later, the brea was torn off and a
shingle roof was built over it, high enough for a spacious
garret which was well utilized for storing fruits for winter.
Pears, apples, pomegranates were buried in white sand
on shelves along the walls; also vegetables, and fine big
bunches of ripe grapes hung on nails from the rafters,
which would keep fresh until late in the winter. The prin-
cipal rooms opened out on the long, wide corridor with fine
red brick floor, supported by stout pillars entirely covered
with different kinds of vines, the Passion flower predominat-
ing. These vines, in their growth, interlaced so as to form
a thick, protecting rendezvous for numerous small birds.
Linnets, robins, and tiny humming birds in their bright plum-
age flitted in and out, sucking honey from the Passion flower,
and made music the livelong day. This porch used to be
our schoolroom. Here, we, with two or three neighbors’
children, learned our first letters. We had a nice old lady
for our teacher, and here, too, we studied our catechism,
and learned to say the Ten Commandments by heart. The
porch was cool and shady, and screened from the wind by
the vines. It made a lovely schoolroom. Here on this
porch it was the custom, in the evenings, and especially in
summer, for all the servants to kneel down and join in