Page 5 - hssc1929parks

138 Historical Society of Southern California

to be a lateral wing extending toward the rear, forming the
familiar L-plan, with a corredor facing the patio along both
wings, as well as across the front of the house. Crumbling
walls, exposed when another room was torn down, also attest
to a small extension at the west end of the front. In the old
days there came to be much travel along this road, between
Los Angeles and San Bernardino, and daily, at the last, the
picturesque stage coach passed by this old door. In later
times the adobe was used as a sort of tavern, and in one
room a big fireplace, apparently an addition of later days,
seems silently to tell of crackling fires, guests coming in out
of .the chill night, and stamping horses left outside.

Today this adobe seems to be occupied by the men who
tend the orange grove that surrounds it. I have never found
any one at home there, so I confess my observations have
been made by peering shamelessly through the windows, with
my face pressed against the dusty glass. Followed by a
mewing and bewildered house cat I have clambered through
the rose briars to enter the tall open window of an abandoned
room. After my twenty-fifth the heat of the quest, so
adobe
begun with the expectation seeing them all in a
innocently of
day or so, knew no obstacles, although I was met by police
dogs at some gates, mistaken for peddler and what not at
others. When you are explaining yourself on adobe hunting,
the introductory even when
speech is sometimes difficult,
standing politely on the doorstep. You may be mistaken for
-
almost anything a detective or a prohibition
officer, espec-
contem-
ially if the family come home and find you longingly
plating their front corredor, or counting the pomegranate
trees in the yard. And once as I waited in the kitchen of an
home, while my obliging host sought a newspaper clip-
old-time
ping in regions above, a huge, burly man, a dark and ominous
descendant of a one-time seafaring Angeleno, whom he un-
favored, came down the back stairs, leaning heavily
doubtedly
on a cane and a crutch. Half way down he saw me, a stranger,
idling in his back porch and grunted, "What do you want?"
"I am looking for the old adobe houses of Los Angeles County,"
said I. "What's the matter with you?" said unromantic
he,
as he reached the last step, and went on and through a door,