IT WAS WALNUT CREEK, 1953. We rose early on a Saturday morning. Mom had fixed hot chocolate and powered-sugar doughnuts, a light breakfast, and we were headed for the farm! Yahoo!

Farr and Granmore Larsen, our Danish maternal grandparents, had come from Denmark in 1923, when Mom was only two, the only daughter in the middle of four brothers, and they raised their five kids in the Oakland hills, all attending Castlemont high school. And then in 1948, the grandparents, Adolf Viggo and Karen Marie Larsen, and bought Adolf’s dream farm in Northern California, up Highway 99 west to Orland: a 35-acre dairy farm and miracle spot. Just a short walk to nearby Stony Creek, a stony runoff from the California Coastal Range that ran into the Sacramento River.

But Dad had been up long hours before us, checking his maps. He had yet another route in his adventuresome mind to entertain his three boys, Pete, Jim, and Tom (Mike came later) and get us to the farm: crossing by car ferry from Martinez to Benicia! (There was NO bridge until 1960 or so.) Then we would wind up through the U.S. Army Arsenal in Benicia and north to Highway 80 and then further north on 99 to Orland.

We three brothers were soon packed for a weekend of fun at the farm: fishing stuff, BB guns, work clothes, pillows to sleep on for going up and coming back, flashlights, pajamas and sleeping bags. Duffy, our black water spaniel and rat-tailed terrier mix, was naturally along too, looking like the very bright dog he was, midnight black with curly hair like a poodle, but clean-faced with a narrow tail. Mom had more provisions in a black travelling bag she kept, along with her knitting projects, in the front.

Riding in the family Buick onto the ferry slip at Martinez was just awesome. Ferry workers in black seacaps were mysterious, seasoned guys who signaled us to come forward, come foreward more, then STOP, and then they put chocks in front of our tires. Wow! What an adventure! Out of the car we slipped carefully between other parked cars and then took a brief look into the bowels of the ferry’s workings, the engine room, the engine now running at idle, and huge! Then up the narrow staircase to the top deck! Wow! What a view! And seagulls! Obviously we were floating with an up-and-down motion at the dock that we would have to get used to. Then a sharp whistle blast from somewhere on the ferry, and we were leaving Martinez! HOLY Pzazz! The seagulls were overhead, begging, screeching for anythng the other seasoned ferry travelers would throw to them. We too would learn to pack old bread on future crossings and listen to their screech of joy as they caught it on the fly out in the middle of the Carquinez Strait!

Benicia soon approached and we scooted back to the car and watched the up-and-down motion of the ferry as we rocked and docked into the landing timbers on East Fifth Street, Benicia. Once again the seasoned guys in back seacaps signaled us on how to exit the ferry, to go up the steel landing ramp and onto the wooden deck leading to East Fifth Street. Wow! This was a trip and a half! Then out through Benicia and past the ammunition storage buildings, boyhood minds imagining what kinds of weapons and explosives might have been stored there, the Korean War somewhere else, unknown to us in the west.

The farm was always amazing. This particular weekend it was my turn to get my own Jersey milk cow. As Farr (Danish for “father”) was a true animal lover, and as his cows gave birth to calves, we were allowed to name a calf and it would always be ours. After other adventures and chores, we walked to the calf shed where the young ones were kept and he introduced me to mine. It was gorgeous! Warm tan brown in color with a black nose and long, black eyelashes and a white beauty mark in the middle of its face, running nearly the length of its head! What a beautiful animal! On the spot I called it “Beauty” and she was mine forever, to watch grow, to pet, to visit in the clover or alfalfa fields over the years. In years to come, Beauty matured, gave birth to another equally gorgeous calf which also had a white streak on her shoulder. What a sweetheart — so I named her just that: “Sweetheart.”

And so began some early unrecognized joy with words — calf-naming in Orland, because a young man with a young family in Denmark dreamed of having his own dairy farm some day, and his bright, hard-working wife helped him work, save, and achieve it. Yeehaw!

Peter Bray lives, works and writes in Benicia.

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