A boy runs barefoot, feet-toughened, through a winding maze of footpaths and weaves into a lemon orchard in Carpinteria, collecting sandstone pebbles of varying sizes to use as ammo for the slingshot in his back pocket. He aims at a rodent, a ground squirrel, pulls back the leather pad, and hits the creature squarely on its forehead.
This boy would grow up to be my grandfather, Lawrence Neil Bailard Jr., whom we called Lawry, Dad, Grand-père, Bumpa, Bompa, or Tío. He is no longer here to answer all our questions about ancestors or gopher eradication or some obscure historical fact about Dr. Seuss or Abraham Lincoln or the Matilija Fire. Lawry’s extraordinary life represented a vast storehouse of memory — the themes: the sea, the farm, and family.
Imagine little Lawry, sitting in the bucketed hull of a Flint skiff at age 3½; it’s his first trip to Santa Cruz Island. His dad pilots the small ship as the luxurious white Fleishman yacht passes, sending its wake-breaking waves into the small boat and making Lawry wonder if the vessel would fill with seawater and sink. This early exposure to adventuring on the Pacific Ocean led to a lifelong love affair with the Channel Islands.