Strange California Connections

Around 1968, Paul Whiteman, a well-known big band leader from the 20s and 30s, built his west coast home in a new California development called Canyon Country Club Estates.

Canyon Country Club Estates had been carved out of the barren desert just south of downtown Palm Springs. It was meant to be a welcoming enclave for Jewish families who in the past had been denied membership in the other country clubs around the Coachella Valley. It turns out, this was just the first of a number of strange California connections for me.

Back up some forty-plus years and this same Big Band Leader and composer was performing in a midwestern auditorium as part of his nationwide tour for that season. A young adventurous woman named Hildegarde Noll was in the audience along with her girlfriends. They were all experiencing the big cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul for the first times in their lives. Hildegarde had moved down from Sterns County. She was one of eight children raised in a strict German Catholic farming family. She and her friends all worked as maids for well-to-do notables along Summit Avenue.

Hildegarde’s California connections run shallow and deep at the same time. She moved out west with several girlfriends and all secured jobs as maids for the monied elite who lived on Seventeen Mile Drive in Carmel. Her job allowed her to move from one millionaire’s home to the next, serving Hollywood stars and East Coast Industrialists.

As the kids and I drove along 17- mile drive by Carmel-by-the-Sea a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t help but think about what it must have been like almost one hundred years earlier for my mother. She would have been in that same neighborhood, going into Monterey for household supplies and doing sundry chores. She probably walked the same wharf and along Cannery Row years earlier. It was as if we were both breathing in the same salt air. Sadly, all of that ended when her father got sick back on the farm and Hildegarde returned to Minnesota to care for him.

Fast forward a number of years later on and my mother, now separated from her husband (my father), was solicited for household help once again on the West Coast. Upon arrival, the job around Santa Barbara had unexpectedly disappeared. Hildegarde was left almost penniless with two toddlers in hand and no new job prospects. After spending less than a month there, she was forced to return to Minnesota once again.

As the kids and I drove around Monterey, Carmel-by-the-sea, Big Sur then down to Santa Barbara, I couldn’t help but reflect on what might have happened if my mom had gotten that job and stayed in California. Is it unreasonable to think that if she had stayed there, I might have found myself living an entirely different lifestyle rather than the one I had in St. Paul? I guess I’ll never know.

There is one thing I am sure of. Paul Whiteman only stayed in Canyon Country Club Estates for less than five years. He missed his old bandmates back east and returned to New Hampshire where he passed away shortly thereafter.

His home went through a series of owners until the mid-2000s when, once again, a Minnesota connection reappeared. Long-since enamored with California, this couple, a writer, and an artist, bought the house without knowing it’s past owner. My recent jaunt with the kids along the PCH only reinforced an over-active imagination that wondered: ‘What if?’

Mom, I’m back in California once again. Sure do miss you here.