Recycling gives Parkfield a new life
Parkfield gets a new lease on life. My wife Zee and our daughters Katy and Lilly moved into our newly built 1,100 square foot house with two bedrooms and one bathroom in the spring of 1962. We had bought 8,000 acres from Clyde Taylor and our new neighbors were all a buzz about how this 27 year old kid could pay $50/acre for a ranch that wasn’t worth a dime over $20/acre. I guess on the day escrow closed I did pay the most and that's what you do if you want to own more land, be the highest bidder. My barometer for paying too much is when I can’t service the debt, but it’s okay for me to pay enough that I’ve kept myself awake for a night or two over these many years asking myself, “Jack, just how are you going to pay for this piece of land?” Don’t worry I’ll figure it out.
The first 30 years took a lot of daylight-to-dark days, buckets of sweat, some mistakes and some things done right. But I could feel progress in the making. I recognized early on that if I didn’t build everything using my hired hand and myself and buying most of my needs for 10 cents on the dollar at San Joaquin Valley junk auctions I was going to have to start writing hot checks to pay for new stuff. It was amazing that I could unearth so many useful items at a junk auction. Which meant that I could now afford to turn this beautiful land into a working ranch and not just for cattle but all wildlife, and in later years for people who want to see this land from the back of a horse.
It didn’t take long before I started planning my work week around when I would be going to the next junk auction. I was also going to cattle auctions to buy the cattle I needed to stock the ranch. I got to know which auction would have my kind of stuff and which cattle auction would have my kind of cattle. The things I bought ranged from stuff I would use tomorrow to things that I might not use for 30 years.
There’s something that I forgot to tell you, the 8,000 original acres had no corrals, most of the fences were half up and half down and it took several years before I had a reasonably reliable water system for my family and livestock. Mr. Taylor, kept 2,800 acres of land that contained all the improvements that I would buy from his estate about 15 years later. By now the ranch is locally known as the V6 Ranch and by paying too much for each parcel of land that joined me, we now own 20,000 acres, we have four kids which are the light of our lives and thus explains how we became the V6. Nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren and husbands and wives came later.
By the 80s, I had been driving through the town of Parkfield for 25 years without giving it much thought as I was too engrossed in renting more ranches to run more cattle. Over coffee one morning with friends, one friend tells a joke about a horse barn that was completely full of horse poop, the punch line was “with all this poop there must be a pony here someplace.” I think that pretty well summed up the condition of Parkfield in the late 1980s. The Royce Hotel now stood empty, so there was only one business left in town, the Bamboo Room. It was mainly a beer and wine bar and if the owner felt up to it she would fix you a meal. How hungry you were dictated how good it tasted.
In the glory days of the 1880s to the 1920s you would see Wildcater’s drilling for oil, miners looking for and discovering the Patriquin Mine which had a rich vein of Mercury and there were also quite a few homesteaders. All together they totaled 900 people living in Parkfield and within an 8 mile radius in 1899. But over the next 60 years they would all be gone as each of their professions went broke, leaving a handful of cattle ranchers and dry land farmers to make themselves a living. Parkfield by the early 1980s had hit rock bottom and a county road sign at the entrance to town said population 37.
Where the Parkfield Cafe sits today, under its foundation lie the memories from when it was known as the Over’s house and Post Office. But one day a giant Valley Oak had fallen making a direct hit on the house and post office, luckily no one was home.
Parkfield at the time was hobbled by an attitude of: “I don’t care enough to make any effort to get the tree off this now pancake-flat house.” The signs of “I don’t care” showed everywhere. But for me it seemed like a reasonable time to pay too much to buy a forsaken town that was in bad need of a revival, a do over.
The burnt down “Bamboo Room”, c. 1981
On the corner of 1st and Oak Street sat an old single wide mobile home that a retired couple lived in. The town’s only bar, the Bamboo Room, had burned to the ground. So Parkfield that once had a sparkling and lively attitude began to take a slow trip to dilapidation as each industry went bust and so did the value of a town building lot. When I started buying any lots that were for sale, town lots varied in price depending if they were 50’ by 100’ or 50’ by 150’ from $100 to $200. As lot owners from far and wide learned that I was buying town lots, I was soon hearing from people that had Parkfield lots for sale. Some had inherited them many years ago and were more than happy to sell. Some had bought their lot at a Monterey County tax sale. One gentleman called me on the telephone and said that if I would drive up to Monterey he would give me four lots that his father had bought in 1913. He said the taxes were less than ten dollars per year for the four lots so they got paid each year. As he was signing the deeds over he said his son has been a disappointment to him and he knows I’ll make better use of them than he will. Again according to the local think tank, I was up to my old ways paying way too much for something that was basically worth nothing. Old timers remembered The Great Depression when some lot owners used their deed to a lot in lieu of cash at a local Poker game so the story goes.
By now the Monterey County planning department was starting to enforce the building codes for the southern part of the county. They published a new county zoning map which said, you have to have 9 contiguous lots in order to have a building site in the city of Parkfield. That brought more lots on to the market as most lot owners didn’t have 9 contiguous parcels.
The first thing that had to happen was to show that our town was taking the road back to a new life. But it needed the actual removal of this big Oak carcass, as a symbolic reminder of the past. That Oak is now firewood and our town of Parkfield can rejoice to be among the living but with a new motto “Trees equal a thriving future.”
In June of 1988 my son John graduated from Cal Poly and returned to Parkfield looking for work. I told him that there was only one living in the cattle business and that was mine. I thought about how Parkfield could evolve when John said, “What the Cholame Valley needs is a cafe.” I thought for a minute and said, “Okay why don’t you go build one?” John replied “Okay,” so with some help from a college classmate and my ranch workers John built the Parkfield Cafe. With the Cafe finished and up and running it was logical that we needed a four room Lodge. So in 1990 John got out his hammer and saw again and with local help and some itinerant labor he built a lodge ready for occupancy in 1991. It lies directly across the street from the cafe.
John and his friend Steve Johnson in front of the newly constructed Parkfield Lodge, 1989.
While John was busy furnishing the four rooms, I had just finished taking a three day course that delved into a different way to think about making better decisions on how to manage the V6 Ranch. The name of the course was Holistic Resource Management and after three days of “aha!” moments, I had changed the way I think and it changed who I am today. It shed new light on how I could make better decisions using the Holistic model and gave me permission, and in fact demanded of me, to think of new ways to solve old and new problems. I was free to toss out the traditional ways and to dream dreams and then ask “Why not? Let’s go for it!”
1993 was a busy year. A year when Katy, our oldest daughter, and her husband started the Parkfield Rodeo. It will celebrate its 30 year anniversary this year. It was now the spring of 1994 and Zee and I had spent the day in Paso Robles shopping. We decided to eat dinner in town and I said “How about a movie?” Zee said “Okay.” Just like my new way to make decisions has affected me, the movie we would see had a similar effect on me. The movie was City Slickers and as it ended I said to Zee “We can do that.” So in September 1994 we put on our first cattle drive and this year will be our 29th year of moving cattle that need moving with guests that need a cattle drive and a horse for a boost to their inner vitality.
John and Barb had their first child, Lauren, and needing more income, John started building Gray Pine log furniture. For twelve years John and Barb built pine log furniture. The day of September 19th, 2006 started as an ordinary day but ended up being extraordinary. My phone rang at 10 P.M. It was John and he told me that his shop was on fire. By the time Zee and I got there it was fully inflamed and within an hour his furniture shop was just a pile of ashes.
Blessings in disguise can show themselves in many different ways. For John, who was getting tired of building Pine Log furniture, and with his shop and all his tools in ashes, it was time for he and Barb to look at all their options. They decided it was time to remodel the Cafe and Lodge and start promoting them. A local rancher wife decided that she would like to run the cafe, leaving time for John and Barb to invite riding groups to bring their horses. The two would feed them and provide a separate corral for each horse and escort them on trail rides over the V6. This held all the promises they dreamed of and in no time they were in the recreation business.
The Blue Oak Camp Roundup Room
John and Barb soon realized that they needed a gathering room where all meals could be served and exploits of the day could be relived. So John, again with hammer and saw and some ranch help, built the present day Roundup Room. Over the next few years there was a part of each group that preferred a bed to sleep in, rather than a tent and sleeping bag. So again with nail gun and skill saw (equipment upgrade) and some ranch help the six room Bunkhouse was finished in 2008. Over the next several years John and Barb discovered that more comfortable beds were necessary so three Glamping tents were built. We also have four flush toilets and two stall showers with hot and cold running water. All were designed with exercise in mind. In other words you get to walk to them. They're very nice so it makes them worth the hike.
Talking about toilets, I think is a refreshing way to end with 2065 words to ponder.
See Ya,
Jack