| The Palo Alto History Project |
| The Palo Alto Cowboys 2993 Louis Road |
| The Palo Alto Cowboys A Guest Article by Don McPhail We tensed back in our big saddles and snugged our hats down tight. Then kicked our horses sharply in the flanks. Arching slightly, they jumped to a gallop like thoroughbreds from a starting gate, racing across the straw stubble toward a barbed-wire fence a quarter mile away. Like we were flying, Larry and I clung tight to our horses across the dusty fields. We were Lash Larue and Tom Mix, straight from the Park Theater Saturday matinees, chasing the bad guys across the plains. In the distance we could see open range, from Louis Road nearly out to Bayshore -- interrupted by small farm buildings and a few scruffy trees. We were ten, or eleven maybe, and we lived in a small college town near San Francisco called Palo Alto. Pal was my first horse, a palomino, naturally. Not really mine, but I got to ride her every afternoon in the summer. She was the biggest creature I had ever seen, but gentle. Before I mounted up, I always touched up near her muzzle, on that softest skin around her mouth We grew up in the Palo Alto of the forties and fifties. It was a simple place. There were no soccer moms, or mammoth homes, or huge SUVs. Like small towns everywhere, on May first each year there was a May Day Parade, all the way up University Avenue and down Middlefield Road, followed by the May Fete at the Community Center. In this Palo Alto, we played catch or work-up baseball or capture-the-flag right in the middle of the street -- on Melville Avenue or Kingsley or Forest, seldom interrupted by passing cars. Judge Doyle, from around the corner, took us kids at Christmas and patiently formed us into a choir, a raggedy and well-practiced group of neighborhood carolers. Palo Alto was partly rural. Not as many orchards and farms as neighboring Mountain View or Los Altos. But we had plenty of open fields. Trees were filled with apples and pears and plums. There were walnut groves, orange and cherry trees, fields of carrots and berries. Piers Dairy was located out Louis Road, north of Colorado Avenue. And there were horses. Just past Piers Dairy -- out at 2993 Louis Road, where now there are ranch-style homes and schools --was Franklin Stables. This was no traditional riding academy, to learn dressage and show-routines. We had no English saddles; we rode Western. And we didn't canter, we trotted. Mr. Franklin was a typical cranky old codger, who didn't stand for any nonsense. In his beat-up hat and missing a few teeth, he was a real cowboy to us. Heroic, but pretty frightening. Somewhere, though, we sensed a streak of kindness. My friend Larry and I took riding lessons from him, and he was always constructive. He was demanding and sharp, but usually encouraging. One day, with dreams of being cowboys ourselves, we asked if we could work for him. He said we could, but we would have to be on time and work hard! And he was right. After he worked it out with our moms, for three days a week all the rest of the summer we started at 8AM and began shoveling. It was our job to muck out the stalls in the dilapidated barn. There were a dozen horses, each with its own stall, and we were the designated cleaners. Wearing jeans and old cowboy boots, and armed with shovels and large, rickety wheelbarrows, we attacked those stalls and slowly removed the smelly manure, one steaming load after another. We carefully wheeled it up the plank onto the huge manure pile, dumped it, and pushed our barrows back to the barn for another load. Each workday we labored until Noon. Then, exhausted, we sprawled on the dirt outside the barn and wolfed the bologna sandwiches our moms had made, washing them down with milk that Mr. Franklin provided. With youthful energy, we soon revived and asked if we could saddle up our horses. Mr. Franklin brought out Pal and Lucky, and helped us toss the saddle blankets over them. We lugged the big saddles over and he helped us swing them up onto the horses. Then, like the cowboys we wanted to be, we got to cinch them in, learning to give a sharp nudge in the horses' ribs so they wouldn't hold their breath and cause a loose cinch. For three hours we got to ride our horses, unrestricted, in the open fields all around Franklin Stables. We were lucky boys, free to gallop and race, or to saunter quietly, patting our horses and talking about what we wanted to do next time. Pal and Lucky are long gone and so is Franklin Stables, built over with houses, some of them nearly fifty years old now. I never knew what happened to Mr. Franklin. Palo Alto is no longer the simple college town, but an important city with shopping, fine dining, elegant houses, and desirable schools. I don't go there much any more, possibly because I have forgotten about so many of the old days. But I believe I would like to see where Piers Dairy and Franklin Stables once were. I'd like to go back to the Community Center, where the Childrens Theater still stands, and where the May Fete and the Maypole dances were held. And I'd even like to revisit University Avenue and see if I can imagine the busy downtown as it once was, with parents lining the quiet street in front of Roos Bros. or Sprouse-Reitz, watching as marching bands sound and their boys and girls parade by in colorful costumes, making them all very proud. -Don McPhail |