Tag Archives: San Fernando Mission

Van Nuys — a Viewing

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A new series applying history’s tire-iron to the rusty Hub of the Valley

*Millard Sheets, 1965. HSFC Bank on Van Nuys Boulevard, now Bof*A

PART ONE: ‘WHEN ALL THIS WAS FARMLAND’

In the photo below, the sun-baked middle ground is today’s Van Nuys. Van Nuys is unusual in America in that the historian can’t sanctimoniously intone in the opening paragraph “For time immemorial People of the Ancient Ways called this land home, at one with Nature’s Ways.” Nobody called Van Nuys “Home” until Isaac Newton Van Nuys. And for the Tongva, the Chumash and the Tataviam who lived in the surrounding hills, the way to be at one with Nature’s Ways was to hot-foot it across the Valley as fast as you can in the dry seasons; and avoid it completely during the dangerous wet times when it swamped and Tujunga or Pacoima Wash could rampage. Of the two pleasant spots where natural wells and pools spring up, and the Indians had mixed-tribe rancerias, neither of them is Van Nuys. One was Encino [Siutcanga]; the other of course was San Fernando [Achoicomenga], where the Mission was built. But Van Nuys belonged to the antelopes. When the Indians were almost gone and the Mission was secularized the Valley was heavily ranched. Gen. Andres Pico took his interest in San Fernando and the northern half of the Valley, and his brother Don Pio Pico, the last Californio governor who had signed the original grant in 1846, by the 1850s had somehow come to own the southern half himself — including the cattle-tramped hardpan we call Van Nuys, that nothing in the middle:

Mission San Fernando and the vast San Fernando plain.hoto 1875 by a railroad surveyor; taken from SF Pass looking toward Cahuenga.

Don Pio Pico, executing rights from a complicated chain-of-title victory from the Land Commission, sold his half of Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando to the Yankees because beef prices had collapsed. Around 1865, the 15-year Gold Rush boom waned, then busted. The days were bygone of Valley rancheros driving thousands of cattle up to San Francisco and Sacramento to be slaughtered for twenty-dollar beefsteaks. The problem of a sudden oversupply of lowing stock solved itself, when a searing drought gripped the Southland, leaving the Valley full of cattle bones by 1868. The land sale was pervaded with ironies; Col. Fremont had made the Mission the headquarters for his California Battalion, and across these very plains had ridden in triumph to receive the sword of capitulation from Gen. Andres Pico, who claimed the Mission and its lands for his own. In 1848, Pico capitulated to save the Californios’ ranchos. Now the Picos were selling theirs off to the Yankees. But Pio Pico was the wiliest California land-jobber of them all. Realizing a profit from the switch of allegiances to Norte America, even so land could be liquidated legally, was their triumph. Pio was was certainly shrewd enough to realize a Hotel on the Plaza would bring steadier returns, and more genteel social connections, than running stock on the hoof. It was a brilliant trade for Pico, one of his canniest bets, for it kept him in good credit. It was also a decisive investment in downtown Los Angeles; the first moment when the dusty pueblo earned any notice at all in the world. Pio Pico put the Merced Theatre in back of the Pico House, with a door to the lobby; and put Jules Harder in the hotel kitchen; and made LA a city on the map.

**1880s**: **the combine and twenty-mule team.**

And it was a great deal for Van Nuys, who was the partner responsible for actually running the farm operation. Lankershim had tried dry wheat farming for a couple of seasons but had busted. Van Nuys said he could do it, and he did; with true Yankee luck, the middle of 1870s when he experimented brought some good El Niño rains, and by the 1880s Van Nuys was harvesting boatloads of grain with Lankershim’s capital, and shipping it overseas at a branded premium. Thus it was a great return for the San Franicsco investors, too. Lankershim had found this land destroyed by heavy cattle ranching and failed to work it; it was Van Nuys who made it into a productive monocrop that brought other wheat farmers to make fortunes here too. He was one of the greatest farmers who ever lived.

The Home Ranch was the Van Nuys’ farmhouse, where he and Susannah (Lankershim) raised three kids and a million bushels of wheat.

But who was Isaac Newton Van Nuys? He wasn’t the founder of Van Nuys, but it was named for him when he sold in 1909. (The town was founded in 1911). Speculative towns are usually named after the developer’s signature on the front of the check, not the farmer’s name on the back. Significantly, also, the name ‘Van Nuys’ is practically the only one of the developers’ original town names not to have changed; meaning, Van Nuys never actively voted to change its identity, as did social-climbing Toluca to Lankershim to North Hollywood, or Zelzah to Northridge, or Marian to Reseda, or Owensmouth to (the equally unappealing) Canoga Park. In the next part we’ll take the man, and his name, and his Life, in View, to glean what civics lessons we can.

March! Leap! Listen to that ‘Meadow Serenade!’

Classical Gas Dept.

March 1 was the Romans’ New Year. The mythology of the festival is tied to the mythology of the founding of the City itself. One of the story’s potent icons — twin palms — is still to be traced on the landscape of many Latin cities, including Los Angeles. From Fasti, Book 3, “March,” by Publius Ovidius Naso; translated by Sir James G. Frazer:

“Come, warlike Mars; lay down thy shield and spear for a brief space, and from thy helmet loose thy glistering locks. Haply thou mayest ask, What has a poet to do with Mars? From thee the month which now I sing doth take its name. Thyself dost see that fierce wars are waged by Minerva’s hands. Is she for that the less at leisure for the liberal arts? After the pattern of Pallas take a time to put aside the lance. Thou shalt find something to do unarmed. Then, too, wast thou unarmed when the Roman priestess captivated thee, that thou mightest bestow upon this city a great seed.”

The Tiber,, one of Rome’s Quattro Fontane; by the Swiss sculptor Francesco Borromini. The river god lies recumbent, with a cornucopia and water jar. The scene is the Lupercal, a grotto near the old riverbank where, famously, the Twins were rescued by Mother Lupa, who nursed the infants and wolfed-up the Roman blood and spirit. Ovid’s poem places Mars in the same spot, in the same relaxed position, during the god’s seduction of the holy virgin princess, Silvia:

“Silvia the Vestal (for why not start from her?) went in the morning to fetch water to wash the holy things. When she had come to where the path ran gently down the sloping bank, she set down her earthenware pitcher from her head. Weary, she sat her on the ground and opened her bosom to catch the breezes, and composed her ruffled hair. While she sat, the shady willows and the tuneful birds and the soft murmur of the water induced to sleep. Sweet slumber overpowered and crept stealthily over her eyes, and her languid hand dropped from her chin. Mars saw her; the sight inspired him with desire, and his desire was followed by possession, but by his power divine he hid his stolen joys. Sleep left her; she lay big, for already within her womb there was Rome’s founder. Languid she rose, nor knew why she rose so languid, and leaning on a tree she spake these words: ‘Useful and fortunate, I pray, may that turn out which I saw in a vision of sleep. Or was the vision too clear for sleep? Methought I was by the fire of Ilium, when the woolen fillet slipped from my hair and fell before the sacred hearth. From the fillet there sprang a wondrous sight – two palm-trees side by side.‘

Planted with the Roman civilization the same day the Roman civilization was planted in LA;

“Of them one was the taller and by its heavy boughs spread a canopy over the whole world, and with its foliage touched the topmost stars. Lo, mine uncle wielded an axe against the trees; the warning terrified me and my heart did throb with fear. A woodpecker – the bird of Mars – and a she-wolf fought in defence of the twin trunks, and by their help both of the palms were saved.” She finished speaking, and by a feeble effort lifted the full pitcher; she had filled it while she was telling her vision. Meanwhile her belly swelled with a heavenly burden, for Remus was growing, and growing, too, was Quirinus [divine name for Romulus, god of the curies of the people]. If you are at leisure, look into the foreign calendars, and you shall find in them also a month named after Mars.“

“It was the third month in the Alban calendar, the fifth in the Faliscan, the sixth among thy peoples, land of the Hernicans. The Arician calendar is in agreement with the Alban and with that of the city [Tusculum] whose lofty walls were built by the hand of Telegonus. It is the fifth month in the calendar of the Laurentines, the tenth in the calendar of the hardy Aequians, the fourth in the calendar of the folk of Cures, and the soldierly Pelignians agree with their Sabine forefathers; both peoples reckon Mars the god of the fourth month. In order that he might take precedence of all these, Romulus assigned the beginning of the year to the author of his being…. Walls were built, which, small though they were, it had been better for Remus not to have overleaped. And now what of late had been woods and pastoral solitudes was a city, when thus the father of the eternal city spake: ‘Umpire of war, from whose blood I am believed to have sprung (and to confirm that belief I will give many proofs), we name the beginning of the Roman year after thee; the first month shall be called by my father’s name.’ The promise was kept; he did call the month by his father’s name: this pious deed is said to have been well pleasing to the god...'”

The ancilia were twelve identical shields of figure-eight design — eleven decoys made to disguise the one which was a magical war-talisman. The original, a gift from Minerva, fell from the heavens before Rome’s second king, Numa, with the audible promise ringing from the heavens, that under this shield, Rome would always be mistress of the world. Numa, the pious and gentle successor to the warlike Romulus, founded the laws of the Roman religion, including the college of priests called the Salii, the Leaping Priests. On the kalends of March, the patrician youths honored in the college each took one of the shields, and danced the corn up out in the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars. Failure to honor Mars in the dance would mean the crops wouldn’t rise, and the Roman arms would be defeated in the season’s campaigns. Leaping, springing, bouncing, capering, the youths performed ritualized imitations of “Spring” while singing the Carmen Saliare, Song of the Leapers. This ancient hymn had words in so archaic a version of Latin that classical Romans were baffled as to the meaning. But mystery is not the enemy of religion; neglect is. So the Salii sang the prayer as received, and leapt and marched in formation, until the civic religion and the Salian College were outlawed in the 4th century.

Cozeulodoizeso; omnia vero adpatula coemisse iamcusianes duo misceruses dun ianusve vet pos melios eumrecum…Divum empta cante, divum deo supplicante.
Tr.: O Planter God, arise. Everything indeed have I committed unto (thee as) the Opener. Now art thou the Doorkeeper, thou art the Good Creator, the Good God of Beginnings. Thou’lt come especially, thou the superior of these kings …Sing ye to the Father of the Gods, entreat the God of Gods.
— R.G. Kent’s translation of one of the Carmen Saliare fragments. Note the conflation of Mars with Janus (Dianus Virbius, the Double-Man) who was the older Italic god of the New Year. From the identification of the God of Crops and War as also the Doorkeeper, comes the custom of leaving open the Gates of the Temple of Janus during the times that Rome was at war, and only closing them during (infrequent) times of peace.

Included in Ovid’s recounting of the mythology of March 1 is a homily on the story of the Sabine women — the raped fore-mothers of the Romans. By turning aside the martial wrath of both their outraged Sabine men-folk, as well as their hot-spurred Latin abductors, the Sabine wives saved their generation of infants, sparing the Roman people who would be descended from them: “Hence the duty, no light one, of celebrating the first day, my Kalends, is incumbent on Oebalian [Sabine] mothers, either because, boldly thrusting themselves on the bare blades, they by their tears did end these martial wars; or else mothers duly observe the rites on my day, because Ilia [Troy] was happily made a mother by me. Moreover, frosty winter then at last retires, and shorn by the cold, return to the trees, and moist within the tender shoot the bud doth swell; now too the rank grass, long hidden, discovers secret paths whereby to lift its head in air. Now is the field fruitful, now is the hour for breeding cattle, now doth the bird upon the bough construct a nest and home; ‘tis right that Latin mothers should observe the fruitful season, for in their travail they both fight and pray.“

Civilization seems these days more like a devourer of the green fields; a distracting opiate against natural activity on the land; and a bar to those who might seek a meaningful re-ligion with Nature’s God. If we miss the flow, the flood, the flowers, the festivity, we miss life itself. But don’t take it from me, take it from the Gershwins! ‘Meadow Serendade’ was cut in Philadelphia from the original 1927 “Strike Up The Band.” Click for the music! (The plot of the satirical show was lightly anti-war — it was all about America’s declaration of war upon Switzerland over the Cheese Tarriff.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pNtZpw5mF_DljY0EDDhAHO914qxis843/view?usp=sharing
A single lead-sheet was found in the famous Secaucus Warehouse; in 1990 the great John Mauceri, of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, back-orchestrated it from fragments left in the score, and recorded it with Brent Barrett and Rebecca Luker. But there was never any sheet music: the song was never published. I wanted to use it in a cabaret a few years ago, and set out to jot down a fake-sheet; but the Gershwin chromatics and harmonics were too much to “jot,” and without them, the singers couldn’t hear the part, so we cut it from our show. Covid-19 nudged me to go back and finish the difficult work of doing a proper arrangement ‘by ear.’ With its classical bucolics, and its Jewish-sounding poignancy, it’s both a brilliant satire of milk-fed American nostalgia for rural life, and a moving tribute to it. Anyway, it’s too good a song to allow it to languish as forgotten or unheard Gershwin. Sing, and leap along:

HE: Though my voice is just a sing-song
I must burst into a Spring Song —
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
Fondest mem’ries seem to waken
To my boyhood days I’m taken —
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
In the dearest section of my recollection,
Back to fields of clover I’m conveyed.
In that charming locale, Nature must get vocale,
Listen to that MEADOW SERENADE…

CHORUS:
I hear the rustle of the trees from the nearby thickets
Where the oriole is calling,
And the bobolink is bawling
For his mate.
I hear the sighing of the breeze and the chirping crickets,
Where the whip-poor-will is wooing,
And the katydid is cooing
To his Kate.
And I can hear the cowbell chorus
That’s now being played.
Hummingbirds humming for us,
From deep in the shade.
There’s music in my heart
As my thoughts go winging
Where the Spring is ever singing
That MEADOW SERENADE.

SHE: In that meadow now, there lodges
A garage for Buicks and Dodges.
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
You had Prince and Rover (what dogs!)
Now you’ll find them there, as hot dogs —
‘Hey nonny-nonny, piminy-miminy mo!’
Get a Coca-Cola! Buy a New Victrola!
Through the scene the billboards are displayed.
You can fill your car there, even find a bar there —
HE: Bring me back the MEADOW SERENADE!
(repeat Chorus)