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Matthew walked bow-legged with quick, northbound jerky strides up the hill above Pescadero State Beach. His blue nose female kept up alongside, but her grey head hung lowered, shoulders hustling, tongue panting. Matthew’s back, young and strong, held his yellow backpack upright. It’s top peeked high above Matthew’s head. It’s bottom strapped snug around Matthew’s hips. The dog’s leash dragged on the ground, handless.
“I saw that guy south of Davenport on my way to Santa Cruz on Thursday!” said the passenger in the car driving southbound on the coast road. ”On the way back home, he had reached Swanton.”
The driver regarded Matthew as the car sped past. The speedometer needle poked 60. Only a couple state beaches and a eucalyptus grove altered the contours of the coast hills. “If we see him on the return trip, we’ll pick him up.”
After dinner and drinks at Duarte’s the two hopped back in the car and headed north. On the hill north of Pomponio creek, Matthew and the dog climbed. No arm outstretched with a thumb up asking for a ride. Matthew didn’t turn to even look at the oncoming car.
The car slowed over to the shoulder ahead of Matthew and his tired dog.
The passenger looked surprised at the driver, “I can’t believe you’re actually doing this! Maybe this guy won’t even want a ride?”
“Doubt it,” replied the driver, looking in the rear view mirror. ”He’s running towards us.”
“You’re going to let the dog in here too?” asked the passenger.
“I let our dogs in here. And one of ours is a Pit. Why not?”
Slightly winded, Matthew reached the car by traversing the drainage gully along the road’s edge. The passenger stepped out of the car, onto the paved shoulder, opened the back seat door and introduced himself to Matthew. The driver waited behind the wheel, brake applied, engine running. Matthew unclipped the waist strap and slung off his backpack, tossing it to the side of the backseat. The dog jumped in, tail a little tucked, sniffing the carpet of the car.
Through his bushy black beard and his white evenly-spaced teeth, Matthew broadly smiled and said, “Thank you so much for stopping!”
Ivano Franco Comelli‘s La Nostra Costa (our coast) sticks an Italian flag in the coast north of Santa Cruz. Ivano Comelli is “un figlio della costa (son of the coast), born and raised on a brussel sprouts rancio.”
Ivano’s family lived on the Coast Road from 1937 to 1953 amongst other ranceri and amici della costa. “Italians who lived on or near the Coast Road would often say that they lived su per la costa, up the coast.” The family home was located on The Gulch Ranch, Il Golce.
“Our single-story batten and board-house had only about 1,200 square feet of actual living space and was separated from the Coast Road by a small patch of lawn, which in turn was surrounded by three sides by a hedge of tall juniper plants. These thick, woody plants shielded the house, somewhat, from the dusty wind, but did little to mitigate the constant noise that was generated by passing vehicles. There were far fewer vehicles on the road in those days; however, it still had a significant amount of traffic.”
Southbound cement trucks traveling the Coast Road to Santa Cruz from Davenport’s Portland Cement Plant would “descend into the gulch and climb a steep grade on the other side. Our house was located right at the top of the grade where the trucks completed their climb. Many times a truck going by was so noisy that our single wall house literally shook on its foundation. Mercifully, when the highway was rebuilt in the latter part of the 1950s, this particular portion of the gulch was mostly filled with rock and sand. The present roadway has a slight dip, but no longer does it have that steep descent.”
La Nostra Costa provides old photos and tells stories of daily life along the coast ranches and in old Davenport. Some things change, some things remain the same: access to beaches bordered by privately-owned land, nudism and sex on the beach while being spied upon from above by boys on the bluff, automobile accidents on the Coast Road, good food and Localism.
During World War II, being immigrants without U.S. Citizenship, these Italians were not allowed west of the Coast Road. “The entire coast from the Oregon border to just below Santa Barbara was declared off-limits to enemy aliens effective February 24, 1942.”
La Nostra Costa may be found at Bookshop Santa Cruz and via a few other venues. Ivano also maintains a blog.
First out on the road, on a weekend morning, Chryslers and Dodges, convertibles
and sedans, rental cars for tourists. Next Gas 33 Miles
Black asphalt, solid yellow double lines, freshly-plowed fields. Umber sandstone
bluffs, black jagged rocks, white foam, and a cold, blue, shimmery-velvet Pacific.
Cabrillo Highway.
On the long straight-aways, seventeen Harley-riding bikers rumble two-abreast.
