Rosebud

Rosebud

When I was a kid, watching all the great sitcoms of my youth, I remember watching an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show (which ran from 1961 – 1968) when Rob and Laura Petrie were trying to explain to his son, Richie, why his middle name was Rosebud. It was a November, 1962 episode written by our old friend, Carl Reiner and it wound up that Rosebud was an anagram of an origin I don’t recall, but which was based in funny family stories that helped Richie feel better about his unusual middle name. I had no idea that Rosebud was anything other than a funny,slightly effeminate name. How would an eight-year-old know about a 1941 classic movie directed, produced, co-written and starring Orson Welles and called Citizen Kane, which all hung on the proper name Rosebud. While I have never watched even one of the 684 episodes of The Simpsons (I’m sure I’ve seen all 158 of The Dick Van Dyke Show episodes at least five times – 790+), I am told that The Simpsons also had a Rosebud spoof episode. Even Seinfeld (actually J. Peterman) had a Citizen Kane “dying word” parody.

Citizen Kane is considered by many to be one of the greatest movies ever made. Anyone debating that better take it up with the Smithsonian, who made it one of its inaugural inductees to its National Film Registry. The story is based on a composite of American media barons, the two most notable of which were William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. And given that the opening scene is at the protagonist, Charles Foster Kane’s palatial seaside mansion called Xanadu, I think its fair to say that Hearst Castle was the model for Xanadu. The best evidence that the fashioning hit the mark came when Hearst specifically forbade mention of the film in any of the Hearst publications.

Four years ago, I started thinking about what to do for Kim’s 60th birthday in 2018. I asked what she wanted to do since we usually took a summer vacation with a family villa rental (the prior year had been a lovely chateaux in Normandy) usually over her birthday in early July. She said she wanted to keep it in California so that more of her friends and family could come. I was disappointed, since it didn’t initially feel “special” enough. Then it struck me. One of the most “special” spots in the world happens to be inCalifornia, the Hearst Castle at San Simeon on the Central Coast of the state. I had no idea what was possible,so I did what we all do to get the ball rolling, I Googled Hearst Castle. In an obscure corner of a web page, I saw that the State of California, that controls Hearst Castle as a State Park, would consider requests for private rental of the property.

It only took one call to San Simeon and the events coordinator of the Castle to lock up the evening of Sunday, July 1, 2018 for Kim’s birthday extravaganza at Hearst Castle. I have never been a very disciplined person. I am more an impulsive sort of guy who likes to seize the initiative,especially if it feels differentiating. I will not suggest that renting Hearst Castle was not an extravagance. It was. It took tremendous planning and literally layers of mandatory service vendors (the State of California is OCD about its monuments) to pull off. We were limited to 50 guests in total. Not 51,50, no exceptions. That seems like a lot of people, but trust me, 50 slots go very fast. The only line we had to draw was the “no kids” line. But here’s the biggest reason so few people seem to rent Hearst Castle for events like this; San Simeon is in the middle of nowhere.

I’ll bet that William Randolph Hearst, when he built his Castle in 1919, felt that in a century, San Simeon would get engulfed by progress and it would likely be in the middle of some sort of urban sprawl. That is as far from what has actually happened as an outcome could possibly be. To say that San Simeon is remote is an understatement. The nearest town to the Castle to the south is Cambria at 8 miles and to the north, Gorda at 39 miles. The nearest regular commercial service airport is San Luis Obispo at 42 miles. It’s a tough place to get to and an even tougher place to throw a party for 50 people.

In hindsight, as crazy as the idea was, I am very glad I did it. It was a very special night that I believe all 50 guests, and especially Kim, will remember for their whole lives. There are very few events that rise to that level in life and I can think of no one more deserving of such special treatment and grand memories than Kim. The night was perfect. The weather. The setting. The guest list. The catering. The food. The entertainment. All perfect. In fact, the whole weekend, spent in and around Cambria and San Simeon, was perfect.

Tonight, two years after her special night, Kim and I are staying in the exact same room at the Fireside Inn in Cambria, overlooking the rugged Central Coast of California. We’ll drive past San Simeon and the distant castle on the hill to the East. We will stop and say hello to the elephant seals that lounge on the beach just north of the San Simeon beach, those seals always looking like Kurt Vonnegut’s impression of what the human species will eventually evolve into (see Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut). Our day’s drive will carry on up through Big Sur, where the road gets narrow and treacherous and the scenery is so spectacular in the morning mist that I will want to stop at every cliff-hugging curve to soak in the windswept views. Big Sur gets its name from the Spanish conquest of California. It is a simple reference that the Spanish Conquistadors felt that the wild lands along the coast south of Monterrey was so remote that they simply called it El Sur Grande…..the big south. The strange thing (I do understand that I keep repeating this thought one way or another) is that five hundred years after the discovery of this rugged coastline, and perhaps as a testament to the raw power of nature in some parts of the world, the scenery remains just barely changed since those long ago days. Man has cut a small two-lane highway along the shoreline and up on the cliffs, but nature regularly reclaims her property and that road can be closed for several years at a time as the California highway crews fight nature to keep the road functional. Some might think that the Big Sur natural beauty is a compliment to man’s ability to demur to nature by leaving such beauty untouched for future generations, but I suspect that has less to do with this ongoing reality than the fact that man cannot compete with nature in this place and has had the wisdom to declare it as undevelopable.

Before we reach Cormel and the Monterrey Peninsula, we pass the world-renowned retreat of Essalen, with its entrance on the ocean side of the narrow road. I have a dear high school friend who used to suggest we go there for some contemplation. He is now remarried and living in Santa Fe and I an ensconced in San Diego, so meditation will take a backseat to the aging process and we will likely never go to straighten our our respective chi’s.

From there it’s past the garlic capital of the world in Gilroy and up the East Bay to Oakland. I have never driven up the East Bay for some reason and am anxious to see what it looks like. It looks like every other Freeway in California, but at least the Richmond Bridge over the Bay to San Quentin is a lovely sight as we start gathering ourselves for our arrival into the wine country of Sonoma Valley. I would declare Cambria to Sonoma to be one of the great day drives of all time with coastal fog, meditative remembrances, garlic in our nostrils and the Bay Area all ahead, around and behind us. We are now in the new state of Northern California and finally understand what Rosebud is all about.