by Janet Dawson
“Yes, that’s the place. I was there once,” Mildred added. “I was in a Western back in the late thirties, something called The Cisco Kid and the Lady, with Cesar Romero. We shot exteriors at Lone Pine. That’s where Pearl was from.”
Maybe she’d retired there, if she was still alive. “I understand Pearl married twice, and her first husband was killed during the war.”
“Yes,” Mildred said. “Eddie, the Marine. She met him while she was volunteering at the Hollywood Canteen. They weren’t married very long. He was killed somewhere in the Pacific. She married again after the war, a man named Steve. He was a grip at one of the studios, Metro, I think. Pearl met him on the set and they started dating. I don’t remember his last name, either. Pearl always used the last name Bishop professionally, so that’s how I know her. That marriage lasted several years and ended in divorce in the mid-fifties. Pearl has a son from her second marriage. His name’s Carl. If she’s retired I’ll bet she’s living with him, or somewhere near him. I hope this helps you find her. I haven’t had a letter from her in a long time.”
“Thanks, you’ve been helpful,” I said.
Mildred chuckled. “I’m at an age where I don’t remember things. It’s like my brain cells have gone south. Wait a minute, that’s it. A direction.”
“A direction?”
“Like north, south, east or west,” Mildred said. “The first part of the name of Pearl’s second husband, it’s a direction. Northcote? No, that was an actor she dated right after the war. Westbrook! That’s it. His name was Steve Westbrook.”
By Wednesday afternoon, I knew that Steve Westbrook, the grip Pearl Bishop married in 1948, had continued working in the movie industry until his death in the late seventies. More important, I knew where to find his son Carl Westbrook. He worked for the United States Forest Service, at the Mono Basin Scenic Area Visitor Center, located near the town of Lee Vining in the Eastern Sierra. He lived there as well, with his wife.
I opened my Internet browser and sent a search engine looking for the visitor center website and a phone number. A woman answered and I asked if Ranger Westbrook was available.
“He’s not here right now,” she said. “He’s leading a tour. Would you like to leave a message?”
“Actually I’m trying to locate his mother. Her name is Pearl Bishop.” Was Pearl still alive? A leading question was one way to find out. “I wondered if she might live there in Lee Vining.”
“Pearl?” The woman laughed. “Oh, Pearl is a hoot. Yes, she lives with Carl. I saw her just the other day at the Mono Lake Committee bookshop. Sometimes she helps out a couple of days a week.”
I thanked the woman and hung up the phone, a big grin spreading across my face. Pearl Bishop was alive, living with her son in Lee Vining, and still spry enough to volunteer.
I pointed my web browser to the Mono Lake Committee website. I was a member of the committee, an organization dedicated to preserving the unique ecosystem of the lake. The committee’s information center and bookstore was located on Highway 395, the main north-and-south route on the eastern side of the Sierra, which also served as Lee Vining’s main street. I found the number and reached for the phone, then I replaced it in the cradle. This was a conversation I wanted to have in person.
My calendar for the rest of the week was light, and the weekend was clear. I made some phone calls and rearranged a few appointments. As soon as I got home that afternoon, I went up to the garage apartment and arranged for Darcy, my tenant, to feed the cats during my absence. Then I started packing.
Chapter 24
Thursday morning I loaded a cooler of water and provisions into the trunk of my car, tucking it in next to my overnight bag. I carried some camping gear that included a sleeping bag, a deflated air mattress, and a folding chair and table. Just in case, I thought.
The worst of the morning rush-hour traffic had thinned as I headed out of the Bay Area. The road climbed up Altamont Pass, where huge windmills spun against a clear blue summer sky. On the other side of the pass, the highway dipped down into the haze of California’s broad Central Valley. I made my way east, past fields, orchards and fruit stands, and stopped in Oakdale for gas, coffee and a bathroom break.
Farther east, the terrain changed, the elevation climbing gradually at first, with rolling hills and knobby outcroppings. Then the Sierra Nevada, the white mountains, loomed in the distance, rising through the summer haze, filling more of the sky as I drove closer. I turned south on California Highway 49, the Mother Lode route that ran from the northern mines up by Downieville, down through Grandma’s home town of Jackson, all the way to Oakhurst, where Grandpa was born and raised.
South of the Don Pedro Reservoir I saw a mountainside crosshatched by huge pipes transporting water to San Francisco from the reservoir behind O’Shaughnessy Dam, in the now-drowned Hetch Hetchy Valley, a twin to the more famous Yosemite Valley. The main route up the steep slope was the New Priest Grade, with its numerous switchbacks. This road climbed less precipitously than the Old Priest Grade, used primarily by locals and those with four-wheel drive. Not by me, though. It was a bit too steep for my taste.
At the Big Oak Flat entrance at the northern boundary of Yosemite National Park. I showed my national parks pass at the entrance and stopped nearby to use the rest room. I wasn’t going to the Valley, the magnet for most of the park’s visitors. I continued east on Highway 120. It was only sixty miles or so to Lee Vining, but one didn’t hurry on this narrow strip of asphalt. Tioga Pass Road, as it was now called, twisted and turned through Yosemite’s spectacular scenery. It closed in autumn with the first snowfall and sometimes didn’t reopen until late May or early June.
The highway climbed steadily. Huge boulders, carved and deposited by glaciers, lined either side of the road, and I glimpsed a waterfall to my left. At Olmstead Point, I parked, and got out of my car. I was 8300 feet above sea level and the sky was clear and blue. To the south was Clouds Rest, the peak towering nearly 10,000 feet. Nearby I saw the familiar granite profile of Half Dome, photographed many times by Ansel Adams, and climbed by people far more adventurous than I. A ranger had set up a telescope trained on the peak. I peered through the lens. The hikers making their way up Half Dome’s sheer granite looked like ants climbing a huge pickle.
Thinking of pickles made my stomach growl. It was after one and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I returned to my car and opened the trunk, taking out my cooler packed with water and provisions. I made myself a pastrami sandwich and I ate my lunch, sitting on the wide rock railing that edged the parking lot, watching people hike the short trail out to the boulders beyond the parking lot.
Refreshed, I took another swig of water and walked back to my car. Coming down from Olmsted Point I drove along the rim of Tenaya Lake, its cold glacier-fed water a deep blue. At the eastern edge of the lake picnickers walked along the sandy beaches and waded in the shallows. A yellow-bellied marmot, a big rodent common in the park, sunned itself on a boulder near the road as I entered Tuolumne Meadows. I finally left the park at the eastern gate near Tioga Peak. From Ellery Lake, it was downhill, twelve miles of steep road and switchbacks, a road I didn’t want to drive at night or during inclement weather.
I was now at the western rim of the Great Basin, which encompasses most of Nevada as well as parts of California and Utah. It’s an arid region, the largest North American watershed that doesn’t drain into an ocean, and the stark landscape has a beauty all its own. Ahead of me was Mono Lake, which doesn’t drain anywhere. This ancient body of water, about seventy square miles, is estimated to be over a million years old. Fed by Eastern Sierra streams that wash in salt and minerals, the lake’s fresh water evaporates, and the water becomes become more salty and alkaline than the ocean. It has no fish. Instead it has brine shrimp and alkali flies. Along the lakeshore and rising from the water are picturesque limestone formations called tufa towers. Millions of migratory birds visit the lake each year, feeding on the shrimp and flies, and the large islands
in the lake are nesting grounds for California seagulls.
Mono Lake used to be larger. Back in 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began diverting water from the tributary streams feeding the lake, depriving it of fresh water. The lake’s level dropped drastically and its ecosystem began to collapse. The islands became peninsulas and predators devastated the nesting sites. The exposed lake bed sent particles into the air, damaging the region’s air quality. By 1995 the lake level was almost forty-five vertical feet below its pre-diversion level. Mono Lake had lost half its volume and doubled in salinity.
People who love Mono Lake, the stark, eerie landscape surrounding it, and the wildlife it supports, lined up with David and Sally Gaines, who formed the Mono Lake Committee in 1978. They began litigating, winning an important California Supreme Court decision in 1983 and finally, in 1994, a State Water Resources Control Board ruling that set limits on water exports and mandates a water level twenty feet above the lowest level. The water in Mono Lake is rising, slowly. It’s not where it should be yet, but the ecosystem is slowly healing.
Highway 120 leveled out as I reached the bottom of the canyon and the junction with US 395. I stopped, watched for an opening in traffic, then turned left and headed north into the small unincorporated town of Lee Vining. The old mining camp has a population of a few hundred people, but that number increases in the summer. Lee Vining is a major hub for recreation on this side of the Sierra Nevada. Visitors are drawn to Mono Lake, Yosemite and the remote ghost town of Bodie, on a high plateau to the northeast. Hikers and campers explore the canyons and there are plenty of places to fish and boat. Some businesses close when winter blankets the Sierra, opening in spring and shutting their doors with the first snowfall. But this is also a popular spot for winter sports, with ski runs at June Lake and Mammoth Lakes, both to the south. Photographers love the area in any season, with its many moods.
And Mono Lake itself is a prime location for birders, a major stopover on the Pacific Flyway. In fact, my father was here for the Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua. I’d left a message on his cell phone to let him know I was on my way over the mountains, but he hadn’t yet returned the call. I wanted to see him, of course, but there was also the possibility that the assembled birders had booked all the available lodging in Lee Vining. Maybe I could stay with Dad. It was either that, or the sleeping bag and air mattress in my trunk.
It was just after four in the afternoon when I parked on Third Street, just around the corner from the old dance hall that housed the Mono Lake Committee Information Center and Bookstore. The front steps were crowded with people, many wearing T-shirts with Bird Chautauqua or Audubon Society logos, binoculars and cameras hanging around their necks. Inside the center was stocked with books and souvenirs. The cash registers were doing a brisk business. I waited my turn, leafing through a photo book showing the lake during all four seasons. Then the woman behind the counter finished ringing up a customer and turned to me.
“I’m looking for Pearl Bishop,” I said. “I understand she sometimes works here.”
“Pearl?” the woman said. “She’s not here today. But I did see her awhile ago, over at the Latte Da.”
“Thanks.” I stepped outside the bookstore and walked back across Third Street. The Latte Da Coffee Café was attached to the El Mono Motel, and it was busy as well. I went inside, queued up to order a latte, and looked around. Then I spotted a couple of likely prospects near the back, four senior citizens, two women and two men, at a table, its surface decorated with red, white and blue poker chips.
I walked toward them. The dealer, a big, grizzled man with a tonsure of gray hair around his balding head, had his back to me. He flexed his fingers and growled, “Down and dirty,” dealing the last card in a hand of seven-card stud. He set down the deck without looking at the card he’d dealt himself. He had a pair of tens showing on the table. He glanced at the woman on his left. “Bet your aces, Ida.”
Judging from the smile that tweaked her lips, Ida liked the last card she’d been dealt. She tossed a blue chip onto the pile in the middle of the table, sat back, and reached for her coffee cup. The man next to her, bald and skinny, bet his pair of queens, saying nothing as he added his blue chip to the pot. Now the other players looked at the white-haired woman on my right. She had an eight, a nine, and a jack showing, all diamonds, a possible straight or flush. She let them wait as she took a sip from an insulated metal coffee mug with a Mono Lake logo.
“Up to you, Pearl,” the dealer said.
Pearl Bishop set down her mug. “Yours, and another one like it,” she said in a voice that was equal parts gravel and whiskey. She tossed two blue chips onto the pile as though she were tossing pebbles into a pond.
If her Internet Movie Database bio was accurate, Pearl was pushing ninety, and she looked pretty good for her age, a medium build in green slacks and a striped shirt. Her short white hair was swept back from her wrinkled face and she had bifocals perched on her nose. She had a pretty good poker face, too.
“In or out, Elmer?” Pearl asked the dealer. He grumbled as he took a look at his cards. Then he shook his head and turned his cards face down. Ida and the skinny man called Pearl’s bet.
“Read ’em and weep.” She chuckled as she displayed a straight flush. Then she pulled her winnings toward her and arranged her already substantial pile of poker chips according to color.
“Got time for another hand?” Elmer asked, shuffling the cards.
Ida consulted her watch. “I can’t. My daughter’s driving down from Bridgeport and she’ll be here in half an hour.”
“I gotta go, too,” the skinny man said.
“Well, if George is out, we might as well settle up,” Pearl said. The poker players tallied their chips. This was a game of nickel-dime-quarter. Pearl was the big winner. At six dollars and seventy-five cents, she’d more than doubled her initial buy-in of three bucks. She stowed her winnings in her purse, a grin on her face. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
Ida brushed cheeks with Pearl and tossed her empty coffee container in a nearby trash can. She and George headed for the door. The dealer put a rubber band around the cards, then scooped the poker chips into a flat tin box. He slipped both of these into the canvas tote bag hanging at the back of Pearl’s chair. “See you tomorrow?” he said, patting her on the shoulder.
“I’m game. Call me.”
He walked slowly toward the front door. I took a step forward. “Pearl Bishop?”
She looked up at me, sharp blue eyes twinkling over the rim of her bifocals. “Who wants to know?”
I smiled at her. “My name’s Jeri Howard.”
Pearl’s eyes widened and she tilted her head back with a raucous laugh. “Jeepers Creepers! It’s Jerusha, by damn. You’re named for her.”
“Now how did you know that?”
“Your grandma once sent me a picture of you. The famous private eye. She used to write me about your exploits. She was so proud of you, said you know your onions. Besides, you look a lot like her. That red hair comes from your Grandpa Ted, though. What in the blue blazes are you doing in Lee Vining?”
“Looking for you.”
“Well, you found me.” She patted the seat recently vacated by the dealer. “Sit down and we’ll beat our gums.”
I pointed at her coffee mug. “May I get you a refill?”
She shook her head. “No, one’s my limit. Why are you looking for an old relic like me?”
I sat down. “I’ve been going through Grandma’s letters from the years when she worked in Hollywood. They make interesting reading.”
“Your grandma always did write good letters. I never did, but she made the effort to stay in touch, and I appreciated that.” Pearl sighed. “Now she’s gone, and so is Anne. I’m probably the last one standing.”
“Mildred’s still alive,” I said. “I talked with her yesterday.”
“She is? Do you have her number? I’d love to talk with her.”
I’d jotte
d Mildred’s phone number in my notebook. Now I wrote it on the back of one of my business cards, and gave it to Pearl. “I was trying to locate you. I even called the Screen Actors Guild. Then Anne’s daughter connected me with Mildred, who gave me some clues. She said you were from Lone Pine.”
“Movies in my blood,” she said with a laugh. “Back in the early twenties they filmed a silent picture in Lone Pine. It was called The Round-Up and it starred Fatty Arbuckle. My father was an extra in that one. Pa worked the pictures every chance he got. Ma, too. They needed every dollar, especially during the Depression. I went off to Hollywood in ’thirty-seven, same year as your grandma. But I stayed.”
“Yes, I’ve looked at your credits on the Internet Movie Database. I even watched those three episodes you did for The Fugitive.”
Pearl chuckled. “Ah, David Janssen. Now there was a good-looking man, and such a pleasure to work with. I had fun in the movies and television. And I made a living at it, which was more than a lot of starry-eyed youngsters did. But there comes a time when the parts aren’t there for an old gal like me, even if I am spry and have most of my brain cells. Jeri, I’m delighted to see you. We have a lot to talk about. Where are you staying? I think every motel in town is full. It’s tourist season. With the Chautauqua this weekend, we’re up to our butts in birders.”
“I’m not sure just yet. My father’s due here for the Chautauqua, and he’s staying over at the Lakeview. If he’s got room in his cabin...”
“You’re bunking with me,” Pearl declared. “I live with my son and daughter-in-law. They added on an apartment when I gave up Hollywood and moved north. You can sleep on the sofabed. Can you give me a ride home? I walked over here. It’s just a few blocks. Everything in Lee Vining is just a few blocks. I don’t drive anymore, you see. At my age I’ve got no business behind the wheel of a car.”
