Today, in LA, we suffer a rally of the heat wave that punished us last week. I wish I was at Rosemary's. I would pop in there now but for the fact that Rosemary's Ice Cream Parlor is in downtown Bakersfield, a sprawling oil town with 300,000 plus inhabitants and a corresponding real estate boom. "Ole Bako" regularly enjoys temperatures of 100 degrees and worse. It's an hour and forty five minutes north of us, in the South Central Valley and is its agricultural epicenter. Most of our country's table grapes, pistachios, almonds and carrots, come from this rich, masterfully irrigated part of the valley. Bakersfield is famous for its style of country music, for Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and also for its oil. As Gloria Swanson bullyingly cajoles William Holden in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard:Norma Desmond: Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars.
Joe Gillis: Keep it.
Norma Desmond: Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, pumping, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!
When you drop down from the beautiful mountain ride into The Grapevine, named for both its luge-like passage and the vines bounded by the triangle between the north and southbound lanes of I-5, you immediately see a fantastic birds-eye view of the valley. When you hit the floor, the oil is ever pumping and here my allergies start to kick in. After a half hour of what is still a beautiful drive, now on I-99, you streak past vineyards and orchards, and depending on the season, potatoes, mustard, and cotton. This is where Cary Grant gets threatened by a crop duster in Hitchcock's North by Northwest and you occasionally still see them swoop over the freeway from field to vast field. Then you hit Bakersfield. Most people in LA will tell you that it's a place they rush through, from-to. When I gingerly turn onto White Lane I momentarily come under the impression that the world's supply of oil is endless and the environment is a nagging aunt you should ignore, on account of the fact that probably at least seventy-five percent of the vehicles are huge flat-bed trucks or SUVs. The occasional Honda, small Chevy, Lexus or Bentley provides light entertainment. I have a small economy car, and once in a while I feel a little threatened by leers from aggressive flat-bed drivers, as if a small car is a sign of my worth. Sometimes one will roll by with Haliburton or Schlumberger emblazoned on its side as a reminder that this is a company town, conservative and somewhat dated despite state of the art gated tracts. When my much loved natively resident in-laws went shopping for a hybrid vehicle recently they easily purchased one from surplus on the lot. Here in LA you have to get on a list. That will change as there is now an influx of disenchanted Angelenos moving in, but I'm still not sure if modern Bakersfield is the American Dream personified or a hastily manufactured illusion of it.
Bakersfield is certainly a great town for old-school food. There are the usual "luxury" chains, from Tahoe Joe's to P.F.Chang's, but what remains of the town's past are excellent Basque restaurants, five or six of them from the old pack, lead by Woolgrowers'. French Pyrenees' Basques settled here in force a century ago and are still a great influence in the region. A gem is the Pyrenees Bakery, near Woolgrower's downtown, their breads and pastries best sampled at their own outlet. Not far from there a fifties flavored Chinatown barely hangs on, and two leading ice cream manufacturers, Rosemary's and Dewar's (pronounced there dwars). Dewar's is famous for its iced milk and salt water taffy. They have a couple of outlets including the original, rather tattered, location. But, there is no frozen delight that compares to Rosemary's iced cream served in its single hallowed location. A family business, established in the mid-seventies and named for the founder's daughter, they make their iced cream on site, and toppings too. Chances are, one of the chit-chatting daughters, if not the maestro, will break away from family talk and quietly help you at the till when you leave. Their dining room is large, muraled with cherry topped enticements, and filled with white painted steel chairs on a checkerboard floor and marbled tables that remind me of a famous, lime green hued soda fountain in Cambridge, Mass. I have sent many people to Rosemary's when they have called me from the freeway, between towns, asking where to go for lunch, as they also serve straightforward toasted sandwiches (my favorite being the liverwurst). I am such a fan of theirs that I would do a website for them for next to nothing. In all forthrightness, a Black and Tan (see picture), overflowing with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, layered plentifully with hot fudge and butterscotch, topped with their own confectioner's cream and a cherry, glass of water on the side, will leave you full of its own accord. I won't mention the voluptuous banana splits and countless other fabulous standards on the menu. And you feel you are in your hometown.
In this LA neighborhood, gelato shops abound and the trendy, in my mind overblown, Pinkberry's "iced delight" is a stone's throw from my door. Rosemary's iced cream in Bakersfield beats and trounces them all, hands down, and if I could I would sniff disdainfully at them if I were passing by on my way to a local Rosemary's outlet. Rosemary's is a positive American Reality now, in Bakersfield, my hometown for almost four years.
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7 comments:
For the last five days I have spent too much time thinking about lion jerky and roast raccoon.
When I found myself typing "eating raccoon" in the Google search, I knew I was in trouble.
There was lots to see and read. There were hundreds of photos of our furry friends and numerous raccoon recipes that kept my interest far longer than I thought it should.
Thank you Jonathan and Winfernal.
To your credit, you both paint a colorful vivid portrait when you write. Your entries take me somewhere. I can smell the smells
and see the colors.
Unfortunately, parts of the picture have stuck in my head.
(Yes, it's the roast raccoon that I keep thinking about.)
I have decided to perform an exorcism of sorts.
I am going to take Jonathan's lead and concentrate on Rosemary's iced cream.
I am going to think about the flavor and taste it in my mind.
While I am doing that I am going to think about my own fond memories of Bakersfield. To help me with this, I will listen to one of my favorite Buck Owens songs (featuring Dwight Yoakam)
www.homestead.com/deesongs/bakersfield.html
Good idea Wolfgang. Great song, and thanks for the link.
It can be heard here
How we forget that there is more to California than its two premiere cities: Los Angeles, the glitzy hub of internationalism and source of most that is new before we knew it was new, and San Francisco, its more tasteful and sedate cousin to the north, the well preserved repository of our earlier history. They make wonderful bookends, but there's lots to be discovered in between. Your comments on Bakersfield made me want to climb in my jitney and head north to Sacramento via Route 99, what I always called the Oakey route, the spine of the Central Valley (and America's great farmer's market). Unfortunately it's something that most Californians never experience, shunned for the speedier Route 5 to the west, or the more picturesque 101 further west, or the even more spectacular Route 1, if you have the time. How often I've made the 99 trip, frequently taking two days to get there, stopping and sampling a host of charming communities on the way. Bakersfield was always the first stop, with its herds of pickups and speeding semis, its dust devils swirling in the fields as you approach, and a sun-baked seedy calm permeating everything. I don't recall ever eating anything there except franchise or Mexican, none of it particularly memorable. I will certainly make a stop at Rosemary's the next time I make the trip. I suspect you had a guide when you went there, always an advantage when experiencing a city for the first time. I seem to recall some talk of a Basque restaurant of some repute, but never bothered to seek it out. Do you know anything about it? I'm not sure I even know what Basque cuisine is.
After Bakersfield, back to 99 and on to Fresno, about twice the size of Bakersfield, but charming by half, consisting of a seedy and abused downtown (I actually like seedy, as long as it has an intact, vintage charm to it) with typically soul-less suburban sprawl spidering in every direction. Someone once told me that Fresno was the raisin capitol of the world - quite a distinction. I'd often exit south of Fresno proper, often heading over to Tulare, Porterville or Visalia and taking county roads north to Clovis, a small community littered with bad antique shops, but sporting a wonderful neon portal trumpeting its proximity to Yosemite. You're north and east of Fresno at this point, but you do go through the north part of the city as you head west to the 99. Once en route, you must stop at Chowchilla, a one street burg that gained its reputation several years back when a school bus full of children was hijacked and taken to some remote outpost where bus and children were buried (no one perished - needless to say burying a bus is no mean feat). I had the best flautas I've ever eaten at a little taco stand on the main drag. The guacamole was pretty perfect too. It's been many years, so who knows whether it still exists. Northbound again, with stops at Merced, Modesto, Stockton, all of which have wonderfully preserved movie palaces from an age when going to the movies was an event. Before you know it, the capitol of our great state is upon you, a city that deserves its own separate consideration.
If you have the time and inclination, try this off the beaten track north; I think you'll enjoy it.
A post-script about ice cream. I am sick to death of designer ice cream. I long for the days when, if you wanted something special, you went to San Francisco and stood in line for 45 minutes for Bud's, still a bright spot in my memory palate. In LA it was Swensen's on Hollywood and Las Palma, across the street from The Gold Cup (the legendary greasy spoon frequented by some of the scariest drag queens and more colorful habitues of Hollywood's underbelly), renowned for the high fat content of its product. And even more sadly missed, C.C. Brown's, just west of the Chinese and also on Hollywood Boulevard, a family venture that made without a doubt the best hot fudge sundae ever concocted. Dog-eared and ill-lit, with dark stained wood booths, its memory fills me with a genuine nostalgia. It was once a candy store too, and they still carried a smattering of sweets, but it was the ice cream, and the sundaes specifically (they did a killer butterscotch too) that attracted its devoted clientele. I remember once wandering in late after a movie and spying one of the tot sized grandchildren of the owners asleep on the lower shelf of the abandoned candy section. It's an image I'll never forget.
What an absolutely wonderful comment, anonymous. I can't thank you enough. I love the bookend analogy, but your details about many of the central valley cities, which I know too, are golden. Taft, and its western approach from the coast is a favorite of mine. One reveals much these days by telling on those places because no doubt they are all about to be swallowed up by hungry colonists from LA. Originally, that was the intent of Washington when they initiated the whole Lets-Get-The-West thing.
Here in LA, anythingn north of Calabasas is no man's land to most "Angelinos" and the only town between there and SF is Santa Barbara, coast road or not. I would love to keep it that way as long as possible. The Central Valley is luckily still regarded as a thoroughfare but for people like us revealing its secrets. I am not a California native, though couple of branches of my family settled here before the 1850s, but I am told by naturally born inhabitants that I am an honorary native. Perhaps I shouldn't be talking all exclusive, but, strangely, most of my closest friends are native Californians and they tell me, in spirit, that I am too. Spirit is what made this state and I think it continues. To me, locally, that is a very great honor. SoCal is The Breeze:)
Thank you for your kind words about my own, Jonathan. For the uninitiated and sceptical (in regard to taking the 99 journey) may I recommend some reading matter. First is THAT RIBBON OF HIGHWAY II: Highway 99 from the State Capital to the Mexican Border (it's part of a trilogy; the other two volumes cover Sacramento to Oregon and the Northwest up through Washington state) by Jill Livingston. It is wonderful reading, blending history with notable stops and travel tips too (including maps). The other is HIGHWAY 99: A Literary Journey Through California's Great Central Valley, edited by Stan Yogi. A compilation of observations by famous natives familiar with their points of origin (John Steinbeck, William Saroyan, Joan Didion are a few of the contributors) it provides an interesting counterpoint to the more conventional concerns of the Livingston books. All books mentioned are currently in print. Happy reading, and more importantly, happy eating.
Ahhh nostalgia. I just googled and found your page. I have a sundae named after me at Rosemary's. The place isn't named after the daughter of the owner, but the wife of the owner. Daughter Roseanne manages the place now. It opened as a Leatherby's in 1984 and became Rosemary's in 1986 or so. There used to be two locations, but the original is now the only one.
I am thrilled and honored to have your comments on this post. Thrilled because Rosemary's is a pet place of mine and also because you have corrected my mistakes and I thank you for that. Honored because you are one of the few who have a sundae named for you there. Now I will spend much time trying to figure out just which Sundae it is! Thank you for the comment!
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