Visiting Old West Days in San Juan Bautista (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
San Juan Bautista is about 35 minutes outside of Monterey in California’s San Benito County. Many people go to San Juan Bautista to see the bell tower at the San Juan Bautista Mission where Alfred Hitchcock filmed a scary scene from his movie Psycho.
The day my family set out for San Juan Bautista, the town
was holding its Living History Day with re-enactments and activities for children.
We started our visit in San Juan Bautista Mission’s
garden. The brightly-colored tile
benches with arabesque inlays against a white background are like something you
would see in Andalusia (modern-day southern Spain). There is a large rose garden, which smells
wonderful in the heat. Intertwined
cactus plants invite painful touches.
Inside the Mission’s church, workers were preparing for a
wedding, so we were able to see the whole church decorated with white garlands
on the pews. The lady at the store said
they had two weddings and a baptism scheduled.
You can triple book when you have a community, who will ensure that the
decorations will be nice for everyone.
We went to the museum to see the stagecoaches and
blacksmithing materials. The pony
carriages were on break, so we went to the Plaza Hotel where they were holding
Western dance lessons upstairs. We were
invited to dance by a “dance master.”
Only Florence and I took up the dance offer.
The first dance we did was called the “chinchu.” The word meant “bed bug” in Spanish. The dance originated in Watsonville,
California – a Scottish town. The dance
master said it was a sort of Scottish jig.
“It goes like this,” the dance master started. “First, you point your toes in four different
directions and then you slide twice in the same direction. After that, you point you toes on the other
foot and slide twice in the other direction.
Then, you do the waltz and start again” were the instructions.
For the next dance, the dance master put a hat on me to
designate me as a man and introduced Florence as a “bitty lady.” The dance we did was called A Circle Waltz
where you walked into the circle and had the women pass in front of you to get
a new partner. Four women passed in
front and then you walked in two times before you did the waltz
The ballroom where we were dancing was huge. It covered the entire top floor of a
three-wing building. We danced for a
good hour. Florence loved it, because
everyone told her she was pretty. She
got twirled around a few times, too, by men in cowboy hats.
Meanwhile, I had to try leading as a man in waltz steps and
got “Oh Dear” remarks for stepping on feet.
Florence ran back to me at the end of the dance to try on the top hat.
We lured Florence away from the grown-ups’ play with a pony
carriage ride. The carriage was like a
stagecoach with open sides. We circled
the square in front of the Mission and waved at people.
On the way back to the car, I asked Florence what she liked
best about the day. She said she liked
the Mission garden and the horse carriage ride.
I told her I liked the Western dances.
We both agreed that the bed bug dance was hard to do.
By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
 |
| Ruth Paget Selfie |
