I started life in a "once upon a time" place that came before today's Los Angeles. As we lived on a corn and citrus farm in what was then the countryside, we owned a big, red barn with stalls for the workhorses and the cow. I had two older sisters but no one much to play with as a little boy. My mother let me wander alone outside in the farmyard. When the cow was in the barn, I used to go in, get her tit and suck some milk. Many times, an enormous turkey that ruled the yard would start after me and I had to run like the dickens to get up on the porch. It couldn't reach me there after I'd slam the gate.

We lived near Santa Fe Springs, a small town long since covered by the Los Angeles sprawl. Farming was a constant struggle for my father until one day, while drilling for water, the hole ruptured with a surge of natural gas and, consequently, oil. Dad signed leases with Union Oil and other companies. Oil wells soon dotted the land on what was to be one of the richest oil fields in California.

I remember one well in particular. At about five in the morning, a roar like a bomb shook the house. We rushed out and saw lumber torn from the derrick flying all over as gas and oil blew through the top. Huge fires in the oil fields then forced us to move from Santa Fe Springs. Fires so dangerously close to our home that we had to flee for our lives. Fires so incredible, they could be seen from downtown Los Angeles.

The news media coverage by Harry Chandler's Los Angeles Times, William Randolph Hearst's The Evening Herald and others was intense. People from all over Orange County came to see the spectacle. Stories about my family became common gossip. One joke told of "old man Bell, the dumb hillbilly farmer, when the Oil Company said we'll give you a fifth, he said hell no, I demand a sixth." Actually, my father was not a hillbilly and had graduated first in his class at Occidental College, so he knew about fractions.

After the fires, we lived for a brief period in the Beverly Hills Hotel, which was quite a change from the farm. (Perhaps our moving there and the subsequent newspaper stories in some way inspired the later idea for the "Beverly Hillbillies.") Nearby was a bridle trail right in the middle of Sunset Boulevard where movie stars rode their horses. Then, we moved to a mansion built on a remote ridge in an area called the Buenos Aires Ranch, which my father, Alphonzo Edward Bell, Sr., adapted to the name "Bel Air." The house had forty-two rooms and 1,760 acres. My mother gave it an Italian name, Capo Di Monte, which means "Top of the Hill."

My memories from this house reside in a fairly unspoiled landscape. We arrived there in 1921 when I was seven. The country was still wild. Mountain lions would cross our front lawn. When we bought the place, its grounds were already well-groomed but I think my father didn't know what to do with all the oil money that was coming in at such a prodigious rate. Over a million dollars must have been spent on the yard alone. (In today's dollars, it would be hard to estimate the amount.) He built a tall, rock wall around the whole property, planted sprawling lawns, then added a swimming pool, a tennis court and an extensive terrace system for the gardens of vegetables, flowers and fruit trees. We had trails going down to Stone Canyon to magnificent stables for horses and mules; also, a rock house with a cage that occasionally held a bear. The house is gone but large parts of the rock wall, the tennis court and the garage still stand. Stone Canyon is now the site of the celebrated Bel Air Hotel.

Raised to be a Cowboy

My father fostered in me a love for the outdoors. You might say I was raised to be a cowboy. Certainly, either by design or happenstance, I learned the skills of one. We had a little camp in the High Sierras, near the town of Alanchia in the Owens Valley. We would pack in with mules and horses from there. I started doing that about age five. We rode clear up into a paradise called Gomez Meadows.

A friend named Otto Resky, who was a veteran of WWI, had filed on the land and got 160 acres. It was very rough and tough. We stayed in tents and had a fireplace built between two huge rocks. We rode horses all over the steep terrain and fished in the south fork of the Kern River.

When I was a young kid, I used to watch the men pack the mules and get the horses ready. I learned early how to saddle and bridle a horse. The mules could never be trusted. You had better stay away from their heels, because they would sure kick you.

I would ride a donkey named Sam that was about the same size as my jenette at home. Trying to keep a saddle on such a round-shouldered animal became my main chore. We had this old Gomez place ever since I can remember. I think my father had it even before I was born. It was my introduction to the wilderness.

George Thomas and My Father

When I was eleven, Dad bought a ranch in western Colorado near the town of Meeker, up the White River, which he renamed the Bar Bell Ranch. I believe that I truly developed into my own person under the influence of a cowboy, George Thomas, who worked as our ranch foreman. He became a father figure. While working with him on the open range, I lost whatever traces were left from babying by my mother.

George Thomas came with his wife and children from western New Mexico to western Colorado in the 1890's. He was a very skilled cowboy who had ridden in rodeos and won some of the bucking horse events. He was a phenomenal shot with both the rifle and the six-shooter.

One time, my father, George and I heard the horses neighing loudly, obviously spooked by something. We all walked over there to find a rattlesnake coiled up, ready to strike. As soon as George spotted the snake, he whipped out his pistol, shooting its head off in one swift motion.

My father laughed, "George, that was one hell of a wild shot, I bet you couldn't do that again in your life!"

George smiled just a little. "Maybe," he said, then went on about the business of settling down the horses.

Nothing further was said until weeks later while we were out hunting and my father saw a deer very far off in the distance.

"That's out of range, probably more than five hundred yards," he said. "Let's see if we can circle around and get closer."

"Naw," George replied, "just watch."

George steadied his rifle on a rock, taking careful aim. He fired once. We saw the deer fall down without a quiver.

"Well," he said to my father, "looks like I made `nother wild shot, don't it?"

George Thomas had a modest way about him and a stoical attitude about physical hardship. It all went along with being a cowboy. I had to toughen up and get used to the job, not that I had it that bad since I only worked summers.

One of the parts I hated the worst was caused by the terrain of the mountain grazing land where we had to take the cattle. The meadows were scattered on steep slopes covered with thick aspen trees, often not wide enough to ride through. You would have to search those aspen groves to round up the stray cows that loved to wander off into the shade. These cows were not amenable to your wishes.

The horse knew more about it than any cowboy and would not shilly-shally about his business but blasted through those trees at a good clip. Trouble was, the horse often picked a spot he knew was wide enough for him but he did not necessarily worry about the extra width of the human knees sticking out on either side.

I was always beaten and bruised by this and once asked George what I could do.

"Just don't think about it," he said.

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