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Erle Stanley Gardner
Author, lawyer, Perry's creator.
So what's Ventura have to do with him?
Now everybody has heard of Perry Mason, I supposed. Certainly more than
they have heard about Ventura, California. Yet the two are, startlingly,
intertwined in such a suprising sense of the word. For this is a
place where that famous fictional lawyer came into existence at the creative
hand of Erle Stanley Gardner who was in real life, at the time, a practicing
lawyer.
So what's
the connection?
Well, that's
what we had come to town to discover. To find Perry, and discover
something about his place of birth. We'd heard so many things, yet
never seen; we'd been given mysterious hints, but never unearthed
the basic clues and facts concerning these Ventura Stories about the famous
fictional lawyer. This trip we were determined and had taken camera
in hand to record the evidence on film. I decided that no clue would
be left unturned until we found the truth concerning the mystery of Perry
Mason's place of birth.
The first bit of business was getting the car parked in the newly constructed
parking lot building--shown on in the picture to your right.
Then, the
next stop was obvious! But we, being such smart folk, figured we
could find our way around this town without any help from official information
centers. After all, we weren't really tourist. We've
visited the town so many times over the years. I even came here to
Computer Shows!
Finding Perry
couldn't be all that difficult.
Obviously!
While practicing law, Erle Stanley Gardner started writing and selling
stories. During this time he invented his fictional counter part:
Perry Mason, Attorney at Law. All of this took place in Ventura,
and the city's Court House served as the "fictionalized" setting for Perry's
courtroom antics.
Because of
this, and our own interest in writers, especially this very prolific one,
we made it a point to find out "Where's Perry?" A puzzling mystery
which took some undoing on our part before uncovering its resolution.
Not that the master fictional lawyer was hiding so much as the seeker of
his creator's Ventura law office was a bit on the slow side. We were
always very close to it and, in fact, passed the building at least once!
Ventura is,
after all, merely our county seat; and who pays much attention to such
places?
In the early
years Ventura was one of those sleepy places, those small towns which (to
paraphrase from memory) Gardner claimed "rolled up their sidewalks" by
10 PM. It is on the California coast; and was founded by the mission
fathers who spread their good word and teachings to the local native population
they found here. Then came the Spanish settlers, with their land
grants from the King of Spain. Huge ranchos surrounded the missions,
up and down the territory to be called California, which was, at that time,
part of Spain, then part of Mexico, before becoming a part of the United
States.
King's Highway (El Camino Real) is what they called the "trail" that tied
the missions together--each located one day's horseback ride from the next
in line. San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, to
name but a few better known California cities, take their names from these
missions.
Buenaventura,
as it was originally known, is now a booming mod beach town, great place
to sun and enjoy the wonders of the Blue Pacific, not far from the famous
Channel Islands. Ventura is totally aware of its past, and actively
rebuilding its many historic sites and structuring the town so that it
is becoming a very inviting place to spend a really nice vacation.
It is, slowly, becoming quite a cultural center, having impressive
Music Festivals, which just this year captured our personal attention.
(We spent a couple of very enjoyable days there this year, during which
time, between concerts, I took many of the following pictures in my attempt
to find Perry.)
THE SEARCH CONTINUES
only if you click on the
gold plaque!
