When I was young, my family would take summer trips driving to southern California to visit some of my father’s family. I remember one year when I was five or so, we had planned to stop and visit Hearst Castle. I was an inquisitive child, asking lots of questions about who lived there, etc. I think my parents were a little exasperated with the questions or preoccupied but they gave me a flippant answer, “God”. I sat quietly in the backseat, pondering this. God lives at this place where we were going to stop? We arrived at the visitor center but all of the tours for the day were booked, so my parents decided we would forego the visit until another time and continued to drive on. I was devastated, how could this be? My parents were denying me the opportunity to visit God. I cried and sobbed. My parents tried to explain that we could not visit today but that sometime in the future we would stop. When you are five, events are either immediate or forever. I was never going to visit God at his house. Being five, I was also easily distracted, and something else came up, I don’t remember what but I calmed down and forgot about the aborted visit to the Supreme Being.
So, visiting Hearst Castle became an item on my bucket list. On, Tuesday, 8/23/11, we rode the local bus to the Hearst Castle Visitor Center, picked up our tickets (they suggest you make reservations and you may purchase online) and rode a tour bus up to the castle. I know that God does not live here. William Randolph Hearst did have a lot of money and power, which made him feel god-like but not what I imagined when I was five.
We took the Grand Tour which goes through the large rooms on the first floor of the main house, including the reception or assembly room, dining hall, billiard room and the theatre. Other tours go through the bedrooms, the cottages and the kitchens. The place is beautiful, the best that money can buy and a lot of money was spent. From the tapestries and sterling silver Tiffany lamps to the statues and tile work, everything is first class. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and gave a very positive spin on Mr. Hearst. After our tour we walked around the grounds, including the Neptune pool with inlaid tile, surrounded by Greek columns and statues, as well as an indoor pool with tile pictures of mermaids at the bottom. The grounds and landscaping is well kept and maintained and you can almost imagine Charlie Chaplin, a frequent guest, coming around the corner. We saw a 45 minute movie about the building of Hearst Castle which briefly mentioned that Mr. Hearst was involved in the newspaper business.
Dining Hall in Casa Grande
The Neptune Pool
Rich on one of the many terraces
Now I may cross this off the list.
For more information, visit http://www.hearstcastle.org/.
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