'We don't have nothin' like that in Texas'
My family's favorite story about giant sequoia trees
The entrance sign at Sequoia National Park as it may have looked when my family took visiting relatives to see the Big Trees in the early 1960s. — NPS via Calisphere
IN THE EARLY 1920S, my father’s family moved from Texas to Lindsay, California. He was born there in 1929, just months before the stock market crashed, sending the country into the Great Depression. My mother was born in nearby Porterville in 1932. They met in the spring of 1950 in the tiny town of Springville — also in Tulare County — and married soon after.
Around 1962, some of my grandmother’s Texas relatives visited California, and my father and his two brothers somehow ended up in a competition to impress these relatives with the wonders of the Golden State. I was about 10 years old and remember this very clearly.
My Uncle A.D., the oldest, took them to Disneyland.
Well, it was nice, one of my grandmother’s sisters said, but Texas had Six Flags. The theme park halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth had opened the previous year, and by accounts from the relatives, it was much nicer than Disneyland.
My Uncle Jay, seven years older than my father, took the relatives to Hearst Castle. The former estate of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst had been donated to the people of California by the Hearst Corporation, and my uncle was certain that the fabulous hilltop mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean at San Simeon would wow the Texans.
Well, it was nice, my grandmother’s brother said, but Texas had the King Ranch. The ranch, founded in 1853, comprised more than five times the acreage of Hearst Ranch holdings in San Luis Obispo County and had been designated a National Historic Monument the year before.
Finally, it was my father’s turn to entertain the relatives. He decided to take them to Sequoia National Park to see the General Sherman Tree. Believed to be somewhere between 2,200 and 2,700 years old, General Sherman is the largest known living single-stem tree on Earth. No matter how many times you’ve seen this tree — or other Giant Sequoia specimens growing on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada — it will take your breath away.
My grandmother’s sister had just one thing to say: “We don’t have nothin’ like that in Texas.” — Claudia Elliott