Curious about grown-ups' intoxication with the so-called "John Barleycorn," the young London buries his face up to his ears in foam, "gulping it down like medicine, in nauseous haste to get the ordeal over," and becomes drunk for the first time.īeer breaks aside, London's father was so successful at Coastside farming that he earned enough money to buy an 87-acre chicken ranch in Livermore. In the 1913 book, which London called his "alcoholic memoirs," he writes about the time he carried a pail of beer to his father, who was plowing on a hot day in a field a half a mile from the house. "One of (London's) earliest memories as a boy takes place in San Mateo, and it shows up in 'John Barleycorn,' which is as close as he came to an autobiography," Hayes says. Those rural years left an imprint on the 7-year-old London, who returned to ranch life in Glen Ellen until his death in 1916. The author's stepfather, John London, grew potatoes and raised horses on the 75 acres that he leased there. London's working-class family lived in San Francisco's Bernal Heights before they moved down to Tobin Ranch, between Pedro Point and Moss Beach, in 1883. "It seemed the family moved so many times when he was a child, people don't keep track of all of the residences," Hayes says. He will talk about London's life in Northern California at the conference tomorrow, as he's done for the past nine gatherings. Greg Hayes, a London scholar and resident ranger at the Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen, is definitely aware of London's Peninsula connections. Still, no one associates London with San Mateo County, Jackson says, because " Monterey (and Sonoma) do a much better job of PR." TOASTING THE COAST Unfortunately you can't tell where he moored his boat, because the shoreline has changed so much with all the landfill," says Jackson, a Redwood City resident.
"He lived here in San Mateo and sailed his boat out of here.
Ten years ago, the College of Notre Dame was the site of the first Jack London Writers' Conference, an annual event put on by the Peninsula branch. After he gained international renown, London offered his name to the club in the hope of encouraging young writers. London created the California Writers' Club with the poet and close friend George Sterling, short story writer Herman Whitaker and "English civil libertarian" Austin Lewis, according to Mariann Jackson, president of the Peninsula branch of the club.
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