Sundown at Meling Ranch
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/sun/currents/ne...
by Peter Rowe
RANCHO SAN JOSE, Baja California ? On a hillside, dozens of luminaria raise an orange glow into the black desert sky. The flickering light illuminates
concrete markers, marble crosses and rock-studded ravines. It's a rugged, eerie, forbidding scene ? unless you know this land like you know your own
family.
Duane Barre walks easily to the door-sized slab over Aida Meling, 1915-1998. She arranges two bouquets of marigolds over her mother's remains, then
perches on the tomb.
"This is where I come when I want to know something," she says. "I sit here and ask her."
Duane is surrounded by kin, some of them alive. Beneranda "Benny" Perrea de Meling, her cousin and best friend, totes flowers into the cemetery.
Benny's 15-year-old son, Enrique Meling Perrea, scrambles across the hillside, lighting luminaria. Pedro Vanegas, Duane's fiance, corrals vases for
the bouquets.
This is the Day of Dead, and Duane summons her ghosts. Among the 30 relatives and friends in this ground are a few uneasy spirits, their lives cut
short by disease or suicide. But they are only part of this clan's story.
Vaqueros and vaqueras, gold miners and gunslingers, explorers and hermits spent more than 90 years creating this rustic outpost 200 miles below San
Diego. They possessed this land until the land returned the favor and possessed them.
Now, though, Rancho San Jose ? known to generations of travelers as the Meling Ranch ? is for sale.
"If I don't sell," Duane said, "I'm going to go bankrupt. It would take me a fortune to get the ranch back to the way it was."
Duane Barre cannot glimpse her future. But even in the dim candlelight, she can read her past, chiseled into the headstones.
Harry Johnson
1844-1911
On April 1, 1889, the day Harry Johnson met his family at San Diego's train station, a monkey tried to warn them against the madness sweeping through
the region.
The stuffed simian stood in a shop window at Fifth and J, a sign dangling from its neck: "The kind of people who go to the mines."
San Diego was swarming with Eighty-Niners, but most remained in town only long enough to buy provisions and arrange transportation south. Burros that
in calmer days sold for $15 were snapped up at $35; Ensenada-bound steamers sold out, $10 per one-way ticket.
Reports from Baja, one Mexican skeptic noted, "leave the tales of the Arabian Nights eclipsed." "Captain" James Edward Friend, a special correspondent
for the San Diego Union and Bee, filed glittering dispatches from a mining camp outside Ensenada. Within a month, his neighbors ? well-stocked with
picks and ropes, if not the wealth Friend had promised ? were eager to, er, discuss their frustrations.
"It seems that it was conceived that the Captain had written some exaggerated reports about the mines," the Union and Bee explained, "and on pain of
punishment he was, at the invitation of a duly appointed committee, requested to depart from the camp."
Johnson was no scalawag, but he was not immune to the lure of Mexican riches. From his boyhood near Copenhagen to his days as a Texas rancher, he had
chased fortune. But health, more than wealth, inspired this move. Plagued by respiratory ailments, Johnson decided to move his wife, Ella, and the
kids to a drier climate. In 1888, he bought 2,000 acres along the Baja coast, at a place called San Antonio del Mar.
Reunited in San Diego, the Johnson family wasted no time establishing new lives in Mexico. Harry Johnson had cattle to raise and a dream to pursue ?
the "Mina de Socorro," the gold field he was scouring at the 4,000-foot level of the Sierra San Pedro Martir.
By June 1895, Johnson had carved out a 10-mile aqueduct, so the mountains' melted snow could be played over the khaki-colored dirt, seeking seams of
gold. His hopes were realized. Socorro transformed Johnson from an ambitious immigrant into a man of means, able to bestow upon his children the
blessings of wealth.
Not all blessings are welcomed. Visiting San Diego, Johnson and his daughter Alberta paused outside a mansion.
"Bertie," he said, "you girls mustn't remain Amazons. I think I'll buy that place for you."
"Oh, you wouldn't make us live in a city," she replied. "Town life must be so crowded. Can't we always live in the sierras? There we can breathe."
In 1910, Johnson capitulated to his daughter. He bought Rancho San Jose, 10,000 acres on the Rio San Jose, 10 miles and 2,000 feet below Socorro. Now,
he could mine Socorro and run cattle, all the while enjoying the comforts of home and hearth.
His enjoyment would be short-lived.
After several years of sporadic, uncoordinated uprisings, the Mexican Revolution erupted in earnest. While Baja California escaped most of the
violence, insurreccionistas captured Mexicali and Tijuana. Ranches were raided, cattle rustled. Johnson, fearing that his mine could be next, loaded a
buckboard wagon with gold and set out for the banks of the United States. The 200-mile trip to the border, over mountains and desert, took its toll.
Johnson reached San Diego without his treasure.
"Some place between Ensenada and San Diego, he hid four bars of gold, so they wouldn't be stolen," said Duane Barre, Johnson's great-granddaughter.
"They were never found."
The trip robbed Johnson of something even more precious than bullion: his health. Stricken with pneumonia, he died in San Diego on Aug. 25, 1911. He
was 66.
The year brought further trials to Rancho San Jose. Insurreccionistas led by Jose Castro, a Pancho Villa partisan, pillaged several neighboring
ranches. A posse of Johnson's grown sons, Alfie and Andy, Francisco Arce, Ambrosio Murillo and dozens of other ranchers chased the band to the village
of San Vicente.
There, the ranchers surrounded an adobe house where Castro's men had taken refuge. One rancher galloped for Ensenada, where he summoned federalistas
to the siege.
As recounted in Paul Sanford's 1968 book, "Where the Old West Never Died," the Battle of San Vicente resembled the climax of "The Wild Bunch." Men
fell on both sides. At least one desperado died thirsty, his lifeless, bullet-riddled body tumbling into a well. At last, a handful of bandits shot
their way out of the trap and fled south. At Rancho San Jose, they stopped long enough to burn it to the ground.
Studying in San Diego, Bertie did not witness the destruction or the reconstruction of her family's home. But neither shoot-outs nor the American
consulate's warnings could keep her from returning home. On Valentine's Day 1913, Bertie Johnson married a Norwegian immigrant, Salve Meling, in
Ensenada.
The couple moved to the ranch, eventually buying it from Ella Johnson. Rancho San Jose became known as the Meling Ranch, a welcoming frontier outpost.
While Salve Meling was good-humored and strong, a skilled horseman and an intelligent cattleman, the ranch that carries his name is well-known for
something else:
Its long line of indomitable women.
"Nobody said no to my grandmother," said Duane, Bertie Johnson Meling's granddaughter.
Alberta "Bertie"
Johnson Meling
1886-1979
Even before fixing her stamp on Rancho San Jose, Bertie Johnson had become a local legend. Arthur W. North, whose 1905-06 tramps across Baja are
recounted in the charming "Camp and Camino in Lower California," was told by one Canadian expat that Bertie was "the most interesting personality in
all this countryside."
Interesting? She was Lady Bountiful crossed with Annie Oakley. When North caught up with her outside the Socorro diggings, he was impressed by her
"quiet dignity." He also recalled tales of her rescuing the family's herd from "marauding Indians and Mexicans."
"Without pausing for rest or giving thought to the risk, she rode for 13 hours," one gossip told North. "Indeed, using up two saddle horses, the range
riding was so rough. She saved all the cattle."
On the frontier, the callouses on your hands were often matched by those on your heart. Bertie gave birth to five children, and buried one. Lloyd was
10 when he spurred a horse up an embankment. The animal lost its footing and fell, crushing the boy.
"He knew he was going to die at the age of 10," Duane said, citing an old family story. "Strange."
Bertie, Salve and their children lived in a wooden house with a peaked roof and a wide porch overlooking the cottonwoods springing from the San Jose's
watercourse. Guests were common, including scientists from UC Berkeley and the Field Museum of Chicago. (This tradition continues. One weekend this
November, the ranch was visited by a pack of motorcyclists, several Christian missionaries from Orange County and two Mexican naturalists, down from a
Sierra base camp where they monitor the California condor's reintroduction into the wild.)
Unearthly visitors drifted by, too, or so it seemed. Many days, Bertie would rise before dawn to stoke the fire and make coffee for horsemen, their
saddlebags creaking and spurs jangling as they filed into her corral. But they never arrived in her kitchen. When she looked out the door, she
discovered that they never had arrived at all.
Years later, she would learn that these sounds originated at a ranch three miles distant, carrying down the valley to her hyper-vigilant ears. At the
time, though, Bertie wished these "apparitions" would move on to their eternal reward.
"To hell with them! If they want coffee, they can get their own!"
Bertie could take an equally firm line with the living. She battled Duane, a tomboy, insisting on ladylike comportment. If the girl needed discipline
? a common occurrence ? her grandmother sent her outside to cut a switch from a pine tree.
"If I didn't cut a good one," Duane said, "she'd come out and cut two."
But Bertie enjoyed a good party, a good story and the sound of her husband's concertina. Stories about her hospitality are legion, but two stand out.
In 1944, Aida Meling gingerly approached her parents. She informed Bertie and Salve that she and the other three surviving children, now adults, had
decided that ranch visitors would henceforth pay their own way.
"Charge our friends for visiting us?" the couple responded. "Never."
But charge they did. Hunting buddies and card-playing cronies continued to come. So did strangers.
In 1963, many of these friends raised money to send the couple to Salve's home town, Stavanger, Norway, as a golden anniversary present. There was a
bon voyage party at the rancho. A year later, the Melings hosted a weeklong blowout to thank these friends ? and anyone else who might drop by.
"Party, party, party," Duane said. "People came from everywhere."
Bertie Johnson Meling's energy rarely flagged, even after Salve's death in 1975. The next year, she drove the length of the Baja peninsula, standing
at the tip of Cabo San Lucas on her 90th birthday.
She died at her ranch on Aug. 4, 1979. She was 93. In many tributes, her death was described as "the passing of an era."
Aida Meling
1915-1998
At 2, Aida learned to ride.
At 6, to herd cattle.
Soon after, she was shipped north to San Diego for schooling.
In 1934, she married Earl Smith. They ran another ranch, Buena Vista, and had two children, Sonia and Philip.
In 1944, they divorced.
In 1947, she married William Percy "Billy" Barre, a Mexican of English and French descent. They had one child, Duane.
In 1955, they divorced.
Aida smoked, drank, rode, roped, flew and spoke her mind. For 54 years, she ran the guest ranch and oversaw the cattle. As unpretentious as an old
saddle, she loved to entertain. She added 12 snug cabins to the ranch, to accommodate all the visitors; on busy weekends, she fed 60 diners. They
might be movie stars (George Peppard, Elizabeth Ashley) or politicians (many of Mexico's presidents), but all received the Meling treatment.
Once, she grabbed a visitor from Mexicali and put him to work in the kitchen.
"So," Aida said as the man gamely washed out a pan, "what do you do in Mexicali?"
"Nothing," Raul Sanchez Diaz replied. "I'm just the governor."
On Aug. 20, 1998, Aida drove the rutted dirt road to Highway 1 to buy diesel. The next day, she was busy in the kitchen when a heart attack dropped
her to the floor.
With the thermometer rising to 108, the burial couldn't be delayed. Aida's children stocked the casket with Kleenex, cigarettes and booze. Then they
carried the box and its burden to the truck.
"The minute the casket hit the back of the pickup," Duane recalled, "there was lightning and we were hit by pouring rain. And it was only around us."
Chased by the storm, the mourners drove to the family cemetery and laid Aida Meling to rest. A freshly dug grave, a dark sky, peals of thunder ? you
could have mistaken this for a Shakespearean tragedy's last scene. Until Duane started chortling.
"Why are you laughing?" asked Sonia Hughes.
"Mother buried your father and my father," her half-sister replied. "Which way do you think they're going to run?"
The San Diego Union-Tribune declined to speculate on whether either of Aida's husbands welcomed this reunion. The paper did report, though, that her
death "marks the end of an era ..."
Duane Barre
1948-
For decades, visitors to the Meling Ranch have congregated in the dining hall, a long structure with wooden beams and a walk-in fireplace capped by a
copper hood. The room is bisected by long picnic tables, where Duane lays out three filling meals a day, feeding overnight guests and the occasional
drop-in.
Between meals, you can fish, hunt, ride horses, hike or thumb through the guest books.
Jan. 8, 1995: "Wonderful, coming back soon!" ? Katalina Vargas, Avalon, Calif.
March 16, 1995: "Told you I'd be back! Just as good, if not better, the second time around!" ? Katalina Vargas.
There are no entries between November 1998, when the ranch was closed, and July 2000, when Duane took over. Since then, the entries have shone with
the old enthusiasm.
April 8, 2002: "We came in skinny and tired, and left rested and with 'Meling Bellies!'" ? Martin Green, San Diego.
But the entries are not accumulating at the old speed. The rooms need remodeling, the plumbing is iffy, and the whole place could use a carpenter and
a painter. In the corral, only 13 head of cattle remain. With dwindling numbers of paying customers, Duane's bank account is as low as the
drought-stricken San Jose River.
A buyer has been found, but the deal is not final. Duane, though, insists that the sale will allow her to live nearby, in a house surrounded by 25
acres that are part of the Meling family's holdings.
"This," Duane said, "has always been home for me."
But she hasn't always lived at home. Like her mother and grandmother before her, Duane was sent north for school. Briefly. In Pasadena, an
unsuspecting kindergarten teacher said something unwise. The new student's mood went from miserable to intolerable.
"I don't know what she said to me, but she shouldn't have said it. I turned my desk over, ripped the curtains off the window and ripped her dress,
then took off out the door.
"My mother was waiting for me at the street."
Back at the ranch, Uncle Phil took over the teaching chores. Duane would have two other stints north of the border ? she graduated with Castle Park's
Class of '64, and later lived in North County while her own daughter, Sonia Barre, attended Vista schools. Neither experience diminished her devotion
to the ranch.
"I was up there 15 years," she said, referring to her time in Vista. "I hated to turn on the TV and see the news. Everything so negative, negative,
negative."
Her comments may surprise ranch visitors who have spotted the TV satellite dish sprouting from the roof of Duane's house. A 1991 gift to her mother,
this high-tech wonder is the ranch's most prominent reminder of the 21st century.
Perhaps it's appropriate, then, that this modern do-hickey's duties are entirely decorative.
"We never got it going," Duane said.
There are no TVs at the Meling Ranch. There are several radios, but Duane can't remember the last time she tuned in. She learned the horrors of Sept.
11 from visitors; she's grateful that she never saw those televised images of wholesale slaughter.
But the Meling Ranch is not an Old West theme park; it's changed since Harry Johnson's days. His home with its tall roof and broad porch, sometimes
called "the 1910 house," is boarded up. There's electricity here, but only in the afternoon and evening, when Duane fires up the propane generator.
If Duane rarely ventures into the world beyond Ensenada and San Diego, the world comes to her. A map in the dining hall bristles with pins, marking
the hometowns of her guests: Moscow; Melbourne; Nagasaki; Rome; N'Djamena, Chad; Dhaka, Bangladesh. There are still a few empty spaces on the map, but
that's only because Duane ran out of pins.
No matter where you start, this is not an easy trip. The pavement ends 23 miles short of the ranch, giving way to a road that's "dirt" in name only.
It's a rut road, a pothole road, a rock road. Accelerating past 15 mph turns motorists into bobble-head drivers.
But once at the ranch, visitors find a valley where the air is clear, the stars are bright, the days are open. If you're Duane Barre, you find all
this plus much more.
On the Day of the Dead, she walked across the cemetery, the size of a tennis court, stopping now and then to introduce a visitor to her family.
Cousin Teddy. "He killed himself. My mother found him ? that was the worst part." Theodore D. Hughes, 1964-1991.
Aunt Mary. "She's the latest one we've buried." Mary Elizabeth Carr, 1917-2001.
Cousin Felipe. "Cancer. He and I used to chase geese." Felipe Salvador Meling Pompa, 1949-1985.
Perhaps the Meling Ranch's time is past. When ? if ? Duane sells, someone will pronounce the end of an era. Perhaps, though, this would be a mistake.
Even if the last cattle are sold or the cabins fall into terminal disrepair, it's difficult to see how anything could break the link between this
family and this earth.
No matter who buys the Meling Ranch, no matter what new purpose they devise for these acres, the contract will contain an ironclad clause:
"Only Melings," said Duane, resting among the headstones and markers of her departed, "can be buried here."
Home on the Baja range
For 92 years, one family has ruled the Meling Ranch. The trail bosses, through the ages:
1910-1911: Harry Johnson (1844-1911), a Texas cattleman who was born in Denmark, founds the ranch. He and Ella Prather Johnson live here with their
six children.
1911-1924: After Harry Johnson's death and the ranch's destruction at the hands of bandits, "Mother Johnson" rebuilds Rancho San Jose. She runs it for
13 years.
1924-1979: Alberta "Bertie" Johnson Meling (1886-1979), the fourth child of Harry and Ella Johnson, takes over the ranch with her husband, Salve
Meling. They have five children ? Lloyd, Aida, Mary, Felipe and Andrew.
1979-1998: Aida Meling, second child and oldest daughter of Bertie and Salve Meling, assumes control. Married twice, she has three children ? Phil
Smith, Sonia Gale Hughes and Duane Barre.
November 1998-July 2000: Soon after Aida Meling's death in August 1998, the ranch closes.
July 2000: Duane Barre, Aida Meling's youngest child, reopens the Meling ranch but is seeking a buyer.
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