Tales of Cowboy Boots and Boot Camp

As military receptions go, it was an eclectic gathering. A millionaireland baron, old ranch managers, a teacher-turned-author, retired Marines and, uh, Yo Yo Oliveras.

The common thread: They have worked at, lived on--or owned--what is now the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base between Oceanside and San Clemente. And Wednesday night they got together to swap old stories of an earlier time, when cattle--not infantrymen--were run on these rolling hills.

That gets us to Yo Yo, who came dressed for the party in the 160-year-old ranch house in his vaquero duds and Stetson hat. A mischievous grin stretched across his dark, weathered face, and he started to giggle when, after some urging, he agreed to tell his story.

It was in the 1930s. Oliveras was one of the ranch hands at what was then known as Rancho Santa Margarita, where tens of thousands of cattle were being fattened for market on the ranch’s tall coastal grasses.

“The Chinese cooks would go into Oceanside on Saturday nights to drink, play pool and play poker,” Oliveras remembered. “They’d throw a bunch of cold sandwiches at us for dinner before they left.”

But the vaqueros had something else in mind for their Saturday supper, and one night decided to get even.

“We tied their Model Ts to the palm trees with chains,” he said, his smile touching his ears. “We said that, for $100, we’d tell them which one of us did it.”

Instead, the cooks took the tires off their cars, slipped the chains off the axles and went into town, delayed but determined.

And the vaqueros stewed in their sandwiches.

Life on the rancho.

The old ranch house--built in 1828 by Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California--is now impeccably restored and reserved as the home of Camp Pendleton’s commander. These days the occupants are Brig. Gen. Richard Huckaby and his wife, Jan.

The Huckabys played host to Wednesday’s reception to honor Jerome W. Baumgartner, a descendant of one of the rancho’s early families and the author of “Rancho Santa Margarita Remembered,” an account--based largely on taped interviews with his own father--of the history of the ranch-turned-military base.

The elder Jerome Baumgartner, 87, spent his first seven years on the old ranch--from 1903 to 1910--before the

family moved to San Francisco.

“This old house is just about the same as I remembered it,” he said, sipping a beer. “But the Marines seem to have taken better care of it than anyone else. I wonder what this place is worth now.”

The younger Baumgartner, who lives in Santa Barbara, had his fair share of attention at the reception, signing copies of his book for the docents who lead tours of the ranch house, where presidents have stayed.

But the Baumgartners at times played second fiddle to others at the reception--including descendants of three families who owned the ranch in succession in the 1800s and who used Wednesday night’s get-together to compare notes and rekindle memories that have been passed down through the generations.

Among those in attendance was Albert Pico, great-great-grandson of Pio Pico, the Mexican politician who, with brother Andres, built the ranch house. Albert Pico on Wednesday gave the base museum a letter written by Pio Pico to his son while living at the rancho.

Richard O’Neill, whose grandfather of the same name bought half-ownership in the 230,000-acre ranch after the turn of the century, was also there. When the Marines purchased the San Diego County portion of the ranch in 1942, the O’Neill family kept control of the northern third--including property that eventually was developed as Mission Viejo in southern Orange County.

Contemporary cattleman O’Neill has used much of his wealth, estimated by Forbes magazine now at upward of $200 million, to bankroll Democratic Party causes in Orange County.

Also attending were descendants of John Forster, who married Pio Pico’s sister and who, in 1864, purchased Rancho Santa Margarita from Pico, who needed the money to clear massive gambling debts.

But, when Forster died in 1882, the rancho was not passed on to his heirs but instead taken over by banker James Flood, leaving the Forster children with no claim to the land that would one day be worth millions.

Some of Forster’s descendants were good-naturedly sensitive to that fact at Wednesday’s reception, and teased about how one family--the Forsters--lost title to the land to another family--the O’Neills, who eventually cashed in on part of the ranch with the development of Mission Viejo.

“No matter how rich or famous someone is, like the O’Neills, they can’t really pull rank on us Forsters because we were here first,” laughed Pat Forster, a great-great-grandson of John Forster who today lives in San Juan Capistrano, not far from the mission that the Forster family itself once owned in the early 1800s.

“Besides, I don’t want to say anything bad because I’ll be taken off a lot of party invitation lists.”

For his part, Richard O’Neill said he ended up the victor when the rancho was divided into thirds in 1940 and his father, Jerome O’Neill, got the northern 70,000 or so acres that spilled into southern Orange County.

“I think my father picked the northern third as our share because the taxes were less in Orange County at the time--if you can believe that--and he figured I had the $19,000 to pay them,” O’Neill said.

He did just fine with his share of the rancho; even though it had no beachfront, 11,000 acres of the property--which was renamed Rancho Mission Viejo--was sold in 1972 to the Phillip Morris Co. for more than $50 million for the development of Mission Viejo.

O’Neill said he tried to buy back the rest of the old rancho from the Marine Corps in the 1950s, “and they told me they’d give up Quantico and Perris Island before they gave up this place.”

Milt Taylor was invited to Huckaby’s reunion because he was a corporal in 1942 and was assigned by the base’s first commanding officer, Gen. Joseph Fegan, to move into the ranch house and take care of things while construction around him started up. Taylor was the first military person to live in the old house.

“It scared the hell out of me, being up there in that house,” Taylor said Wednesday night. “The old house was dark and dreary, but I was so glad to get out of the barracks.”

The house had fallen into disrepair, and Taylor tended to chores as the general’s orderly.

“There would be evenings when he was going to entertain some friends at the Del Mar Hotel, so I’d go out into the grass and throw a rock to scare up and shoot some quail. They’d be on the general’s dinner table that night.”

After six months at the house, “I was lying in the hammock one day and said to one of the guys that I kind of wish I was back in my old outfit,” Taylor said. “I didn’t know the general was there in the house, and he heard me. He said, ‘I know where your heart is--in combat.’ Three hours later I was out doing physical training with my unit.

“My mom figured I had it made, being assigned to the general’s house. The next thing she got was a letter from me saying I was overseas. I was headed for Guadalcanal.”

About 20 years later, Jerome Baumgartner, great-grandson of Richard O’Neill, the rancho’s first manager, found himself back on base. He wasn’t an honored guest, but rather a Marine reserve hiking the backcountry with other privates first class.

“I remember my grandmother suggesting that I go up, knock on the door and ask, ‘Can I look around your house? My father grew up here.’ She didn’t realize that I was still only a Pfc, and I was deathly afraid of generals,” Baumgartner said. “She had no real sense for military decorum.”