{"id":764,"date":"2012-08-06T06:00:33","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningnewsinverse.com\/?p=764"},"modified":"2012-08-06T06:00:33","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T13:00:33","slug":"i-didnt-know-jack-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=764","title":{"rendered":"I Didn’t Know Jack . . . London"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When someone would say the name Jack London to me\u00a0I\u2019d think Call of the Wild<\/em>, and . . . well, not much else.\u00a0 Maybe because I am from northern California, I\u2019d think of Jack London Square in Oakland and perhaps have a vague notion of something to do with Jack London up around Sonoma.\u00a0 I had an opportunity a couple of weeks ago to visit that \u2018vague notion\u2019 up around\u00a0Sonoma, which is Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen.\u00a0 It is truly amazing, as was Mr. London.\u00a0 What follows for some will be \u2018old news\u2019, but there are some, me included, who didn\u2019t know Jack!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He was born in San Francisco in 1876 to a father who didn\u2019t own up to him and an unwed mother, who shot herself, not fatally, shortly after his birth (talk about a disappointed mother!), became temporarily deranged and turned the care and raising of Jack over to an ex-slave.\u00a0 Not your ordinary start to life, but Jack London was no ordinary person.\u00a0 From an early age he was an avid reader and definitely had a case of wanderlust.\u00a0 At 13 he bought a boat (yes, 13) and became an \u2018oyster pirate\u2019 (yes, a pirate!).\u00a0 A few years later he signed on as a ship\u2019s crew member to hunt seals in Japan.\u00a0 When he returned, the \u2018Panic of 1893\u2019 (The forerunner of The Great Depression and whatever it is we\u2019re going through now) was in full swing.\u00a0 He regularly voiced his opinion about\u00a0poor working conditions, and for it he spent time in jail which helped him develop his strong political views regarding the value of unions and the virtues of socialism.\u00a0 At 17, after several years of being on the road and at sea, he returned to Oakland to attend high school!\u00a0 Yep, he owned a boat, was a pirate, hunted seals in Japan, became a political activist, spent time in jail all before his senior prom.\u00a0 At 20 he entered college at Cal Berkeley (of course), but stayed only a year as the Klondike gold rush beckoned him north.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He would always record his adventures on paper and at a very early age realized that he\u00a0could actually make a living with his writing.\u00a0 The\u00a0Reader’s Digest<\/em> version\u00a0of his life would look something like this:\u00a0He got married, but was not faithful (he said morality was a sign of low blood pressure.\u00a0 Honest!), he was an honorary\u00a0member of the Bohemian Club, he became an alcoholic, he got divorced and remarried, he built a boat and took off for nearly two years sailing to Hawaii, Australia and several south sea islands, he ran for political office (and lost), he was often accused of plagiarism (and sometimes pleaded guilty), he bought 1,000 acres in Glen Ellen where he tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce new agricultural techniques to the world and through it all he wrote over 20 novels and dozens of short stories and essays, all by the age of 40 when he died, some say by suicide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The 1,000 acres he purchased is now the Jack London State Historic Park.\u00a0 It features miles of great hiking trails, Jack\u2019s man-made lake, his cottage, the house his wife lived in (pictured at right) after his death, which is now the museum holding the\u00a0artifacts that Jack collected on his many travels, numerous\u00a0farm out-buildings including the \u2018Pig Palace\u2019 and a fancy manure mover, an open-air theater and his gravesite. \u00a0But among\u00a0the many buckeye, fir, madrone, oak and the magnificent coastal redwood is the gem of the park, the \u2018Wolf House\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jack decided that he wanted to build a most magnificent house on this beautiful property; a place where he could write, entertain and just relax and enjoy the beautiful nature around him.\u00a0 Construction on the Wolf House started in 1911; it was built\u00a0of volcanic rock, slate and redwood on an earthquake-proof\u00a0concrete slab.\u00a0 There was over 15,000 square feet of living space on four floors with 26 rooms and 9 fireplaces. \u00a0The house contained its own generating plants for hot water, laundry, heating, electric lighting, vacuum and refrigeration \u2013 not common in those days.\u00a0 It also had a milk room, root cellar and a wine cellar.\u00a0 In today\u2019s dollars it cost over $2,000,000 to build.\u00a0 As you might suspect, Jack London was often criticized for espousing a socialist philosophy, but living a capitalist\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In 1913, two weeks before Jack and wife, Charmian were to move into the Wolf House, a fire, caused by spontaneous combustion, burned it to the grown, leaving only the volcanic rock of the foundation, walls and fireplaces, which is how it remains today,\u00a0nearly 100 years later.<\/p>\n

Jack was crushed, but vowed to rebuild it, but illness and a lack of money and time prevented that \u2013 he died three years later.\u00a0 But when you\u2019re deep in the redwoods walking around the remains of the Wolf House, you swear you can almost hear the call of the wild.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you\u2019re planning a trip to the Napa\/Sonoma wine country, I\u2019d recommend taking a break from the lectures about why the Cabernets have such big noses and visit this historic site; if you\u2019re lucky you\u2019ll go at a time when they\u2019re doing Broadway in the open-air theater at sundown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bob Sparrow \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When someone would say the name Jack London to me\u00a0I\u2019d think Call of the Wild, and . . . well, not much else.\u00a0 Maybe because I am from northern California, I\u2019d think of Jack London Square … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,114,280,355,356,357,484,785],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bohemian-club","tag-call-of-the-wild","tag-glen-ellen","tag-jack-london","tag-jack-london-square","tag-jack-london-state-historic-park","tag-napasonoma-wine-country","tag-wolf-house"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-ck","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}