The Poem of Pescadero (1)

A sweet story from the Redwood City Tribune, 1924:

“Over 50 years ago a subscriber to a well-known farm journal of California picked up an incomplete part of a poem about Pescadero on Market Street in San Francisco. Finding the lines to his liking, he sent them in to the editor of the journal, who caused them to be printed, with the request that the remaining versews be sent in by anyone who might have them.

“Mrs. D.E. Moore of Redwood City was Miss Mary Hayward of Pescadero when the poem was published. Her mother read it when it appeared in the farm journal and committed them to memory. In fact, the entire family memorized the incomplete poem and repeated the verses from to time as occasion fitted.

“This continued for half a century, Mrs. Moore’s mother passing on in the meantime.

“Last March Mrs. Moore headed a committee which gave an ‘old fashioned dance’ in Pescadero. In conjunction with the dance a program was arranged in which a number of older residents of the community participted. Believing that the poem of Pescadero, which she had known as a child, was appropriate for the occasion, Mrs. Moore asked a neighbor and lifelong friend, Mrs. H.L. Good, to read it as an encore.

“It was then that Mrs. Good recited the verses as Mrs. Moore had known them–and, to the latter’s amazement, added what were evidently the missing stanzas. She had been the original author….”

…to be continued…

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