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A TOUCHING FRIENDSHIP AND ENDURING GIUSTI’S LEGACY
Erle Stanley Gardner’s Love Affair With Delta
By Tom Horton
As published in The Sacramento Union
March 15, 1970
Photos and captions from Gardner’s Delta books,
published 1965, 1967 and 1969
WALNUT GROVE – It was a late hour and a quiet mood at Giusti’s as Moe Morais stood behind the bar mixing drinks, shaking dice and talking about the recent loss of a good friend.
“The first time he came in, about 1961, I thought we had blown it for good,” Moe said. “He had finished lunch and asked me for more coffee. Dolores (Moe’s wife) says to him, in her best waitress voice, ‘You’ll just have to wait a minute sir, I’m very busy.’” So he leaves. Five minutes later Dolores comes running into the bar saying, ‘Oh, my God, do you know who I think I just ran out of here? Erle Stanley Gardner!’ She goes charging down to the boat dock and apologizes all over herself. Erle just laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back.’”
One of the world’s most famous mystery writers came back all right. He came back to Giusti’s and the Delta almost every summer and brought with him a flotilla of secretaries and associates armed with cameras, notebooks and dictating machines. He parked his four house trailers on Bethel Island, bought a couple of houseboats and began exploring the Delta.
IN THE LAST five years of his astonishingly productive life, Gardner published three travel books on the Delta, each filled with lavish praise for the area’s scenic treasures and refreshing life style. He did more than any one man to make the Delta known throughout the United States. In his first book in 1965, “The Wonderful World of Water,” he explained why: “I am at a point in life (75) where I prefer the relatively quiet sport of fishing for catfish and pan-fish in the eddies and in secluded bends where I can be by myself. Ordinarily I am energetic to the point of being restless. I have never quite learned how to relax and do nothing. But the tranquil atmosphere of these house cruisers, the charm of sitting out on a shaded deck in a comfortable chair, watching the breeze rustle the leaves of the big shade trees, were utterly irresistible. I simply couldn’t get up enough ambition or desire to go anywhere.”
IT’S EASY TO understand why this famous author cherished the privacy of a Delta slough. “There was always somebody with him that carried a gun.” Moe said. “He used to joke about the threats made on his life. He even had a collection of his best threatening letters which he showed visitors to his ranch in Temecula. Even when you called him at the ranch, there was usually two other people listening in.”
None of this prevented Gardner from being an old-shoe type. He prided himself on making and keeping friends in the Delta and illustrated his books in the fashion of family albums, corny but sincere snapshots of himself and his friends. (One picture was captioned, “The Author receives change at Wanda’s Café.”)
The river rats who became his close friends, such as “Mo”, called him Uncle Erle. “He’d always call to let me know he was coming,” Moe said, “He’d say, ‘Hey, Moe, this is Uncle Erle calling from Temecula. Get the wine and soup ready because we’re coming up in force. He came here to relax, which meant he was only working on five books instead of 10. He spent two hours a day on the phone. He had a fantastic mind, an amazing memory for names and unbelievable energy. He’d play penny-ante poker all night. Wasn’t much of a drinker, one or two Tom Collins to quench his thirst.”
THE THREE TRAVEL books, quite frankly, are not great pieces of literature. The best word to describe them is chatty, which is the way Gardner wrote them. He sat on his houseboat, and told a dictating machine where he had been that day and the people he had met. He made some comments about the future of the Delta, which he thought to be tremendous, the threat of destroying the natural beauty of the land and the denuding of river levees by removing the trees, which Gardner deplored. He started his last book, “Drifting Down the Delta,” with the comment, “The reader is warned right at the start that this is not a book of breath-taking adventure. It is a book of leisure, of drifting, of how one’s blood pressure can drop fifty points under the benign influence of nature’s healing hand.”
The prevailing rumor is that Gardner wrote his travel books for tax purposes. Moe laughed at that and said, “Listen, I’m the guy who started the rumor. It’s a lot of bunk. He wrote those books because he knew the Delta was a virgin and he loved it.”
The most surprising thing in Gardner’s books is what he did not write about, and that is the best-known spot in the Delta, Al the Wop’s. “I don’t know why, but he never cared for Al’s,” Moe said, “I took him there a couple of times, but he never showed any interest. But he loved Locke and the Chinese people. He spoke good Chinese himself. I think his favorite place in the whole Delta was the Yuen Chong Market in Locke.”
GARDNER PUT it this way in his 1969 book; “My Chinese friends in the Delta mean a lot to me. I know enough of their habits of thought and their national background so that it is indeed a pleasure to visit with them. I know that I have developed a tremendous respect for the Chinese philosophy, for the Chinese thinking, for the Chinese industry and the indomitable Chinese desire to accomplish things.”
The sort, paunchy author (a short John Misterly, says Moe) had a special affection for Giusti’s and Moe and Dolores Morais. Giusti’s is on the cover of the first Delta book and in it Gardner wrote, “It is impossible adequately to describe the warmth of the place, the impression of hospitality, the cool crispness of the salads or the flavor of the food (his favorite meal was sourdough French bread and red wine). Many commercial resorts extend service on a basis of ‘Hello, sucker! Come on in and be fleeced.’ But up at Giusti’s there is a warm friendliness, a genuine desire to accommodate. That atmosphere emanates from the people who are happy with their lot in life an want you to be happy too.”
THE SAME COULD be said of Gardner. In the last book he wrote of “ a touching example of the depth of the friendship of Moe and Dolores.” It concerned them driving 400 miles to LA to wish Erle bon voyage, then driving back all night so Moe could go to work at 9 a.m. “What he didn’t write,” Moe said, “is that he gave Sam Hicks (Gardner’s man Friday) $5,000 and told Sam to take us to Mexico the next day for a one-day fiesta, which Sam did.”
Two weeks ago a man arrived at Giusti’s with a message for Moe and Dolores, “Uncle Erle sent me,” he said. “He said he wanted me to tell you goodbye for him.” Mo closed down the bar early Thursday night because the next morning he was flying to Riverside to attend Erle Stanley Gardners’ funeral.
“I’ve lost a good friend,” Moe said. “And so has the Delta.”
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