We’re Not Horsey People
History waits for the person who cares.
Finally, a couple years ago, I looked at my own family.
I never knew we are part of living California history.
…or that we’re in the Library of Congress (LOC)? I stumbled on cousins with a place in its American Folklife Center.
Geneaology work had led me back to a Calabrian mountain village in 1803, to a branch of my tree that eventually grew to sit thousands of miles away, right in my grandparent’s back yard.
Not the back porch in Little Italy.
Instead this cold trail led from my grandfather’s grandfather’s brother and took me down to around Gilroy, that place with the Garlic Festival. Down to the tiny hamlet of San Martin, on an agricultural stretch of the old Camino Real that once connected Spanish missions running the length of the state. Just south of my grandparents' place in the valley of San Jose.
Helen married my fourth cousin Tony, whose Filice surname rings a distant bell.
Outside of FILICE'S WESTERN STORE from The Library of Congress, photographed by Ken Light in 1989.
Elaine and her western world was not part of my family identity. We were not horsey people.
I imagine we had unknowingly driven past her and Tony’s 40-year old business, known as “a real rancher’s place” selling tack and apparel. Helen Elaine Martin Filice may be new to me but she belongs to California history.
Black and white photographs in the Italian Americans in the West Project collection at the LOC show the outside of FILICE'S WESTERN STORE. The sign is decorated with a saddle on one side and a boot on the other. A big brown fiberglass horse stands under the sign, beckoning drivers in.
Helen Elaine Martin Filice, Miss Grand National 1965. From her obituary.
A homecoming queen and a cheerleader, Helen became Miss Grand National 1965 at the Cow Palace, and a Sweetheart at the Salinas Rodeo, her recent obituary shares. She is pictured standing with her tall, dark horse. A tailored light-colored suit and wide-brimmed hat, gloved hand resting at the bridle, her face tilted to look her beloved horse in the eye. A whitewashed paddock fence recedes into oak-dotted hills.
Her death notice explains she married my cousin Tony at Mission San Juan Bautista, the same site from Hitchcock's film Vertigo where Kim Novak's character fell to her death from the bell tower.
Google Street View tells me the horse statue is still there, painted stark white. The store is a Boot Barn now.
Before Helen was crowned Rodeo Queen another local highschooler, in chaps and cowboy boots, won the title at the Cow Palace. She would go on to become a supervisor, a mayor, and a U.S. senator. (Image from CowPalace.com)
The Cow Palace is familiar to me, but not as a rodeo venue. As a teenager I blew up balloons for a Rolling Stones concert there.
Helen’s fiberglass horse outlasted the family members who put it there. We’re lucky it kept marking that stretch of western road. Now I know we are horsey people after all.
