Hers the Kingdom by Streshinsky Shirley

Author:Streshinsky, Shirley [Streshinsky, Shirley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781620455159
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
Published: 2013-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

In Santa Monica each morning Owen set off from the house to walk the six blocks to his office in the Reade Building, the most modern commercial structure in the growing town, occupying a full city block. From this vantage he attended to the business interests that reached from Nova Scotia to Baja California. At age forty-one, Owen was president of the Sierra Madre Land Company, vice president of Pioneer Oil, a director of Southwestern Electric Company, president of the Guadalupe Rancho Company which, in a complicated maneuver involving buying the water rights to the whole of one large valley, opened some thousand acres in the San Fernando Valley to settlement. He was, at the same time, president of the Delta Land and Improvement Company and, through a combine of syndicates, had holdings that included two lumber mills in the redwood forests of northern California and Oregon, as well as silver mines in Nevada and copper mines in Arizona, along with real estate in some of the country's fastest-growing cities.

"Money multiplies like rabbits," he was fond of saying, "all you need is the first pair." And indeed, making money seemed to be quite a natural act for Owen.

He also managed to be active in historical and benevolent societies, supporting innumerable orphanages and building more than a dozen new wings to churches. The number of boards of directors he served on put him in league with the very men who controlled a sizeable part of the commerce of the nation. Though Owen went to lengths to keep his name out of the newspapers, those with ambition managed always to find their way to his office in the Reade Building, and when they spoke to him it was in tones of reverence reserved for the rich and the powerful.

Until fire destroyed almost all trace of their life on the Malibu, Owen had carefully divided his time between the ranch and family matters, and the businesses he saw to from his office in the Reade Building. Now, with Willa's encouragement, he turned all of his attention to his businesses, while she took on the task of rebuilding the ranch.

We would come to speak of before the fire and after the fire. The fire became a point of reference, a line of demarcation. At first, everything was a whirl of activity. We were busy clearing, cleaning, taking inventory. My daybooks of that time are filled with lists . . . Willa was in the vortex, traveling back and forth on Princess, buying and then prodding shopkeepers, arguing with drayers, overseeing deliveries by land and by sea. At first, the men she had to deal with were politely condescending, and, at the same time, a bit reserved with the chatelaine of the Malibu. When she did not choose to take the many suggestions they made, they became querulous and, finally, begrudgingly admiring. For her part, Willa found the whole thing exhilarating. She enjoyed winning over the skeptical merchants and craftsmen. She felt a sense of

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