A tale of Painters, Butterflies...and Memories

Certain places beg companionship, and Pacific Grove is one of these.

A loss, to be alone with the melody of the sea and the cry of gulls, strolling barefoot across sand dunes that flow gracefully toward the shore.

And shouldn’t there be a sharing of the sun as it slips to the other side of the world, and afterward, too, when the fog rolls in, gray and wet, wrapping itself around ancient Victorians with their striking gables and pretty shutters and gardens perfumed with lilac scents?

On such evenings, moisture drips from the eaves of these old homes and street lamps cast a ghostly yellow glow along Lighthouse Avenue.

Pacific Grove is addictive. While it may not possess the excitement of neighboring Monterey or the glamour of Carmel, its lures are hard to resist. Particularly for travelers in search of yesterday. Sweet, peaceful yesterday. Pacific Grove is the sort of town that provides the old-fashioned goodness that disappeared with elbow garters and bowlers. Remember?

It’s a rare coastal community that grips the heart and haunts the soul long after the moment of departure. Not the village itself, particularly, although it exudes a homeyness and charm. Rather it is the land beyond--the lure of the shoreline with its marvelous sand dunes embraced with ice plant, and the groves of magnificent trees. The cypress, the Monterey pine and the eucalyptus. Their branches droop with the weight of butterflies.

Millions of orange and yellow monarchs arrive in fall and disappear in spring, a departure that remains a mystery, one of beauty and poignancy. For these lovely winged creatures won’t return, their life cycle having been spent in less than a year.

It is in the fall that the monarchs wing their way to Pacific Grove, traveling hundreds of miles. Sometimes from as far as Alaska. And always they settle in the same trees. It confounds scientists, this lure, this flight, this fascination for the very same trees that attracted the butterflies last year and the year before that, which now have withered while their places are taken by a new generation that will disappear before their own year is out.

Pacific Grove is special in many ways, a peaceful little village whose door leads to yesterday.

Salty cottages and magnificent homes line its shore. West of town, where Lighthouse Avenue meets the ocean, artists set up their easels to capture on canvas the scenes of sand dunes and cypress and ocean spray that blows off waves as they curl toward the shore with its rocky beachhead and wondrous tide pools.

Pacific Grove is yesterday’s town with the gentleness of another era. The weekend of April 27-28 will be devoted to Pacific Grove’s annual Good Old Days Celebration. Booths will be set up in the parking lot behind the Bank of America, featuring handcrafted jewelry and furniture, quilts, oils and watercolors, and shelves of home-canned peaches, pickles and preserves.

A tour of Victorian homes is on the list of offerings, along with a pancake breakfast, pie-eating and bubble gum-blowing contests, and firemen will show off with a “waterball” feat, all of this preceded by a parade down Lighthouse Avenue with a lineup of bands, antique cars, gas-filled balloons and puppeteers.

It smacks of a Midwest pageant at harvest time when crowds queue up at hot dog and soft drink stands and country musicians perform for the spectators.

In summertime, crowds gather for the Festival of Lanterns, celebrating the legendary search by a grieving mandarin whose favored daughter disappeared with her lover. The platform is Lover’s Point. Where else? And it’s a scene. Everybody loves a love story. Hundreds show up with lanterns that glow while a flotilla of boats pass along Pacific Grove’s rocky shoreline. It’s a daylong celebration featuring Greek dancers, country music and a huge chicken barbecue.

But nobody in Pacific Grove is satisfied with just a couple of celebrations. This town loves a good time and to celebrate the return of the monarchs, a couple of thousand youngsters doll up like butterflies and march down Lighthouse Avenue each October.

Streets are roped off. Thousands line the sidewalks. And like the butterflies that swarm back to Pacific Grove, the costumed schoolchildren flap their wings along the parade route with its floats, drum majors and the rollicking beat of school bands.

A couple of months later carolers will join a winter parade led by St. Nick. And there’s a “singing Christmas tree” with other carolers supported among the branches.

At Butterfly Town, U.S.A., visitors seek shelter in a series of country inns. One is the Gosby House with its old-fashioned parlor and ruffled curtains and country wallpaper. Gosby House provides the charm of a French auberge. It is grand without being garish. Few Victorians match its splendor.

Fresh fruit and flowers are delivered to guest rooms each morning. Some feature showers. Others bid guests to soak in claw-footed tubs and warm themselves before cozy fireplaces.

To spend a night at Gosby House is to find one’s way back to a 19th-Century inn, with choice antiques, leaded windows, polished brass and marble. The 28-year-old innkeeper, Sarah Long, is a willowy, wide-eyed, blue-eyed blonde, who got her training helping her parents operate a family inn in Ireland. Not that she’s from Ireland. Her family hails from New Jersey, but they’re a band of gypsies, she says.

Her parents--they live in Pebble Beach now--were cursed with the wanderlust. They moved constantly. Whenever and wherever the mood dictated. This was often, it was fun, it was exciting, Sarah Long tells her guests at Gosby House where her sister, Molly, helps in the kitchen, turning out marvelous egg dishes, sausage pies and red-flanneled hash, along with blueberry, pumpkin and oatmeal/ bran muffins.

It goes without saying that Gosby House is no ordinary B&B.;

While Sarah Long visits with her guests, classical melodies fill the old-fashioned parlor. So if one is a romantic, be prepared to be seduced by the charm of this excellent inn on Lighthouse Avenue.

Romance flames next door as well at Old Europe, a snug restaurant with a huge open fireplace, candles and fresh flowers. The owner, an Austrian, prepares veal and zucchini with capers and lemon butter, prawns that swim in garlic, white wine and cream, and wild boar which he prepares in red wine with mushrooms and onions.

At Lover’s Point, the Old Bath House serves meals by candlelight and cocktails in a Victorian bar with an antique espresso machine. Candlelight glows at windows facing a lovely cove while taped melodies, classical and romantic, add to the atmosphere. The Old Bath House is a place for holding hands and filling the soul with scenes of the ocean. Along the shore, couples stroll arm and arm, gulls cry and a chill wind whips petals from geraniums.

In this romantic’s guide to Pacific Grove, we list other restaurants and inns, one the Green Gables, a Queen Anne-style mansion (circa 1888) with guest rooms that face Monterey Bay head on.

Like Gosby House, the half-timbered old home is a flashback to less hurried times. Guests pad about on parquet floors and soak up snifters of sherry before an inviting fire. Accommodations are provided in five bedrooms upstairs, a two-room suite downstairs and a carriage house out back.

The Green Gables is a gathering of marble-topped dressers, Victorian chandeliers, stained-glass panels, bay windows, old-fashioned quilts and period prints. A word of caution: Not all guest rooms are blessed with private baths.

Jeremy Shackleford is the innkeeper at Green Gables and she’s a delight. Want a pair of binoculars for whale watching? Ask Jeremy. Another glass of sherry or a cup of tea? Ask Jeremy. As the Green Gables’ attractive mother superior, she’s eager to serve.

Pacific Grove is the home of a third Victorian, the House of Seven Gables Inn--also on Ocean Avenue and also facing Monterey Bay. This is a family-operated inn with a dozen shining guest rooms, each with an ocean view, each with private bath. And not a speck of dust, it would appear, in the entire mansion.

One must enjoy pets, for this old home with its gilt-edged mirrors and museum-like antiques is shared by a cat named Albert and a dog named Homer.

The Seven Gables is a two-minute stroll from Lover’s Point and within earshot of the ocean. Couples get engaged, honeymooners make it their headquarters, and occasionally marriages are performed in the patio. Romantics take heed: Smashing views are provided in the Breakers Room and the Bellevue Room next door.

Other lovers hurry off to the Old Monterey Inn with its nine guest rooms and a garden cottage (each with private bath). Goose-down comforters provide warmth and afternoons are given over to the cheer of a fire and servings of sherry, other wines, cheese and crackers.

Finally, there’s the Jabberwock, an ex-convent overlooking Monterey’s Cannery Row. Here travelers have the choice of seven guest rooms, three without bath.

The Jabberwock is the home of ex-Los Angeles fireman Jim Allen and his wife, Barbara, who deliver guests from the airport in an English cab and send them off to bed with cookies and milk. That’s their specialty. For travelers who enjoy goose-down pillows, old-fashioned comforters and plain old-fashioned hospitality, the Jabberwock promises to please.

A couple of man-made waterfalls spill out back, hors d’oeuvres and sherry are enjoyed by the fire, and berry omelets and other specialties are served for breakfast.

Midweek guests who spend two nights or more at the Jabberwock are given free passes to the smashing new $40-million Monterey Bay Aquarium, billed as the home of 10,000 creatures. Everything from sea otters to sharks, starfishes to octopuses. Afterward they follow in the footsteps of John Steinbeck’s lineup of characters--Doc Ricketts, the girls at Dora’s bordello and the earthy types who gathered at Lee Chong’s grocery.

Then, as the fog rolls in across the bay, they hurry back to inns filled with Old World grace and the warmth of a wood fire. Pure joy.

For a listing of celebrations in Pacific Grove and the dates, send a stamped, self-addressed No. 12 envelope to the Pacific Grove Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 167, Pacific Grove, Calif. 93950.

Here are the addresses of the inns named in this article:

The Gosby House Inn, 643 Lighthouse Ave., Pacific Grove, Calif. 93950. Rates: $65/$95. Telephone (408) 375-1287.

The Green Gables Inn, 104 Fifth St., Pacific Grove, Calif. 93950. Rates: $70/$125. Telephone (408) 375-2095.

The House of Seven Gables Inn, 555 Ocean View Blvd., Pacific Grove, Calif. 93950. Rates: $75/$110. Telephone (408) 372-4341.

Old Monterey Inn, 500 Martin St., Monterey, Calif. 93940. Rates: $100/$135. Telephone (408) 375-8284.

The Jabberwock, 598 Laine St., Monterey, Calif. 93940. Rates: $75/$125. Telephone (408) 372-4777.

(See today’s Grimms’ column for additional details on Monterey.)