Weekend Escape: Santa Paula : Yesterday’s Town : Twenty-four hours proved to be just the right amount of time for ambling, savoring and winding down in this community that’s stayed mostly original

I have a wide, warm spot for this little town of citrus ranches, walnut trees and days that dawdle. Because this is the way we were in a gentler California when all hometowns came with four-dialed, tin-shingled clock towers atop the Oddfellows Hall and Main streets empty of parking meters.

Santa Paula remains overshadowed by the boutiques of Santa Barbara, of course, and outclassed by the wealthy peace of Ojai. But Santa Barbara doesn’t have a town airport that is a barnstormer’s delight. Ojai doesn’t have a 100-year-old Main Street with buildings formed from Sespe sandstone and locally made brick.

And in few places but Santa Paula will you find a four-sided town clock where the north dial shows bullet holes. They were drilled by a 1900s ranch hand overcome by a combination of good whisky, a white clock face target and a Winchester 30-30 that had been silent for too long.

Still, I had to hard-sell Santa Paula to my lady.

I went for known weaknesses. Southern California’s sharpest but least expensive B&Bs;, I said, are in Santa Paula. We can go antiquing along Main Street. Up there by noon on Saturday, back by noon Sunday. I promise you peace, sleeping late and a bottle of Moet. Also, an airplane ride over the local countryside with me at the controls. Plus a chance to see a town clock with bullet holes.

“A deal,” she said.

I think the clock with bullet holes did it.

There are but two accomodations for tender weekends in Santa Paula: White Gables Inn, on Santa Paula Street in the center of town, and Fern Oaks Inn on Ojai Road, bed and breakfast treasures both.

We flipped a coin and it came down Fern Oaks. Camarillo expatriates Gil and Cheryl Eigenhuis--she an interior decorator, he an employee of Sprint--bought this 1929 Spanish Revival home two years ago. Cheryl is a giggle. Come on in, she says. Go anywhere you please because this house is your house. Sherry for a nightcap over there. Books and the stereo over there.

And say hello to Sam. Sam is a dog, a perfectly round gourmand who used to be an orange Pomeranian. Cheryl has no objections to anyone walking Sam. The difficulty is finding his front end.

The inn’s Williamsburg Room chose us because the Casablanca, Chinois and Violet rooms were taken. It’s built for dreaming with dried nosegays in bud vases, a beehive radio and a knotty pine four-poster that George Washington wished he had slept in.

Dusk by an open window with Moet as an aperitif was perfect. Then, at Cheryl’s suggestion, we browsed through a basket of menus. But lack of really good eating in town is something citizens’ organizations would like to correct, and, all along, I had l’Auberge up my sleeve. It’s a Belgian restaurant in the aforementioned rustic and tranquil Ojai, a short 20 minutes by motor car north of the Inn and Santa Paula. We’d eaten at l’Auberge a year ago and recommended it to friends, who still kiss their fingertips whenever the place is mentioned. Owner Paul Franssen’s restaurant has a treehouse feel with the dining alfresco on a balcony, or enclosed, your choice. We chose the quaint outdoors.

The sweetbreads--blanched in a vegetable broth before sauteeing with shallots and mushrooms in a Madeira sauce--were outstanding. But not as good as my lady’s tournados--bathed by a red wine sauce with tomatoes, mushrooms, shallots and scallions--with the rich aftertaste of aged beef. There was baked sea bass disappearing among the group at the next table. How was it? They kiss their fingertips.

And back at Fern Oaks Inn, our pampered bodies slept like doorstops.

Breakfast at Fern Oaks is whatever one chooses to make it. Sleep until breakfast. Sit in the garden and read all the depressing stuff in Sunday’s newspaper. Compare your Saturday discoveries and little wonders with other guests as they yawn into breakfast.

I helped Cheryl fry the sausages.

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Saturdays or Sundays there is shopping in Santa Paula. Not to Nordstrom’s or a mall sprawling into adjoining counties. That is not the pace of the town.

But there are a handful of decent antique shops. On and around Main Street, we found stores with goods ranging from early garage sale (a $20 letterman’s sweater from Santa Paula High) at The Memory Shoppe, to museum quality (a Dominick & Haff silver service for $2,975) from Antiques 848. A door away was Musselman and Luttrull Antiques and Old Lighting in a 1920s building only a block away from Harris Antiques & Clock Shop, a cubbyhole of a craftsman’s shop where repair talent covers vintage clocks to cane chairs.

The town’s garage sales also are well worth braking for. At one I began wondering how to strap a mahogany four-poster, albeit a single, to the car. It was priced at $180. At another, an oak Hoosier whispered my name. For $80.

Santa Paula’s buildings are of equal antiquity. The Southern Pacific depot circa 1886 still quivers to the rattle of occasional freight trains. Nearby is the 1890 home of Union Oil, now a museum. A little red schoolhouse still works. And privately owned Santa Paula Airport is a relic of the ‘30s and open cockpit aviation.

I’ve visited often over the years, drawn by flier friendships, airplanes older than most of us, and an obsessive affair with WWII war birds. Steve McQueen learned to fly here. Fellow actor Cliff Robertson hangared his vintage Tiger Moth and Stamp biplanes at Santa Paula. In the airport’s first cafeteria, they say, Charles Lindbergh took his joe black, no sugar. And above the airport, any weekend, in a challenging traffic pattern with no control tower to assign takeoff positions or landing priorities, the sky becomes a museum. On this Sunday, we saw a 1945 Harvard trainer wearing the paint of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Joining it on downwind was a sulfur-yellow 1944 Staggerwing Beech.

A 30-minute sightseeing ride in a single-engined, four-seat Cessna 172 from CP Aviation or the Santa Paula Flight Center costs only $40. Telephone in advance or just show up and walk in. This is not LAX.

If, like me, you’re an ex-military geezer who once knew how it was done, well, it’s an opportunity to see if it really is like riding a bicycle. My license and federal medical certificate are current. Recent air experience isn’t. But CP Aviation says I can still fly their Cessna from the authority of the left seat--as long as the right seat is filled by one of its instructors. Then the ultimate reassurance. My lady says sure, she will fly with us.

I taxi out and line up the cream-and-chocolate Cessna 172 with the center of the runway. Full power. Sneakers off the toe brakes, feel the rudder start to bite, and wait for the seat of your pants to know the airplane is getting lighter. Gentle back pressure on the control column and lift the nose wheel. Now she wants to fly. There is a slight shudder as wheels leave the ground. We are flying. It is like riding a bicycle.

The Southern California air on fall days before noon is glycerine. It is a grand flight. Over to Lake Casitas. Back along a ridge at 500 feet above Larry Hagman’s mountaintop home that looks 10 times the size of South Fork. Then turn over Ojai and back to Santa Paula without waking the town from 1948. The touchdown, ahem, was a fluke, softer and better coordinated than any in my prime. St. Francis, the patron saint of birdmen, allows such landings twice every lifetime.

There is applause from the back seat.

Budget for Two

Gas to and from Santa Paula: $12.50

One night, Fern Oaks Inn: 101.65

Dinner at l’Auberge, Ojai: 75.00

Lunch, La Playita, Santa Paula: 47.35

Sightseeing ride, CP Aviation: 39.50

FINAL TAB: $276.00

Fern Oaks Inn, 1025 Ojai Rd., Santa Paula 93060; tel. (805) 525-7747.