San Fernando Mission was twenty-two miles from Los Angeles, with inadequate train service, and the dirt road, after the first winter rains had swelled the “rivers” and washed away the bridges, was often impassable by motor. The desertion and the desecration of the picturesque place was complete. For more than two hundred years the hot sun and winter rain had beat upon the Mission’s adobe walls. It boasted no curio shop, no lunch room, not even a priest to guard it. A few Japs were living in the one habitable room--they mended bicycles. We were as free to move in as were the swallows so thickly perched on the chapel rafters. An occasional tourist with his kodak had been the only visitor until we came. Then all was changed. It was in San Fernando that we first met up with the typical California rancher. This man, whose name I recall as “Boroff” had been one of the first settlers in the valley. On a “location hunt” we had spied Mr. Boroff’s interesting-looking place with its flowers and its cows, and had decided to pay our respects and see if we could get the ranch for a picture, sometime. One of the “hands” brought Mr. Boroff to us. Rangy and rugged, oh, what health-in-the-cheeks he had! He swung us about the place and then suddenly we found ourselves in a huge barn drinking tall glasses of the most wonderful buttermilk. “Do you know,” said Mr. Boroff, downing his, “I drink a quart of whiskey every day to pass the time away, and a gallon of buttermilk so I’ll live long.” * * * * * Squatted one afternoon on the edge of the roadway in front of the Mission, I began idly scratching up the baked dirt with an old Mexican stiletto we were using in a picture. A few inches below the surface I noticed funny little round things that did not seem to be rocks. I picked up a few, broke off pieces of dry dirt, cleaned the small particles on my Mexican shawl, and found them to be old Indian beads, all colors, blue, red, and yellow. Through the leisure hours of that day I dug beads until I had an interesting little string of them. The Indians from whose decorated leather trappings the beads had fallen had been sleeping many years in the old cemetery back of the Mission. Now there are grass and flower beds growing over my little burial place of the beads, for the Mission has been restored; but even were it not so, the movie actress of to-day would surely rather lounge contentedly in her limousine than squat on old Mother Earth, digging up Indian beads. * * * * * The third and last of the Missions we visited was romantic San Juan Capistrano, seventy miles south of Los Angeles, nestling in the foothills some three miles from the Pacific. Our scenario man, Mr. Taylor, had prepared a Spanish story of the padre days, and this lovely rambling Mission with its adjacent olive ranches, live-oak groves, silvery aliso trees, and cliffs along the seashore, was to afford stacks of local color.