virile and attractive, was meant to symbolize the moral decay that had infected the country. Audiences, meanwhile, seemed to react to him—understandably, given the glamour casting of Newman—as “a celebration and glorification of materialism—of the man who looks out for himself.” Pauline agreed with popular sentiment, adding that she appreciated Hud’s accurate depiction of the West—“not the legendary west of myth-making movies like the sluggish Shane but the modern West I grew up in, the ludicrous real West . . . The incongruities of Cadillacs and cattle, crickets and transistor radios, jukeboxes, Dr Pepper signs, paperback books—all emphasizing the standardization of culture in the loneliness of vast spaces.” In her analysis of the honest, unromantic way Ritt had depicted life on a western ranch, she offered a very personal memory: The summer nights are very long on a western ranch. As a child, I could stretch out on a hammock on the porch and read an Oz book from cover to cover while my grandparents and uncles and aunts and parents didn’t stir from their card game. The young men get tired of playing cards. They either think about sex or try to do something about it. There isn’t much else to do—the life doesn’t exactly stimulate the imagination, though it does stimulate the senses.... I remember my father taking me along when he visited our local widow: I played in the new barn which was being constructed by workmen who seemed to take their orders from my father. At six or seven, I was very proud of my father for being the protector of widows.
And later:My father, who was adulterous, and a Republican who, like Hud, was opposed to any government interference, was in no sense and in no one’s eyes a social predator. He was generous and kind, and democratic in the western way that Easterners still don’t understand: it was not out of guilty condescension that mealtimes were communal affairs with the Mexican and Indian ranchhands joining the family, it was the way Westerners lived.
It was an unusual point of view for an educated woman to hold in the 1960s: Rather than resenting her father for his infidelity to her mother, Pauline seemed almost to take pride in it. In her adult years, Pauline would be drawn steadily to similarly unapologetic, confident, and self-reliant males—as friends, sometimes as lovers, and often as objects of professional admiration.
By mid-1928 Isaac Kael had reached his peak of prosperity, having built the ranch up to the point where it could accommodate a capacity of twenty-five thousand chickens and having amassed a stock portfolio totaling more than $100,000. But because he had bought the bulk of his securities on margin, they didn’t really belong to him, and he then made a terrible misjudgment in selling short. As the market continued to rise, however, he was forced to lay his hands on more cash in order to maintain control of his stock. “He put up everything he had as security, and still he was short,” remembered Louis Kael. With such a huge amount of stock debt, Isaac was in no way prepared for such turbulence in the marketplace, and eventually he was washed up.
He quickly found that he had become a pariah, as far as the other chicken ranchers were concerned, and the people who had always seemed to look up to him were now plainly uneasy, avoiding him when he ran into them on the street. There was nothing for Isaac to do but pull up stakes and move to San Francisco, where he hoped he might be able to piece together a new life for his family.
CHAPTER TWO
Isaac Kael was only forty-five when he lost the Petaluma ranch, and initially, at least, he was confident that he was capable of two more decades of solid work. Taking into account the expertise he had developed during his years as a chicken rancher, he decided it would make sense to go into the retail poultry and produce business. When the Kaels arrived in San Francisco, he immediately sprang into action and, using most of the little money that was left, leased three separate stores. As he had no equipment, no license, and no product, he sent Louis, now in his early twenties, to the Jewish Welfare Foundation to take out a series of modest loans to help launch his new business.
Isaac enjoyed a few reasonably profitable months as a poultry retailer and greengrocer until October of 1929 and the Wall Street crash, after