Hearst Castle

Kidnapped! 

That was the headline splashed across every newspaper on February 4, 1974. Patricia Hearst, heiress to the vast Hearst fortune, had been abducted by three members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). It was all anyone could talk about. 

Her capture, crimes, imprisonment, and eventual pardon would provide endless fodder for celebrity gossip hounds. Patty, now 71 years old and the most famous of William Randolph Hearst's ten grandchildren, lives a quiet life in the sleepy town of Wilton Connecticut, far from the public's prying eyes.

Our "paths" recently crossed during my not long ago visit to Hearst Castle, the family compound for the first half of the twentieth century. Its opulence is undeniable, boasting 58 bedrooms, 60 bathrooms, 41 fireplaces, and a functioning wine cellar despite the then strictures of Prohibition. But of all the facts I learned that day, perhaps the most endearing was this. As I stood at the edge of the mansion's famous Neptune Pool, the guide told me Patty had just been there, lounging by the water during her earlier vacation. 

That's right. Despite the property's current ownership by the California State Park system, the family reserves the right to utilize the mansion as they wish. 

Patty and I, separated by just a week, both hovered poolside, looking out at 345,000 gallons of memories...

"San Simeon --- a sandcastle, an implausibility, a place swimming in warm golden light and theatrical mists, a pleasure dome decreed by a man who insisted, out of the one dark fear we all know about, that all the surfaces be gay and brilliant and playful." - Joan Didion