There weren't much to prove

 In an oak barrel life

   The water smelled like sulfur

    And was brackish and gray

        Arroyo life

        Dried up hills where low grade coal 

Was once mined 

      -You could find scores of shells 

In the hills a hundred miles 

  From the ocean

     What are these doing here

The K-OLA 

     mine sign was still visible

Made from white rocks

    On a bare hillside

         The old oak barn 

        With old planks 

Or maybe redwood? 

As the barn looked red

         I think the barn was why my dad 

      Bought the property

Most of it was a very deep arroyo

With dangerously steep sides 

On the west

    The arroyo led to a 

Silk smooth muddy lake/pond 

Man made by bulldozer

Before the county got involved

Years later my uncle said 

I own half that property!

But he was a blow hard

I think he's still alive

My cousin put him in a home

After his wife died

    These hills had been cattle ranches 

   Split up by the Spaniards 

The hills were crisscrossed 

In lines, tracks 

From the cattle walking back and forth 

Grazing for two hundred years

Somewhere near here a

Man was shot and killed 

By his neighbor who had warned him 

to keep his cattle off his property

But he had no fences

Still you don't kill a man 

Over cattle grazing

And he went to jail

Thieves used to prey on 

Miners bringing gold back 

From the foothills

Joaquin Murrieta 

   And the like

They'd kill them and take 

Everything

So they had to build a jail

I think it was

In Pleasanton