More About Walker Basin

More About Walker Basis
©Joanne H. Harris, 2008

The first memories I have of horses are when we lived in Walker Basin. We lived on a piece of land that was part of Nick Williams' ranch. It was just a log cabin in a meadow. The only other creature in that section was Bubbles, Nick’s Hereford bull.

Nick’s place had a corral, and I remember a corral full of horses. I remember walking into the corral and all of the horses rushed to the far side except for one, a horse named Shine that my mother rode when she helped Nick and his daughter, Nita, move cattle.

The next memory I have is about the same horse, Shine. Mama was peeling apples and she gave me some apple cores or apple skins to give to Shine. Unfortunately, she didn’t give me any lessons on how to feed a horse, so of course I presented the peels with my fingers bent. The poor thing proceeded to grab my fingers and bite me, but not on purpose. He really didn’t do me any harm, but I shrieked and mother came out and gave me a tardy lesson on how to feed horses. Even this didn’t make me shy of horses.

Our cabin had no running water or indoor plumbing. What was that stuff called electricity? I don’t think the main ranch had electricity. I don’t remember any thing about the inside of the cabin except mom making a down blanket for me out of a down blanket she'd had as a child. That blanket was around for at least 30 years.

Mom has told me that Nick was supposed to provide us with milk, which didn’t happen. Mom had had some experience with guns and had a 22. She could hunt and shoot rabbits. Fritz and I were fond in later years of saying we ate rabbit for breakfast, rabbit for lunch, and rabbit for supper. We also picked wild unions like the Indians did. Daddy came up now and then and brought staples like beans and flour.

Mom used to complain that Nick mixed his sourdough in the flour sack. This included eggs. When he was finished he left a little in the sack for the next starter. Mom said it got pretty strong. Nick didn't throw away coffee grounds daily, but just added more for several days.

The outside of the cabin is what I remember. There was a stream close by with willows to play in. In the spring there were wild violets that I picked by the huge hands full. In the winter Fritz rolled up snow balls and made a fort that lasted long after the snow was gone. One day Daddy shot an owl and stuffed it. Mom complained it looked like an hawk.

We stayed at the ranch in Walker Basin for almost a year. Who knows what was going on with my parents, I do not.

Strangely, I don’t have memories for the next two years. I have pictures of me and my sibling at various houses on Paiute mountain and I know the stories that go with them. For the next couple of years we lived at the Bowman mine, the ranger station, Tommy Thomas’ cabin near Frank and Jenny King's place. Nick Williams had summer range on Paiute at a place called French Meadow. So mom moved with all of us kids, five in all (Audrey, Fritz, cousins Beverly and Dana, and myself) up to the ranger station, which was empty at the time and on French Meadow.

Mom had a couple of goats to provide milk for us kids. The goats ran wherever they wanted to and one time Nick come over to complain that they had “eaten the ass out of one of his saddles”.

He, being a cattleman, would put his cows wherever he could get grass. Since the ranger station in French Meadow was vacant, he ran some cows in the “ranger meadow.” All of the gates were poor man’s gates. These go by many names but they are all barbed wire with a poll that one slips into a wire loop at the bottom and slips a wire loop over the top, I use the term slip loosely because they are very difficult to close, some times impossible. Sometimes a gate on the Ranger meadow got poorly closed or left open. Nick came over one time and told mother if she didn’t keep the gates closed he would wire them shut. She said that that was fine with her because then she would cut one where she wanted it.

Mom still helped out with the cattle from time to time. She had sort of a love/hate relationship with Nick and some of his family, but they never killed each other.

My First Days on Paiute

When I was little, two or three years old, around 1937, my mother Esther took my brother Fritz and me and went to live on a ranch that belonged to an old rancher named Nick Williams. I believe my mom did this for reasons of health or sanity. My sister Audrey stayed with friends in the Los Angeles area. Fritz was five years older than me and my sister was a year older than Fritz.

My mother, a capable rider, was supposed to help with Nick's cattle from time to time and we all lived in a small log cabin on a separate section of the main ranch. Our only domestic company in that section was Bubbles, a Hereford bull, and Muffin, our cat. We stayed there for a year. Memories of a child as young as I was are at best vague and sometimes it is difficult to separate what one actually remembers from what one was told. My memories are mostly like post cards, pictures in my mind.

Fritz and I walked to the main ranch most days. Nick had a bone yard there that had several old wagons and a few automobiles, a great place for kids to play. Fritz was responsible for me and I was his only company. I only remember Mom and home and Nick at the ranch. I understood that a man worked at the ranch, and Nick had ten daughters and a son.

Fritz and I wandered all over the place, having our little adventures. One day we came upon a nest of rattlesnakes and Fritz guarded them and made me run home to get Mom to do something about them. She didn't want to come as she was busy sewing on her treadle sewing machine. But I would not stop yelling, so she finally came. I don't remember what happened after that. What was important was that my "message to Garcia" got through.

Nick used to tease me by poking his finger at my face and daring me to bite it. Mom warned me not to bite, but one day when we were at the ranch for dinner (beans) I did bite him. For punishment Mom made me chew and eat three chili tepinas. that was a lesson I can never forget.

I remember once a hog was going to be killed. I guess Mom was going to help scrape it. Fritz and I sat on the top rail of the fence as they dragged the pig -- it looked huge -- into the corral with a rope tied to one hind leg. Have you heard the term "screamed like a stuck pig?" The screaming starts before the pig is killed. They ran a rope through a pulley and suspended the pig in the air. Then they cut its throat and the pig bled out and thus was dead. A large cauldron sat on a fire and they scalded the pig to make the hair come off easier. I guess we all ate pork for a while. 

We ate marrow gut when some animal was slaughtered. The animal is left to stand without food for 24 hours. After it is killed, the small intestine is removed and the liquid in it left to sort of coagulate. Then it is cut into pieces and fried. I can remember how good it tasted.

Joanne Heyser Harris

Introduction to Project

Long ago, well, not all that long ago, say seventy years ago, the Heyser family met Paiute Mountain, in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. It lies south of the Kern River Valley. They also met an early rancher, Nick Williams. 

After a few years they filed on the old Gehringer Claim, which had an old cabin,  and renamed it High, Wide and Handsome. The Cabin began to take shape on that claim. Today all that remains of The Cabin is a stone chimney. People who camp at Camp Nick Williams (known as French Meadows in the good old days) call it the Stone House.

Throughout the years many people came to visit, friends of the Heysers, business associates, friends of their children, and The Cabin seemed to exert an almost mythic effect on the people who remembered it in later years. 

The purpose of this blog is to invite people still living who have memories of The Cabin to set them down on paper, well, electronically for now, before there are none to remember and it will be just an old chimney, the Stone House. 

Ken Harris (husband to Joanne Heyser)

(My wife made me write this!)