Living at French Gulch

Living at French Gulch
Copyright Joanne Harris 2008

By the time I was about eight I begin to remember doing things by myself. We lived on French Gulch, at the bottom of French Meadow but on the other side of the fence. Through the meadow and across an old bridge out another gate of the meadow, you came to John Watkins’ claim. John and Anna Watkins had a cabin there. It was two-story and had three rooms downstairs.

They had an outhouse, a three-holer, and we girls used to have fun in there. We girls would go into there and lock the boys out. There was another boy around, besides my brother. We went in there to talk and you might as well do two things at once. That three-holer was really uptown.

The Watkins mine was called the Squaw Pocket, so they were miners, sort of. Most of the people up there were miners, sort of. I guess the Morlands took it pretty seriously. Art Griswold, who owned the Bowman, actually had another mine also.

Mining had pretty well slowed down. During the Second World War there was no money for mining. It was suspended in many places because of the necessity of taking the people and the money for the war.

Sometimes Dixie Lee Cassidy, Anna Watkins’ granddaughter was there. We’d go over there, my sister and I, and sometimes Beverly, to visit and play.

Anna had a quilting frame. When you weren’t using it you pulled on a pulley and it pulled it up into the ceiling. When you wanted to work on it, you dropped it down and the ladies sat around and quilted. I can remember seeing that. It was an actual quilting party the way they used to be. This would have been in the Forties.

Somehow they had a fawn. We’ve all seen Bambi, and isn’t he sweet. Let me tell you, fawns are vicious. This particular fawn attacked my brother regularly, right up to the time he was a yearling. It didn’t attack the rest of us, just him. It stood up and struck with those really razor sharp hooves. My brother carried a monkey wrench with a missing movable jaw whenever he went over there. When the deer came after him, Fritz hit it between the ears with it with all his might. Then the fawn would leave him alone for a while. People would say, “Well, stop it, deer, don’t do that,” but Fritz always carried his wrench.

The Watkins were neighbors. One of the problems with going to the cabin was you had to drive right by their house to go through the gate, into the meadow, across a bridge and out the other gate to where our cabin was. If you didn’t want them to know you were in – well-- there was no way of getting around it. So Mama set out to build a road that came in another way.

It came out of – what was it? – no, it wasn’t Claraville – Bella Union, that was it --anyhow, the road cut off from there and it followed a fairly natural path. The work was done with shovels. You cleared the brush and moved a few rocks, drove the car back and forth over it, and pretty soon it began to be a track. Then we came around a hill – I can picture the whole thing in my mind – and then went down through a low spot which was on a claim called Grey Squirrel which my father had filed on, besides our claim which was High, Wide and Handsome. Then it came along an old ditch left over from the Gold Rush days. This was a water ditch. The ditch systems were very extensive very quickly after the Gold Rush started. I really don’t remember where this ditch started, but it went along the hill above the cabin and across the mine dump that was there at that cabin. (We didn’t start that mine. We did some work in it because we had to do assessment work.) And then it went along the hill. The road came to the ditch and went along the hill, which was rather a steep hill. You couldn’t have built a road there without this ditch. It was sort of flat and filled, and then when the road got to the dump came down a very steep hill and you could park right at the cabin.

The wedding Night

Some who read this might have an expectation of a virtual night of debauchery, however as sad it is to dissapoint you certain realities must be observed.

Laurie, my daughter was married to a nice young man in a pleasant cermony in Woodland Hills, California. She was married under a canopy in a jewish ceramony where a small glass is stomped and then everyone cheers.

The ceramony screamed for a song called Sunrise, Sunset, but that was not to be. The young couple did not have much money as is true of most young couples so they decided to have their hoeymoon on the mountain. It was late in the summer and though at that time in the city the temperature is blessed, on the mountain it is more like the beginning of a small curse.

After the fun, the couple drive most of the night to the mountain and when they arrived on top of the Harris grade it was cold, dark and very windy, icey, cold, windy to be exact. While it is true that cities have road signs here and there, on the mountain there are no signs. There is only one road on the Paiutes, the rest is driveways varying from one thousand feet to five miles in length.

Naturally they passed the drive way to the High Wide and Handosme claim, our cabin, and became lost in the dark. As much in love as they were at this time, tempers were getting short, they were cold and hungry and wished they had stayed home.

Finaly they saw something they recognized at the side of the road, it was the ranger's station closed of course for the rest of the year. The small cabin was locked and the only thing they could get into was the two seater outhouse. Most outhouses are full of spaces to help them to smell better and this one was no exception. They discussed their situation thoughtfully but could not decide weather it was better to sit and cuddle or to walk back and forth, one on the floor, the other across the two seats.

They spent the entire night arguing as to which was the best idea, it was Laurie who wished to cuddle. The wind howling through the boards was cold, it was dark and smelly and each did his thing to keep warm, Lauire huddled in a corner while her new love paced back and forth mumbling unkind things about life in general.

As much as I and others love the mountain it can be cruel, especially to newcomers. Actually they were lucky to find any shelter at all and it made the rest of the marriage some what more tolerable.

A few years before I and my love arrived at the cabin at about ten oclock at night to spend a pleasant weekend. It was alright in the car but when we opened the car door to go inside the cabin the cold took our breath away. We only had to walk about twenty feet to get to the cabin door, but that is a long way when you are freezing to death. Bye the time we got to the door our hands were numb and getting the key out of my pocket was difficult because I could not feel anything, but getting the key into the lock was really difficult.

I could hold onto the door knob alright but getting the key into the lock took a long time, a period long enough to die of cold. The shaking became worse and worse and getting the key into the lock became more and more difficult. It was actually a race against time. But we did get in. To light a match to start a fire could not be done so we went straight to bed taking with us part of a turkey we had brough along.

We finaly got warm and munched on our turkey drum sticks and life got better as we drifted off to sleep.

At this time life stopped getting better for I woke up feeling something crawling on me, lots of somethings in fact. I reached for a flash light and saw the bed, sheets and our bodies covered with the largest ants I have ever seen, almost an inch long each. There were millions of them. I did a little screaming and my husband did a great deal of screaming as we leaped out of bed. But wwe did survive and that was that.

It is best to leave the mountain to the mountain lions and coyotes during the fall and winter months.