The Ranger Station
©Joanne Heyser Harris
Kids get bored and try to keep life interesting. No less so with us on Paiute. I seem to remember tp-ing someone's cabin, scaring campers in the public campground and generally wandering the mountain to see who was in residence and who had left the mountain. We never stole anything, but there were several abandoned cabins from the Gold Rush and lots of stuff to pick up. Every cabin had a coffee grinder tacked to a tree. There were old bedframes in most cabins and an ouythouse nearby.
Fritz started trying to dig up old graves until Mama found out and put a stop to it. She was afraid of what diseases might be left in the grave. Also the depredations were repaired, showing someone was monitoring the graves. Never knew who.
We kids usually became friends with the summer forest fire guards since Audrey (Andrea) was in her middle teens and the guards were in their late teens or early twenties.
One summer we had shared a joke with the guard and a friend of his. And Englishman took an American guest on a red coat fox hunt. The punch line was, “We say, 'Tally-ho the fox,' not 'Kill the little bastard.'”
We had been off the mountain for a week or so, and to announce our return we sneaked up to the ranger station at night and ran some long underwear up the flag pole. We had printed “Tally-ho the fox” on the underwear. Unknown to us, the ranger station was empty because of a fire in another district. During the three days the guard was gone, the district ranger came by. He removed the banner and suggested to the guard that it “lacked dignity.”
A few years later a girl friend and I came up to stay at the cabin for a week. This year there were two guards, one of whom was married. We visited back and forth and we all rode a couple of horses in the public meadow. They came over for dinner the evening before we had to leave. While dinner was cooking we left them at the cabin. We told them we had to doctor a horse who had cut himself on some barbed wire. Actually, the horse was well and we intended to nail the door to the ranger station outhouse shut. We did so and returned to the cabin for dinner and a pleasant evening.
Next morning we got up around 5:00 and I went to the outhouse and sat down. “Hmmm, lots of dew on the toilet seat,” I thoght. “Hmmm, pretty sticky dew,” I thought. Investigation showed the dew to be jam. We weren't the only ones who could sneak around at night. About a quarter mile from the cabin on the road out we found a sign that said, “Have a dry trip home.”
The next time, someone left a bucket of water above the cabin door. It got my father.
Showing posts with label Fritz Heyser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fritz Heyser. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
A good cowman never eats his own beef
Being as the Paiutes had no electricity we did not have any refrigeration so if you wanted meat you had to go out and kill it unless you brought a meat animal with you.
One such animal was Archy, a pig. Archy was an intelligent animal and he liked nothing better than sitting on the couch in front of the fire eating a pie or two. He was strong and difficult to control. Mother fed him in a dish pan which he would finish in ten seconds or less while easily spitting out the onions from one side of his mouth at the same time spitting out the seeds from the other side. Not one seed or onion landed in the dish pan. It was a thing of wonder to watch.
Wherever we went Archy would follow, it was impossible to sneak out or outrun him, Archy was always with us. Once someone saw us fooling around at the Bella Union flats and told the ranger. The ranger replied "Oh that's just the Heyser kids with the pig and hound." We were well known on the mountain.
One day we went to the sawmill and I was talking to someone when Joanne came running up to me while at the same time I heard some piercing screaming. She said that Archy was surrounded. I ran towards the screams and there was Archy in a corner surrounded by five of the biggest, meanest cats you ever saw. These cats said they were going to beat up Archy and they looked as though they could do it. Of course we saved him for the umpteenth time.
We usually walked over five miles and Archy was good for only about three. He had tiny little feet and after a while they would hurt upon which he would lie down in the middle of the road and start screaming, telling every lion in the area there was to be food tonight. We always had to carry Archy home and it was hard as he was heavy. We would take turns carrying him and were usually exhausted by the time we got home. If we had left him on the road mother would have been very unhappy and I think Archy knew it and so just waited to be carried.
Fritz, my bother, wanted to be a provider and he went out early every morning to find a deer to shoot. He had a good spot on a rock pile right above a deer trail and saw many deer, but each time he set his sights on the animal he would get buck fever just looking at those big brown eyes.
One day he came home frightened. While sitting on his rock he heard a fawn calling in fear and saw it running with a wolf right behind it. The wolf however was not having a good time as it was kayaying and looking behind, and there, slashing and leaping, was a doe, a very angry doe, striking out at the wolf with her cookie cutter hooves.
He said he was afraid the doe would return to take him on next. But not long after that, early in the morning we heard a rifle shot and later home comes Fritz, covered with blood, not his own and on his back was a deer. At last we had meat, if wrapped with the pink coverlet during the day, and hung at night it would have lasted us more than a month.
Alas, the law of the hills destroyed our dreams of steak for supper. In the Paiutes meat is very hard to come by, and every one needs meat up there. People depend on one another, except for the cowboys, and people share everything, even their meat, not out of love for others but because one cannot escape from sharing.
You see, when some one butchers an animal the coyotes come out of nowhere and all night long they howl near the site. Since the cabins are miles apart it does not take a genius to figure out who has meat. The next day the guests start arriving, one by one and two by two, "just to see how we are," they say. It does not take long for the conversation to turn to meat and one must share. To not share could be dangerous. Most of the people we shared with did not give us any meat, but still the law of the hills applies. By the end of the day all we had left was a front quarter, enough for stew for a few days.
Now the cowboys had much the same problem, except they tend to rustle one another's cows. When ever Nick butchered a steer he hung out a thirty year old hide with one leg missing to show the other cowmen he had butchered one of his own. But the hide did have his brand on it, a muleshoe L, so no body said anything, out loud at least.
My mother helped out Nick at times so Nick would give her a little meat from time to time, but mother said it always had worms on it. I asked Nick one time why he killed beef that were not his when he had so many of his own and he said "Youngun, a good cowman never eats his own beef."
With all these little problems people on the mountain still had to associate with one another during the day, but by night with stealth, problems were solved or perhaps exacerbated. No one could live on the mountain without neighbors who would help in an emergency and that included some one who might even be trying to kill you from time to time. Up on the mountain you could not choose your friends, you took what was available.
I recall Jerry, a little weasel like man, who lived in a tiny cabin with one room. It was black from smoke and smelled of urine. One day he showed me a coffee can full of gold. Now Jerry did not have a mine. Mother told me the gold was from our place which he took during the winter when we were gone, from surface ore we had here and there. He used his two dogs to pull the sled of ore until he got hungry and ate them. I guess he had to carry the ore himself after that.
One time I asked Jerry what he ate in the winter and he said he made bread from the cambium layer of pine trees. He would dry it and grind it up and make little cakes with it in a coffee can. I don't know how he lived so long, he got cold and hungry and he said some one tried to kill him by putting something white into his coffee can. I notice however that everyone up on the mountain lives a very long time. It's a place of life, no denying it.
Some idiot gave Jerry another dog but the last time I saw Jerry he told me that Glen had shot it. Jerry had killed Glen's dog accidentally he said. Jerry talked like they were going to kill one another. Both men were dangerous and in a place where they could get away with it. There were a number of feuds on the mountain you must be tired of reading about them. So I won't mention them any more.
One such animal was Archy, a pig. Archy was an intelligent animal and he liked nothing better than sitting on the couch in front of the fire eating a pie or two. He was strong and difficult to control. Mother fed him in a dish pan which he would finish in ten seconds or less while easily spitting out the onions from one side of his mouth at the same time spitting out the seeds from the other side. Not one seed or onion landed in the dish pan. It was a thing of wonder to watch.
Wherever we went Archy would follow, it was impossible to sneak out or outrun him, Archy was always with us. Once someone saw us fooling around at the Bella Union flats and told the ranger. The ranger replied "Oh that's just the Heyser kids with the pig and hound." We were well known on the mountain.
One day we went to the sawmill and I was talking to someone when Joanne came running up to me while at the same time I heard some piercing screaming. She said that Archy was surrounded. I ran towards the screams and there was Archy in a corner surrounded by five of the biggest, meanest cats you ever saw. These cats said they were going to beat up Archy and they looked as though they could do it. Of course we saved him for the umpteenth time.
We usually walked over five miles and Archy was good for only about three. He had tiny little feet and after a while they would hurt upon which he would lie down in the middle of the road and start screaming, telling every lion in the area there was to be food tonight. We always had to carry Archy home and it was hard as he was heavy. We would take turns carrying him and were usually exhausted by the time we got home. If we had left him on the road mother would have been very unhappy and I think Archy knew it and so just waited to be carried.
Fritz, my bother, wanted to be a provider and he went out early every morning to find a deer to shoot. He had a good spot on a rock pile right above a deer trail and saw many deer, but each time he set his sights on the animal he would get buck fever just looking at those big brown eyes.
One day he came home frightened. While sitting on his rock he heard a fawn calling in fear and saw it running with a wolf right behind it. The wolf however was not having a good time as it was kayaying and looking behind, and there, slashing and leaping, was a doe, a very angry doe, striking out at the wolf with her cookie cutter hooves.
He said he was afraid the doe would return to take him on next. But not long after that, early in the morning we heard a rifle shot and later home comes Fritz, covered with blood, not his own and on his back was a deer. At last we had meat, if wrapped with the pink coverlet during the day, and hung at night it would have lasted us more than a month.
Alas, the law of the hills destroyed our dreams of steak for supper. In the Paiutes meat is very hard to come by, and every one needs meat up there. People depend on one another, except for the cowboys, and people share everything, even their meat, not out of love for others but because one cannot escape from sharing.
You see, when some one butchers an animal the coyotes come out of nowhere and all night long they howl near the site. Since the cabins are miles apart it does not take a genius to figure out who has meat. The next day the guests start arriving, one by one and two by two, "just to see how we are," they say. It does not take long for the conversation to turn to meat and one must share. To not share could be dangerous. Most of the people we shared with did not give us any meat, but still the law of the hills applies. By the end of the day all we had left was a front quarter, enough for stew for a few days.
Now the cowboys had much the same problem, except they tend to rustle one another's cows. When ever Nick butchered a steer he hung out a thirty year old hide with one leg missing to show the other cowmen he had butchered one of his own. But the hide did have his brand on it, a muleshoe L, so no body said anything, out loud at least.
My mother helped out Nick at times so Nick would give her a little meat from time to time, but mother said it always had worms on it. I asked Nick one time why he killed beef that were not his when he had so many of his own and he said "Youngun, a good cowman never eats his own beef."
With all these little problems people on the mountain still had to associate with one another during the day, but by night with stealth, problems were solved or perhaps exacerbated. No one could live on the mountain without neighbors who would help in an emergency and that included some one who might even be trying to kill you from time to time. Up on the mountain you could not choose your friends, you took what was available.
I recall Jerry, a little weasel like man, who lived in a tiny cabin with one room. It was black from smoke and smelled of urine. One day he showed me a coffee can full of gold. Now Jerry did not have a mine. Mother told me the gold was from our place which he took during the winter when we were gone, from surface ore we had here and there. He used his two dogs to pull the sled of ore until he got hungry and ate them. I guess he had to carry the ore himself after that.
One time I asked Jerry what he ate in the winter and he said he made bread from the cambium layer of pine trees. He would dry it and grind it up and make little cakes with it in a coffee can. I don't know how he lived so long, he got cold and hungry and he said some one tried to kill him by putting something white into his coffee can. I notice however that everyone up on the mountain lives a very long time. It's a place of life, no denying it.
Some idiot gave Jerry another dog but the last time I saw Jerry he told me that Glen had shot it. Jerry had killed Glen's dog accidentally he said. Jerry talked like they were going to kill one another. Both men were dangerous and in a place where they could get away with it. There were a number of feuds on the mountain you must be tired of reading about them. So I won't mention them any more.
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