One summer we didn’t have a dog, but we had a pig. In East LA Daddy was considered the person to go to when you had problems, legal or otherwise. He had done the income tax for somebody who had a litter of pigs, and they gave us a pig in exchange. The pig was weaned and we built him a little pen back by the chicken coop. We put the pig in it and started feeding him. I don’t suppose there was any law against a pig or a cow in the back yard in those days.
It was a boar piglet and we wanted to castrate it. Our next door neighbor, Bill Melford, half German-half Mexican and our good neighbor for years, knew how to castrate pigs and agreed to do it. We got the pig down and held him, and Bill did the job. You’ve heard the expression “scream like a stuck pig.” This pig screamed and screamed. About two days later somebody from the Health Department showed up and said, “We understand you’ve got a pig here. There’s been a complaint about dirt and things like that.”
Mom said, “Well, yeah, we’ve got a little weanling pig.” He went in the back yard and said, “Oh, it’s one little pig and things are very clean.” He looked over the fence. We knew who’d complained. And these people had family members living in old trailers and a shack. He said, “Do people actually live in that stuff back there?” So they may have brought something down on themselves. And Mother was very careful after that to keep the pig area clean.
We named him Archie and this time we took Archie the Pig to Paiute with us. We’d scratched him a lot and he was tame, so we took him up to the cabin and turned him loose. About the second or third night, the coyotes got him cornered on the porch. Lots of hullabaloo there. After that, we couldn’t drive him away from the cabin.
We fed him the day’s scraps, potato skins, bits of onion, things like that. We’d stew ‘em up. Then we had a big bag of mixed grain we’d cook in, and we’d feed it all to the pig. Well, this silly pig. Dinner was always boiling hot and we’d say, “Archie, it’s hot, it’s hot.” But he’d put his nose in there and start eating, screaming because it was burning him. He’d eat his dinner fast and sloppy. The food would go in his mouth and a stream of water would come out one side. It was amazing how he could handle food.
Once somebody gave him a piece of gum. He chewed the gum until it was time to feed him. We fed him and he went through the whole thing. When it was through, he walked by chewing the gum. The ability of a pig to handle food is amazing.
We had running water in the cabin when Archie was there because by that time we’d piped it in from the spring. The sink had about a 20-foot pipe that went out into the yard where the water ran out. Little bits of stuff would come out the pipe sometimes and form a little puddle. The pig would go through the puddle eating what was in it. Then, when he wanted water, he’d stick his snout up the pipe and grunt. It would echo in the deep sink, and somebody had to go give Archie some water. Of course, he had the creek to drink out of. And he loved the equisetum that grew by the creek, boy, he loved that.
Archie was our dog that summer and he would go for walks with us. If we went, he went. If we went to the sawmill, he would follow us. It didn’t matter where we went, Archie would go. And then he got older and heavier. What was amazing was the quickness and agility of that pig, as quick and agile as a cat. He’d play with things, a blanket or something, the way a dog or a cat would. It was just amazing watching him. Once he found a fruit jar lid, just the ring, and he used to carry that around on his nose.
If you sat on the porch, he’d come up and sit on your lap. That was fine when he was little. But he was growing up, and by the end of summer he was about 80 pounds. If you sat in this old chair, built low to the ground, he’d get in your lap. There would be the middle of the pig in your lap but a lot of the pig on both sides.
We had a dutch door going into the cabin which we kept locked. But he’d learned to jiggle it and open it. If we weren’t there he’d see what was around in food. One time he ate a berry pie. And then he got on the couch. This pig was spoiled.
Because he was afraid of the coyotes, you could not leave him home. Going for a ten-mile hike, wandering to this cabin and that cabin, would take all day. As he got bigger, it got hard on him because he was heavy and we weren’t anywhere near water. But he wouldn’t be left behind. If everybody left the cabin, you could not force him to stay there.
We figured he could count to nine or ten. Sometimes there would be four or five of us sitting at the cabin and a lot of company would come up. During the Second World War and at the end of the war my father worked for the Air Force as a civilian, but had lots of military friends. The cabin became the place to go. If you could get Sid to invite you to the cabin… . It was a wonderful place. It had a lot of magic for a lot of people. Anyway, we learned that if we were all going to go some place in the car, if we took off, the pig came galloping after the car. There was no leaving him. So we would have one person climb out the bay window on the east side of the cabin, sneak up the hill to the ditch, to the mine dump, walk along the ditch to the road and be picked up later. After this happened, everybody else left, maybe nine people, then the pig would stay. But if everybody went out that front door, you couldn’t make that pig stay. This happened all the time. If the pig thought that there was someone in the house, he would be content to stay at the cabin.
Archie was destined for the end of the year party. This was after the world war. We had a “closing of the mountain” party on Labor Day. This was the first one. The party was going to be at Art’s place at the Bowman Mine, and the Archie was going to be the guest of honor. The pig had been our pet all summer, so all three of us kids, Audrey, Fritz and I, refused to stay on the mountain. We left a week early. We weren’t going to be there for the barbecue. The pig was duly done in and, scraped, put in a pit and they had a big barbecue.
You know, when you spend your life eating game, shooting animals, having to clean them, things like that, you become a little bit inured, a little hardened to the realities of life. I don’t know if “hardened” is the right word, but you show a strong streak of practicality. So when friends are going down the tubes, being eaten, it’s not such a strange thing.
Even though we weren’t willing to eat part of Archie, we had all done all those things. And you know, the strange thing is, we all hunted all those years. Fritz and I would go out and ambush quail. We got very good at the calls of the quail. We never shot quail before the first of August because the coveys were too young. We wanted the young to be able to survive because that was part of next year’s food. Also, we did not tolerate any predators close to the cabin. If we saw a bobcat or something like that near the cabin, we shot them. So, where it sounds cold blooded, it’s kind of like a farm life. You have to accept the fact that there are different life styles and you learn some of these things.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Our Dogs on Paiute
We always had a dog. In the early days we had Mamie. And we had Frowsy, a German Shepherd bitch we got from Louie. Really a nice dog. Bit in the eye by a rattlesnake one time. She crawled under the cabin and stayed for three days. Her eye was all grey, but she seemed to be in pretty good shape. The eye eventually cleared up. Amazing what eyes will do. We had several dogs get bit, but we never had one die.
One summer we had a Dalmatian we took up there, Cloudy. He used to wander around with us kids, but apparently one time he went up to the sawmill and got into some battery acid because when he came back he was heaving. We kind of figured out what was going on and we had to put him down.
But that’s the only dog I can remember – oh, there was Willie. When we lived in East LA, dogs came and went. Traffic, and things like that, and stray dogs. Mother picked up this little puppy, Willie. He was just covered with fleas and sick and we had to keep our distance from him. Mother took him to heart and bathed him and cleaned him up. It was unheard of to go to a veterinarian, especially poor folks. Willie got very healthy.
We had a cat named Twidget. Willie played with the cat. He’d pick the cat up by the scruff of the neck and drag it around the house. I swear, what the cat put up with.
One summer school still had a couple of weeks to run. I couldn’t have been much more than twelve years old, I was in our back yard in East LA when I heard kids running and screaming. I knew they were chasing a dog. A dog came staggering through the fence. I thought, “Oh, oh, this isn’t right.” So I got up behind the dog and I picked him up by the scruff of the neck and the skin on his back, and took him by a box. I turned the box over him and put a weight on it and got Mama. She called the Humane Society and said we had a dog there and she thought it might have rabies. In the meantime, our dog had been out wandering, as people let their dogs do back then. As soon as Willie came home, Mother put him in the house. We didn’t think he had been near the dog.
The Humane Society picked up the dog. They didn’t really check the dog out because they believed there hadn’t been a case of rabies in LA County for years. Daddy took Mother and Willie up to the cabin and left them there. Two weeks later the rest of us came up and we had the usual celebration. There was fresh food and something to drink for the adults and Coke for the kids. Mother mentioned that Willie had acted strangely a few times, so she was watching him and locking him downstairs at night. She said what he had gone down to the creek to drink and suddenly came to a skidding halt and backed up from the water shaking his head. She was reminded of hydrophobia.
That night – I guess Fritz and Audrey weren’t there, it was just me and Mom and Dad –we all went upstairs to bed. We heard the dog running around knocking into things. Mother said, “Joanne, don’t get out of bed. Just stay in bed.” She had forgotten to close the door between upstairs and downstairs. In the morning, when we could see, the dog was downstairs and staggering. He wasn’t getting near anybody. I sat down in a chair and finally he came over a little bit closer to me and lay down by my feet. We discussed it and we said this dog had got to be shot. Suddenly Willie ran outside and ran in circles. My folks said, Oh God, let’s shoot him quick. If he takes off into the forest, other animals will attack him. So we shot him and buried him. We buried him deep because we didn’t want somebody digging him up.
When we went back to East LA we called the Humane Society and said the dog had rabies. We suspected our dog had gotten it from that dog they’d collected. They still said there hadn’t been a case of rabies in four years. They weren’t interested in having us cut off the head and bring it down for testing. That was the last time that area was ever rabies free, because the dog had been spreading rabies.
I think of how casually we handled things like that. Those were the days, you know, when the world was a different place.
Copyright Joanne Harris 2009
One summer we had a Dalmatian we took up there, Cloudy. He used to wander around with us kids, but apparently one time he went up to the sawmill and got into some battery acid because when he came back he was heaving. We kind of figured out what was going on and we had to put him down.
But that’s the only dog I can remember – oh, there was Willie. When we lived in East LA, dogs came and went. Traffic, and things like that, and stray dogs. Mother picked up this little puppy, Willie. He was just covered with fleas and sick and we had to keep our distance from him. Mother took him to heart and bathed him and cleaned him up. It was unheard of to go to a veterinarian, especially poor folks. Willie got very healthy.
We had a cat named Twidget. Willie played with the cat. He’d pick the cat up by the scruff of the neck and drag it around the house. I swear, what the cat put up with.
One summer school still had a couple of weeks to run. I couldn’t have been much more than twelve years old, I was in our back yard in East LA when I heard kids running and screaming. I knew they were chasing a dog. A dog came staggering through the fence. I thought, “Oh, oh, this isn’t right.” So I got up behind the dog and I picked him up by the scruff of the neck and the skin on his back, and took him by a box. I turned the box over him and put a weight on it and got Mama. She called the Humane Society and said we had a dog there and she thought it might have rabies. In the meantime, our dog had been out wandering, as people let their dogs do back then. As soon as Willie came home, Mother put him in the house. We didn’t think he had been near the dog.
The Humane Society picked up the dog. They didn’t really check the dog out because they believed there hadn’t been a case of rabies in LA County for years. Daddy took Mother and Willie up to the cabin and left them there. Two weeks later the rest of us came up and we had the usual celebration. There was fresh food and something to drink for the adults and Coke for the kids. Mother mentioned that Willie had acted strangely a few times, so she was watching him and locking him downstairs at night. She said what he had gone down to the creek to drink and suddenly came to a skidding halt and backed up from the water shaking his head. She was reminded of hydrophobia.
That night – I guess Fritz and Audrey weren’t there, it was just me and Mom and Dad –we all went upstairs to bed. We heard the dog running around knocking into things. Mother said, “Joanne, don’t get out of bed. Just stay in bed.” She had forgotten to close the door between upstairs and downstairs. In the morning, when we could see, the dog was downstairs and staggering. He wasn’t getting near anybody. I sat down in a chair and finally he came over a little bit closer to me and lay down by my feet. We discussed it and we said this dog had got to be shot. Suddenly Willie ran outside and ran in circles. My folks said, Oh God, let’s shoot him quick. If he takes off into the forest, other animals will attack him. So we shot him and buried him. We buried him deep because we didn’t want somebody digging him up.
When we went back to East LA we called the Humane Society and said the dog had rabies. We suspected our dog had gotten it from that dog they’d collected. They still said there hadn’t been a case of rabies in four years. They weren’t interested in having us cut off the head and bring it down for testing. That was the last time that area was ever rabies free, because the dog had been spreading rabies.
I think of how casually we handled things like that. Those were the days, you know, when the world was a different place.
Copyright Joanne Harris 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Chickens, Ducks and Pigeons
It seems to me we had lots of animals up there on the mountain. When we went to Paiute, we always took our dogs and cats with us. We took pigeons. Chickens.
Down from the cabin was a little tiny shack, probably not more than six by eight feet. It was made out of squared logs, and we figured it was where they stored the dynamite because it was a hundred yards from the cabin. We fixed it up with chicken roosts and locked the chickens up and night where they could lay their eggs, if they would be so kind. During the day we let them out. For city chickens, they really, really got smart. They’d be out scratching and some chicken would give a certain quawk and every chicken would disappear.
Once a chicken pecking around right in front of the porch when a hawk swooped down at it. The chicken laid its head on the ground and spread its wings out and just flattened itself on the ground. The hawk overshot it, and came to rest in a tree to think about making a second dive. We got a gun and shot the hawk. We ate the hawk, not the chicken. We took some of the chickens home with us again, those that were still around.
One summer we took some ducklings up there. So funny. So sad. Actually we took them two summers. Ducklings are so cute. They can’t fly. Their wings are the last things to grow. The creek was right there by the cabin, 25 feet away from it. The willows were heavy and the ducklings would just spend the whole day in the creek, eating and feeding. At night we would lock them up. That first summer a predator got one duck. We thought, well, that’s not bad.
So the next year we brought up a dozen ducks. These ducks were more adventurous. They went up the creek, but we figured they were in the creek and in the willows, so they were probably O.K. We didn’t realize they were going all the way up into the meadow, about an eighth of a mile. We were sitting on the front porch when a little duckling, I swear to God he wasn’t more that eight inches high, came running ‘round the corner dead fast quack quack quacking ran right up to us. We figured, oh shit, grabbed a gun and took off up towards the meadow. All we saw when we got up to the meadow gate was a couple of coyotes taking off. We never found anything of those other ducklings.
So the first summer we lost one, and the next summer we lost all but one. And that little duckling, you couldn’t drive him away from the cabin.
One summer when I was older we took a bunch of pigeons up there to try to establish pigeons on Paiute. There must have been twenty pigeons, a large flock. We kept them locked up for a week and fed them, and that was all that was required to fix their home. They’d take off during the day, and I think they went down into the valley around Weldon. They’d be gone all day long and in the evening, they’d come back. This went on for a long time.
One evening we were in our evening sitting spots watching the pigeon flock come in. Suddenly about six hawks -- not all the same kind, either -- apparently had decided to waylay them. They all swooped in at once, but I don’t think they got a pigeon. We had one old pigeon we called NPA because he had a National Pigeon Association band on him. He was the oldest pigeon there. So he’s flying along when a hawk comes shooting up behind him. NPA turned his head, and, I swear, I didn’t know a pigeon had an afterburner. But that pigeon, from flopping along slowly, went “tchewww”—and he was gone! It was amazing. That ambush never happened again, but the pigeons were a lot more careful after that.
Copyright Joanne Heyser Harris 2009
Down from the cabin was a little tiny shack, probably not more than six by eight feet. It was made out of squared logs, and we figured it was where they stored the dynamite because it was a hundred yards from the cabin. We fixed it up with chicken roosts and locked the chickens up and night where they could lay their eggs, if they would be so kind. During the day we let them out. For city chickens, they really, really got smart. They’d be out scratching and some chicken would give a certain quawk and every chicken would disappear.
Once a chicken pecking around right in front of the porch when a hawk swooped down at it. The chicken laid its head on the ground and spread its wings out and just flattened itself on the ground. The hawk overshot it, and came to rest in a tree to think about making a second dive. We got a gun and shot the hawk. We ate the hawk, not the chicken. We took some of the chickens home with us again, those that were still around.
One summer we took some ducklings up there. So funny. So sad. Actually we took them two summers. Ducklings are so cute. They can’t fly. Their wings are the last things to grow. The creek was right there by the cabin, 25 feet away from it. The willows were heavy and the ducklings would just spend the whole day in the creek, eating and feeding. At night we would lock them up. That first summer a predator got one duck. We thought, well, that’s not bad.
So the next year we brought up a dozen ducks. These ducks were more adventurous. They went up the creek, but we figured they were in the creek and in the willows, so they were probably O.K. We didn’t realize they were going all the way up into the meadow, about an eighth of a mile. We were sitting on the front porch when a little duckling, I swear to God he wasn’t more that eight inches high, came running ‘round the corner dead fast quack quack quacking ran right up to us. We figured, oh shit, grabbed a gun and took off up towards the meadow. All we saw when we got up to the meadow gate was a couple of coyotes taking off. We never found anything of those other ducklings.
So the first summer we lost one, and the next summer we lost all but one. And that little duckling, you couldn’t drive him away from the cabin.
One summer when I was older we took a bunch of pigeons up there to try to establish pigeons on Paiute. There must have been twenty pigeons, a large flock. We kept them locked up for a week and fed them, and that was all that was required to fix their home. They’d take off during the day, and I think they went down into the valley around Weldon. They’d be gone all day long and in the evening, they’d come back. This went on for a long time.
One evening we were in our evening sitting spots watching the pigeon flock come in. Suddenly about six hawks -- not all the same kind, either -- apparently had decided to waylay them. They all swooped in at once, but I don’t think they got a pigeon. We had one old pigeon we called NPA because he had a National Pigeon Association band on him. He was the oldest pigeon there. So he’s flying along when a hawk comes shooting up behind him. NPA turned his head, and, I swear, I didn’t know a pigeon had an afterburner. But that pigeon, from flopping along slowly, went “tchewww”—and he was gone! It was amazing. That ambush never happened again, but the pigeons were a lot more careful after that.
Copyright Joanne Heyser Harris 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Even More Paiute People
The John Weiss and Earl and Mattie Morelands lived up on top of the mountain, about 6000 feet where the firs grew. I don’t know anything about their background. Weiss had a small cabin, tightly chinked, a really good cabin. The Morelands had a bigger cabin and even had a bunkhouse and a barn. They had the Lone Star Mine, I believe it was, and worked it for years. A shaft went down 200 feet with stopes going off here and there. Daddy and I got to go down there once.
Herb and Irma Gorman were up there for years and years. They lived in the Claraville flat area. Claraville was an interesting area because there was a public meadow there, something like twenty acres. It had been kind of a city back in gold rush days. There was one little cabin there, known as the Recorder’s Shack, the oldest cabin in the Claraville area. It was made out of squared logs. When Mother built the fireplace at our cabin, the mantle log came from the Recorder’s Shack. My brother carved “Blessed by that spot where cheerful guests retire, to pause from toil and trim their evening fire” on it, a few letters at a time. Fritz was good at carving. My mother always liked the quote, she said, because it showed that guests were supposed to work.
Also we lived in a comparatively big cabin that was rotting into the ground that for a while, Tip Fulton’s old place. Now there was another real character. I wish I could remember what Tip did for a living. Everybody was supposed to be a miner because that’s the only way they could hold their claims. There was very little private property other than Nick’s meadow up there. I don’t know if any of the claims had ever been patented. I suppose a few had way in the past.
A lot of people lived in this old cabin through the years. It was abandoned, but had board floors. I think it had two rooms and an old stove. It had what you needed. And it had an old outhouse back a ways from it. So a person could move in and be sort of comfortable.
Kelso Creek wasn’t more than three- or four-hundred feet from the Claraville Meadow. You couldn’t drink out of it, but you could use the water for cooking and other things. Also, the Claraville Meadow had a wonderful spring that had been rocked in so the livestock couldn’t drink out it, but could drank out of the overflow instead. That’s where we got water for that cabin.
I don’t think Tip was married in the early days, but he got married some time when I was young. Tip liked to tell stories. He was famous for talking about the time the pigs ate Little Nevy, and how it rained for forty days and forty nights. And it was either he or his father got bit by a rattlesnake and he sucked the venom to “keep the pizen from gettin’ to his heart.” Tip was kind of a gossip and scandal monger, according to my folks. He had a lot of stories.
Later on, when we lived over on French Gulch, Tip owned a cow. Every day in the evening we kids would walk over to Tip’s place, probably a couple miles, to get a half gallon of milk. We had milk all that summer.
I actually don’t know the background of these people very much because I saw them through a child’s eyes.
Copyright Joanne Harris 2009
Herb and Irma Gorman were up there for years and years. They lived in the Claraville flat area. Claraville was an interesting area because there was a public meadow there, something like twenty acres. It had been kind of a city back in gold rush days. There was one little cabin there, known as the Recorder’s Shack, the oldest cabin in the Claraville area. It was made out of squared logs. When Mother built the fireplace at our cabin, the mantle log came from the Recorder’s Shack. My brother carved “Blessed by that spot where cheerful guests retire, to pause from toil and trim their evening fire” on it, a few letters at a time. Fritz was good at carving. My mother always liked the quote, she said, because it showed that guests were supposed to work.
Also we lived in a comparatively big cabin that was rotting into the ground that for a while, Tip Fulton’s old place. Now there was another real character. I wish I could remember what Tip did for a living. Everybody was supposed to be a miner because that’s the only way they could hold their claims. There was very little private property other than Nick’s meadow up there. I don’t know if any of the claims had ever been patented. I suppose a few had way in the past.
A lot of people lived in this old cabin through the years. It was abandoned, but had board floors. I think it had two rooms and an old stove. It had what you needed. And it had an old outhouse back a ways from it. So a person could move in and be sort of comfortable.
Kelso Creek wasn’t more than three- or four-hundred feet from the Claraville Meadow. You couldn’t drink out of it, but you could use the water for cooking and other things. Also, the Claraville Meadow had a wonderful spring that had been rocked in so the livestock couldn’t drink out it, but could drank out of the overflow instead. That’s where we got water for that cabin.
I don’t think Tip was married in the early days, but he got married some time when I was young. Tip liked to tell stories. He was famous for talking about the time the pigs ate Little Nevy, and how it rained for forty days and forty nights. And it was either he or his father got bit by a rattlesnake and he sucked the venom to “keep the pizen from gettin’ to his heart.” Tip was kind of a gossip and scandal monger, according to my folks. He had a lot of stories.
Later on, when we lived over on French Gulch, Tip owned a cow. Every day in the evening we kids would walk over to Tip’s place, probably a couple miles, to get a half gallon of milk. We had milk all that summer.
I actually don’t know the background of these people very much because I saw them through a child’s eyes.
Copyright Joanne Harris 2009
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