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GLOBALISM=AGENDA
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Agenda
21 in Lake County, CA |
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© Bill Wink 2007 |
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MIDDLETOWN - BEFORE YOUR
GRANDPARENTS' DAYS For Greg Hardester, May 1977 by:
Skee Hamann
If you could swallow a magic potion that would let
you see Middletown as it was a hundred years ago, you would not recognize the
valley. All the surrounding hills and Cobb and St. Helena
were heavily forested with dark pines and firs, like your own hill that is
the only spot that has not been damaged by fire in the last 63 years. The creeks with trees and willows to hold their
banks solid, and no mining or logging debris to gouge at the banks and choke
the stream, were deep, narrow, all year streams, instead of shallow flood
plains as now. When London mining
engineers came around Civil War time to develop the-rich quicksilver
deposits, they called our mountain area with its impressive forests and
streams The Switzerland of America.
They brought their families from England and by the l870s 2500 people
lived in Pine Flat on the ridges back of Sugarloaf. St. Helena Creek was deflected from its old
course by an early eager farmer stripping its banks clear, below Hardesters’ Crossing, and plowing to its edge just before
a time of great rain. It had flowed from the crossing around the other side
of Rabbit Hill, across Rannells’ land to join Dry
Creek and Putah on the opposite side of your school from where it now flows. As the white people had taken the Indians’ land
and destroyed the green growth,
animals, fish and birds that had lavishly
supported the native Americans, there had been much violence. In the early mining days, too, there were
so many hold ups, lynchings, killings - - an arm
found here, a headless body in an abandoned mine tunnel there - - that people
used to say Middletown had a man for breakfast every morning. But because the violence of crime-loving people has
not changed you still hear today, on TV or in newspaper, of the same
destruction of lives and property.
What has changed with cars, TV. radio, electric
gadgets, is the way people found fun and beauty. I will tell you of some of the very different ways
people followed in the days before your lives began.
Middletown was a rich community when the mines were booming. There were
two banks, two hotels - - One where the Corner Store stands now. The houses of the well-to-do were apt to
have parlors papered in purple or dark red wallpaper heavily decorated with
golden grapes or ferns, plush throw with silk fringe on the piano top under a
gilt and flowered vase, and a thick green carpet with big red roses for
pattern. There was a custom-tailor shop where Kwik Stop is now,
where many a miner was fitted by the two tailors to a tailed evening suit. Where Newman's is now - - the same house - - the
photographer had his studio where brides in flowing, ruffled gowns, grooms in
stiff high collars and dark suits, babes in christening robes with yards of
lace and tucks, grandparents flanked by rows of descendents left their images
for the family album. Mrs. Barker's candy store was around the corner from the
tailor shop, shelf after shelf of bubble-topped great glass jars of brightly
colored candies from which a child might choose for a penny. For many years the supplies not grown, or made, in the
valley came over Mt. St. Helena in Justin Reed's or Ben Hunt's huge
horse-drawn freight wagons, always at least six or eight animals with red
tassels and bells on their shoulder harness to warn approaching wagons of
their passage on turns. At Christmas you knew the important presents from the
mail order catalog would bring the freight wagon down your street for
delivery at your gate. As dusk closed in on the brief days of late December
and wood smoke was sweet from fires stoked for evening meals, the tinkling of those bells nearly burst your veins with excitement
while you hung on the top rail of your gate to see the long line of big
horses and hear the clop, clopping of their hooves on the cold wet earth. The circus came yearly, its big canvas tents set up where
Wells Fargo is now. Chautauqua, the national lecture, concert, theater
circuit, came to the same spot with the same sort of tent. You could see and
hear the same richly dressed musicians, singers, actors, famed lecturers as
people in larger towns all across the country. Spelling bees for all ages were big, and basket socials,
too, brought all together. The girls
competed for the beaus' bids on the unnamed boxes of sandwiches, salads, and
cakes, by covering them in vivid crepe paper decorated with paper flowers. When life moved in a foot-pace or horse-trot tempo there
were lavish flower gardens where home owners found pleasure. The husband of Minnie Cannon, for whom your school was named,
could be seen on summer evenings at their home next to the Catholic parish
house bending over his scores of roses, sprinkling, trimming, cultivating,
the large yard behind its filigree black iron fence giving off warm fragrance
from petunias, asters, pansies with the roses and honeysuckle so that one
wanted to walk past slowly to inhale the delight as long as possible. The remodeled parish house then belonged to former Civil
War drummer boy John Preble and his maiden sister Minnie. Their fence-to-fence bloom-bursting garden
rivaled Cannon's and the annual flowering of their Night Blooming Cereus
crowded their living and dining room with townspeople waiting for the tubular
waxy petals to move toward opening. When people could not turn a knob or dial to hear others
play, they made their own music. In
summer dusk everyone was out of doors cooling off after the day's heat - -
There were few mosquitoes before the Across St, Helena Creek, below Hardester's house, where
all the flat and side hill were vineyard, Mr. Spurling, the wine maker,
sitting near the door of his dungeon-like brick wine cellar, would be
squeezing old German melodies from his accordion. Jeff Haas's Great-grandfather Noble, warned by his
Oakland doctor that he was near death, bought the hills about Verdant Vales,
before they became Castle Hot Springs.
He moved with everything he wanted to surround him in his last months
- - Family, his piano, musical instruments for the children, hundreds of
books-and lived for many years to enjoy the Saturday night musical parties
when guests from mine or ranch came tromping over ridges in the dusk with
violin, clarinet, or harmonica, to make the walls echo to music and laughter
all night. Revivals were lively gatherings staged by itinerant
preachers in the stormy months of winter when there were not so many
attractions out of doors to compete with soul-saving. One thundering expounder of the details of the fires of
hell awaiting the sinner displayed a huge oil-painted canvas chart on the
church wall. The path for the wayfarer
forked ,for his choice, to, the leaping flames and black pits of hell or to
the gold and jewel-encrusted pavements of New Jerusalem with snowy angels and
golden harps to reward virtue. One rancher entered church doors only once a year when he
made his annual appearance as the revivalist called for sinners to come
forward and repent. The full-voiced
confessions of his sins and teary penitence on his knees, arms waving, one
eye on his audience, was as dramatic as vaudeville any day.
People then, even as now, distrusted the one who did not run
with the crowd. A gentle beauty-loving wanderer about the county, who spoke
only in rhyme, was known as Crazy Reed because he meandered about in early
spring offering housewives copies of his doggerel poems and slips for their
gardens of his favorite rose. Long
after he and those who scorned him were laid in the cemetery, the delicate
pale pink, tissuey’ rose, shedding its petals in cinnamony’ fragrant heaps in spring warmth in old
gardens, was still known as the Crazy Reed Rose. Many of you probably have heard of Mildred Pearson who lived two houses on the right up from the school and
through a long-retirement cooperating safely with her in learning how to live
out of doors on what grew there. Mildred told of a unique Christmas in her childhood when
her parents were toll keepers on the Ida Clayton Toll road that ran past
Western Mine to Alexander Valley. In that remote area doctors' attention was very hard to
come by. When her three brothers
became very ill with scarlet fever just before Christmas their mother exiled
Mildred and her little sister Marie to the barn under the care of big sister
Abby, in hopes of keeping them from illness. In the sturdy big barn filled with summer's sweet hay and
straw they were safe and cozy, but very concerned about Christmas. Their mother had no time to think of
anything but life or death for her boys so Abby cut a small fir tree in the
surrounding woods, set it in a box of damp sand from the creek and decorated
it with apples, red berries from the woods and paper cut outs. From old magazines she cut out bright pictures to fashion
amusing nothings for presents. Tied
with old ribbons she managed to retrieve from storage in the back porch of
the house, they provided the stimulation for anticipation of Christmas. On Christmas morning before Mildred and Marie might open
their presents, after singing Christmas carols, Abby had them present each horse
and cow sharing stalls in the barn with them, with apples and carrots for
their gifts. Mildred remembered this Christmas as the most satisfying
of her life. "After all,"
she said, “The very first Christmas was celebrated in a stable."
Read More Local History Guenoc Ranch and the Days Of The flying Muleshoe
2nd Edition The
Story Of Thomas Kearney Dye Murder In The Mayacamas the unsolved murder of
Joan (Hamann) Dole space |
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