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from my perspective . . . Yowie! The 'Spotter' stories keep pouring in. Just got this one in an email from Sharon Holmes Sanborn: "My mother, Frances Alger Holmes, was a spotter during W.W.II. Living on the ranch (note: the March family ranch now), we didn't have a telephone. So, one afternoon each week, she bundled my brother, Jim, and I in the car and we drove over to the Carl Black residence so she could use their telephone. Jim and I looked forward to the trip because, while she was there, we got to play with Kay, Frank and Dave. I remember she had a set of "flash" cards with pictures of the airplanes and each time one flew over, after identifying it with binoculars, she called it in to someone. A side benefit for her, I am sure, was chatting with Sophie Black and catching up on the Valley news." Would be fun to mark on a map where all of these diligent Spotters were around the Valley. It makes me smile everytime someone speaks of a place by the name rather than an address. Just like we give our phone numbers with just the last 4 digits! We used to do that back in Ohio where I grew up. Before they changed it to 7 numbers, our phone number was Trinity 6-7834. So anyone within 5 miles of where we lived, we just said it was 7834! Betty Jenner and I talked about the old party lines and how interesting those were! I got a copy of the Western Siskiyou County Telephone Directory from August 1957 and it shows: 'Elbert Whipple Greenview 21-F-12'. Now that's an interesting number! And speaking of Eb, last night he presented me with the Saturday, December 11, 1971 Redding Record-Searchlight paper with an article entitled: 'Old buildings tell Etna's history'. I am retyping it here, including the photos as it is just too precious not to share! Old
buildings tell Etna's history ETNA ~ There's no big hurry in this town of 729 people. Take the way Etna is handling its flag pole problem. The old 131 foot high flagpole, up in 1929, developed a rotten spot and fell down one night in early 1970. The broken stub has pointed reproachfully skyward for almost two years arousing the curiosity of visitors. But the townspeople aren't disturbed. Somewhere in town there's a replacement pole. Once a week somebody goes down and turns the new pole one-quarter of a revolution. The process is supposed to make the pole season straight. It wouldn't do to have the new flagpole looking like a corkscrew when it's erected. "We hope to get the new flagpole up yet this year ~ maybe before Christmas," says Mayor Lee M. Durett, who moved here from Chico in 1941 because he loved the quiet, cool life in this secluded Siskiyou County valley. The town's approach to its flagpole crisis is typical of the relaxed attitude in Etna. It wasn't always so. The town started in the 1850's as a gold mining camp called 'Rough and Ready'. Civic leaders soon changed that to 'Etna Mills' because somebody had built a flour mill. Etna became a main point on the old California-Oregon Stage Road. Butter, flour and meat produced by the pioneer farmers around Etna fed the miners in the surrounding mountains. There's a good deal of that history to be read in Etna's buildings. The offices of the Siskiyou Telephone Co. occupy what was once an old flour mill. The broken flag pole stands in front of a pioneer structure that has served as city hall and firehall and is now the town library. When you drive around town, you're amazed at the size of some of the old homes. The old A.H. Denny house looks big enough to have been a boarding house for whole mining crews. Denny was a pioneer merchant prince with general stores in a number of mining camps. But it was just a home. 'Denny had a big family,' one old-timer recalls. The old Golden House was built back before the turn of the century. It looks like a New Orleans townhouse of the 1800's. It's been a hotel, a rooming house and is now owned by Mr. and Mrs. L.H. Adams. They are renovating it and plan to furnish all the rooms with antiques as a hobby. Across the street from the Golden House is the Odd Fellows Hall ~ built in 1880 and still used for lodge meetings. The lodge hall, the Golden House and several other old buildings strung along Main Street were built with bricks made right in Etna. Police Chief Ariel Facey is also the town ambulance driver and operates his own butcher shop. "He's on duty 24 hours a day," says Mayor Durett. "The chief is paid $600 a month by the city. If the town is dead, he goes home about midnight ~ otherwise he sticks around to 2 or 3 a.m.," the mayor says. The town has no real problems, Durett insists. It exists on the income generated by the rich farmlands around it and is happy to serve as home to a few loggers who extract timber from the rugged Salmon River country to the west. Why are there so many substantial old homes in such a small town with a rather dull economy? "There was quite a bit of mining ~ there was a lot of money around here," is Mayor Durett's explanation. Etna was incorporated as a city in 1878. It has no newspaper now, but around the turn of the century the town supported two weekly newspapers. A long and vicious feud between the two editors reached its high point in 1900 when one of them called the other 'a pin-headed cur'. There are still rugged individualists in Etna today, the mayor says. "Most of our people are real nice. But we have a few that . . . "
Isn't that a hoot!
Mel would be proud of me as I headed uptown this morning with camera in hand . . . I wanted to snap some 2011 photos of these same buildings. Sooooooo 40 years later, here they are!
Take a little jaunt into the Etna Museum this summer. They are open from 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Tuesday - Saturday for the rest of July and all of August. Other times may possibly be arranged by appointment by emailing Peggy. Today
when Eb and I went in they had a fabulous
display of old homes of the area. Be sure and look at all the
photos in the hallway also.
In joy! Che'usa
Thanks
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