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November 18, 2011 In a conversation with Mary Beebee this morning, she told me about 'Home Guard', which guest speaker Dan Dorsey from Mt. Shasta was going to speak about at tonight's Valley Oaks Senior Potluck. It sounded like something more of us should know about, so Eb and I headed over to share a delightful turkey dinner with all the trimmings with friends from around Scott Valley. Becky and Phyllis cooked the turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, gravy and everyone else brought side dishes and desserts to share. It was a tasty feast and we were most thankful . . . especially for Becky's 'best ever' dinner rolls and Clegg's twice baked potatoes! Briefly, Dan told us that 17 in our 132nd detachment of the National Guard will be headed for Afghanistan in February. I believe Mary told me that 2 were from our valley. Rather than me reinvent the wheel, you can click on this link and read an article that appeared in the Mt. Shasta Herald in August. A most needed and worthy effort by so many people. Dan gave praise to Mary Beebee for organizing the collecting of Halloween candy from the elementary kids to send to some of our troops stationed in Afghanistan. 86 pounds of candy (the chocolate going to troops in Germany and the hard candy to Afghanistan) was collected! Dan also spoke of the huge generosity of the Scott Valley Quilting group whose nimble fingers have made over 1100 quilts that meet government specifications of red, white, blue and fit inside a sleeping bag. It's beyond my understanding why with all the money spent on war efforts, our men and women are not already provided with warm sleeping bags and toothbrushes and toothpaste and something portable and simple they can carry that would stop the bleeding from a bullet wound. Thankfully our young men and women are creative enough to figure out the things they need and ask for them from the home front. Remember the November 9th post where I showed the 1908 and 1929 maps of Etna Mills??????? Well, I went to the Library of Congress link again and looked to see if there were Sanborn maps for Greenview . . . none. Then Callahan . . . none. Ft. Jones had two, so I ordered them. You will need a pdf reader program installed on your computer to view them. The one I use now is Nitro PDF Reader, after having lots of trouble with Adobe. It's free! This link will take you to their download. The main thing I like about this program is that I can adjust the size of viewing from the little bar at the bottom right of each page . . . it goes from 25% all the way up to 1600% . . .
I found the best viewing size of these maps (for me) was 150% or 200%. There is soooooooo much historical and fun information on the pages. I was amazed at the number of businesses (and dance halls) in the town of Fort Jones which only had a population of 350 in the early 1900's. This information is on Sheet One of the maps:
This is information about the Water System and Fire Department in Fort Jones in July, 1908 . . .
This is information about the Water System and Fire Department in Fort Jones in August, 1929 when they evidently came back through town and did 'corrections' . . .
Link
to Sheet 1 (Downtown area) ~ July, 1908 Link
to Sheet 2 (Flour Mill area) ~ July, 1908
A few months ago our resident photographer, Mel, sent me this photo he had taken just up from the Greenview Post Office . . .
Mel said on page 62 of John Jenott's Scott Valley Sketchbook it says: "Tom Martin house, 1st house up from Post Office on N. Kidder Creek. He built many of the stone and mortar buildings in Greenview in the early 1900's." I caught up with Bill Martin and Emmett Martin, two of Tom's grandsons at the Masonic 2nd Sunday Breakfast last weekend . . .
Emmett
snuck out before I got a chance to get him on tape, but Bill sat
down with Eb and I to talk about the old house photo. He said
Tom moved there in 1904 and worked on his own to get it done.
You can listen in on our conversation here.
Note: The link will open
in a new Browser window. Once the recording begins, just click
on the 'Maps-Martin-Marj-and more' Browser window to come back
to this page to see the photos. (adjust
the sound on your computer)
I also got a chance to show Betty Young the photo as she and her parents, Louis & Effie Young, moved there in the summer of 1953. She said she remembered one night being so scared during a snow storm, worrying that the tree branches that were breaking from the weight of the snow would come through the side of the house. Betty pointed out in that first photo, the little building to the right was a root cellar and at that time, the property where the Post Office now sits was part of this property. She also remembers one Halloween night some boys tipped over the outhouse. (Tipping over outhouses must have been the 'national passtime' back then!) Betty said her parents lived there until 1968 or 69, when they moved up Sawyers Bar Road near her. Remembrances can be so dear . . . One of the most fun stories to sleuth out was the August 26th post. It began this way: "A few weeks ago I got an email from Marjorie Clay Bluder which said: "When I was a senior at Etna High School in 1963, I had a job as waitress in a little restaurant run by Mrs. 'Can't Remember her name right now' . . . ". Within a few days we discovered the restaurant to be 'the Chicken Shack' (real name was the Fryer Farm Cafe). That email created a sweet bond between Marj and I. She continued to send me questions and information of her time living in Scott Valley. Sometimes there would be a lull, (as Marj was retiring from her 'Life Work' as Executive Director of Adoption Homestudy Agency of Colorado), then we would start up emailing fast and furious again. I hadn't heard a peep from her for the past month and had no other way to contact her except by email. Then on Monday I saw Wanda Kiep at the Post Office and she told me that our dear Marj had passed over. I was in total shock. The word Wanda received was that Marj was diagnosed with ovarian cancer just weeks ago and now she was gone from us. In this email, friend Bunny Lincoln shared these memories: "Marj was a few years older than I and lived with her family in the now demolished parsonage on the grounds of the Berean Church. My last two years of high school I lived with the Clays. They were like a precursor to the open door policy of the Sewards. The most interesting part of it all is that Marj and I looked so much alike that people constantly mistook us for each other. Pretty strange in a town as small as Etna, where everyone knows everyone. We finally just accepted it, and let people think we were twins." I found this information online . . .
Marjorie
Clay Bluder 1946-2011 I am sure her family would appreciate a message from ones here who knew her from school days or in other ways . . . You can go to this link and send a message to her family.
Hold sweet memories close in your heart . . . Che'usa Please
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