JWR’s Introductory Note: This is an expanded edition of a piece that I posted in SurvivalBlog in November, 2005. I have added more excerpts to bring it from 730 words to 2,300 words, to provide better context on his times, surroundings, and circumstances.
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My paternal grandfather, Ernest Everett Rawles (1897-1985), was a largely self-educated man. Coming from a pioneer family (his father and grandfather came out west by covered wagon in 1857), he had a profoundly practical outlook on life. Ernest grew up on a 6,000-acre sheep ranch near Boonville, in the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County, California. Part of the Rawles Ranch had groves of enormous redwood trees. His family lived life at its basics: The change of the seasons, hunting and trapping, hard work in foul weather, fence-building, wood cutting, lambing, sheep shearing, and the constant state of war with the predators that annually killed dozens and sometimes hundreds of lambs. It was a hard life, but it had its satisfactions. The following are some brief excerpts from his oral history:
I liked growing up on the ranch. We ran livestock on the land, and cut quite a bit of timber. We had horses, cattle, pigs, and Merino sheep. Lots of sheep. Two or three thousand at a time were run by the various members of the family. [To protect the sheep] we had to contend with the coyotes, mountain lions, and bear.”
I shot my first deer when I was 12. I got it down in the hay field, right in front of the house. I was going to try to go hunting with a .22. I knew there was a deer there. My dad said, “You’re not going to start shootin’ deer with
a .22!” and he got the old .44-40 [Winchester Model 1873] out. I remember I had to sit down and put it acrost my knees. I was that small. The .44 was pretty heavy, anyway.
My father had a muzzle-loading rifle that he hunted with for quite a while. That’s where he got the nickname ‘Muz.’ He kept using the muzzle-loading rifle while other people had more modern [metallic cartridge] rifles. He had other guns, of course, too.
There was one panther [mountain lion] that we knew was back at Cow Springs, but that we could never get to see him. He killed dozens of lambs and even full-grown ewes. The dogs would get on his trail, and pretty soon the dogs would get to barking, like they had him up a tree. You’d get to the tree, and look up, and there’d be nothing in it. We used to call him “The Boomerang” because we couldn’t see him [he was always doubling back]. We thought that the dogs were running on the back trails, or something. Finally, we had start dog that we called Rube. He was getting old, and he couldn’t go very fast, but you’d turn him loose and he’d come to the tree–and he was pretty smart–he’d make a circle, and pick up the scent again where the panther had jumped out, usually on the uphill side.
We started one morning, and I run him [Boomerang] for an hour or two. He had circled and come back up the canyon. Just down below me, about 150 yards, there they were, barking up the tree. I took [our horse] old Prince down through the brush towards the commotion. I got there, and he was just ready to jump, out on a limb. His old tail was just poppin’.
I pulled down on him and shot, just as he jumped out of the tree. I thought that I had missed him. There was a big hole of water down in the creek, just below. When I got down there, he was in the water, with the dogs all
over the top of him. He was dead. I had hit him just behind the shoulder. I tied its body on crosswise behind the saddle, but I had to tie his tail back up, because it was dragging on the ground. His skin measured 9-1/2 feet from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.
I only killed three mountain lions, and just a couple of bears. The main problem [with sheep predation] was the coyotes. There were always lots of coyotes to chase. The dogs would corner them in rock dens or shallow
holes. We’d shoot them there, and then the dogs would go in and drag them out. [My brother] Vernon did much more coyote hunting than I did.
People had their jealousies, just like they do today, but for strangers passing through, people were a lot more hospitable. Visitors would often drop by unannounced and uninvited. People would come in from the coast, sometimes they’d come into the house when no one was at home [expecting our return later in the day]. Of course my dad was a politician [so he knew a lot of people.] I can remember we’d come home after a trip in the buggy, and there’d be a barn full of horses, and the chores done, and dinner on the table. That was just the way they did things in those days. They generally brought their provisions with them. If they didn’t, then on the way back they’d bring provisions. People were more cooperative [back then.]
Boonville was a very isolated community until about the 1920s. One young fellah wanted some adventure, so he got on a tan oak bark wagon, and went over to Largo, which is on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad. He went down as far as Cloverdale. Then he got on a train, and went back up to Ukiah. From there, he hitched a ride back home. That’s a triangle of about 30 by 30 [miles.] When he got home, he said, ‘By gosh if the world is as big the other way as the way I went, she’s a whopper.’ That’s about as far as some of the people got in those days. They hardly got on the other side of the hill.
You’ve got to understand that we had a big ranch but we only got money once or twice a year out of it. The money wasn’t very free. All the money you got was in gold coin. I remember I was nearly fifteen or sixteen years old before I saw much paper money. It was all gold and silver. They didn’t have any greenbacks that I remember. My dad would take the wool and mutton to sell, and he’d come back with some tobacco sacks full of twenty-dollar gold pieces. He used to drive three or four-hundred head of sheep down to Cloverdale. They only brought about $2 a head. A big four-horse load of wool taken over to Ukiah would pay for the groceries and clothes for the next winter. That was the big trip of the year, when I was a boy. That was when the money came in. That was the way that we used to get paid for things. Gold and silver coins. As kids, they used to let us play with the gold coins now and again. That was quite a celebration.
In those days, there wasn’t a store on the corner, that brought provisions in. You either raised it, or rustled it. We ate wild strawberries. They grew along the fence-rows. They were small. A big one was about the size of the end of your thumb. We’d pick strawberries all the way to school. When we got to school, we’d have to go wash our faces because we’d be all covered with strawberries.
I did one [spring] season shearing sheep, just after I finished high school. Gosh, that was hard work! You were standing [bent over] right on your head, and you had to have a sheep between your legs. You’d start
[shearing] up the side of the neck and then you come around on down to the tail, and flop the sheep around, and you go around to the other side, and back to the belly. Some of those people could do about four of them to my one. Once they were off, the tags were thrown in and tied into bundles, wrong side out. My brother could, anyway. It was the hardest work I ever did in my life. It was all done with hand clippers in those days, of course. The muscle in forearm ached something awful. At times, my wrist would swell up twice its normal size.
After the shearing, you’d pack the wool in wool sacks. They were sacks about three feet in diameter, and about eight feet long. They held about 400 pounds of wool. They were hung in a rack when they were stuffed.
The sack was supported by a hoop, with the sack doubled back around it. One guy threw in [the fleeces] while another one got into the sack and stomped it down. It wasn’t so bad tossing the bundles up, but inside the
sack, it was a miserable job. I sacked wool from the time I was old enough to throw [fleece] bundles up. But I only spent one season shearing. That was plenty. When the sacks were filled up, a lever was used to raise the sack, and release the hoop. Then the sacks were sewed shut with a big sacking needle. Then the sacks were thrown onto a pile.
In those days, kids went to school in the wintertime, when it was raining, and worked in the summer. One of the best jobs I had as a kid was $2.14 a day slumping ties. That was big pay. On weekends, I’d take a couple of horses and go up the canyon to where they were logging. They were makin’ fence posts and railroad ties and grape stakes and shingle bolts, and shakes. I worked mostly sledding [railroad] ties. They’d fall the tree,
and make the ties [with wedges and a broad axe], but that would quite a ways from where the landing is–where they loaded them on trucks. I’d hook [the team of horses] onto three, maybe four at a time.
Many of the trees were too big [in diameter] to cross-cut at the base. The falling crews would use spring-boards. These [narrow, thin boards] were put in notches that they cut [with an axe]. The spring boards would go in a spiral, maybe up to 20 feet, where the tree is smaller. The timber jacks would stand on these little spring-boards when they cut their undercut and then start their main crosscuts. By using wedges, they could make the tree fall exactly [in the direction] where they wanted.
I’ve [crosscut] a ten-foot [diameter] log with an eight-foot saw. You’d saw from three different angles until you get down under the half circle. You talk about pull, boy those saws pull hard!
On some of the biggest trees up the canyon, they were too big to cross-cut, so they would climb up them, before they ever felled them, and put in holes with an auger, and fill them with black powder, to [blast and] split them in half. On some of the bigger ones, they’d do it again, and split them in quarters before they tried to saw them. They used a big jack screw to separate them far enough so that you could get in and cross-cut saw them.
That [slumping ties and shearing sheep] was the only pay jobs that we had in those days, excepting in the springtime we could get a job peelin’ tan bark.
I ran my trap line in the winter-time. I ran it from the time I was in grammar school all the way through high school. The school was about two miles up the valley. I had certain places up along the creeks along the way to school where I’d set traps. I’d catch coons, skunks, and a bobcat once in a while. I caught one Fisher. Once in a while, I’d catch someone’s old tomcat, too. I sold that one to George Bee. I could tan everything but the tails. I found out later that you had to split that tail out.
I carried a little Stevens .22. I’d check the traps on the way to school. If there was anything in the trap, I’d shoot it. Then, on the way home, I’d take it out and skin it. Sometimes I’d get a little too close to a skunk. By
the time I got to school, I didn’t smell too good. I wasn’t too popular, at times.
On my trap line, as a boy, I used a single-shot Stevens .22 rifle. That was the first gun I ever had. I used to shoot gray squirrels out of redwood trees with that gun. I sold the pelts from my trap line to George B. Vestal.
He taught me the finer points of trapping.
George B. Vestal worked as a roustabout for the Singley ranch. He was a ranch hand who did trapping on the side. He worked for many years for a dollar a day. Later on, he was offered a raise to $1.25, but he turned it
down. He said that it would confuse his accounting. $30 a month is easier to figure. When he died, it turned out that he had 8,000 dollars on deposit at the bank.
We used to have a camp down by the river, near the Hendy grove, and pick hops for the Gowen family. We’d usually stay there two weeks. That was usually how we got enough money to buy our school clothes. We got paid one cent a pound for picking hops. You’d work your tail off to strip a hundred pounds. If you worked long, long hours–get out there at daylight, and head home at dark, you’d pick about 125 pounds. Finally, they paid us a cent and quarter. [$0.0125 per pound.]
We used to say that if you saved just ten percent of what you earned, you’d never go to the poor house. That’s one of the first lessons I learned, and I’ve tried to do something along that line since. And I’ve never gone to the poor house.
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