Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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I was definitely a surprise to my folks when my mother became pregnant with me – she was 38 years old and daddy was 50. They lived in Old Kernville, long before the dam was built and Lake Isabella flooded the site where the town had been. My father's first wife had died in childbirth, as did their newborn son. Five years later, he married my mother and they also lost a son who was 17 days old, and my mother had a series of miscarriages, so they gave up and adopted my brother Henry. Then 10 years...
A small dark green shrub flourishes in the Tehachapi Mountains, growing among California Junipers in drier locations. You may be familiar with this plant in connection with cold medication and diet pills, but Tehachapi Indian people have used it to make tea for many hundreds of years. This is a plant with a hundred different names: Indian tea, Mormon tea, sheepherders tea, Spanish tea, cowboy tea and many others. The local Nuwä (Kawaiisu or Paiute) people call it "Tu-tu-pivi" while botanists...
Although the pandemic has, at least temporarily, caused many changes in daily life, many things remain dependably true. Like the fact that one of the most vibrant, friendly farms in California is located right here where the Tehachapi Mountains slope down to join the rising San Joaquin Valley. This is Murray Family Farms, an agricultural oasis including more than 170 varieties of fruit trees as well as berry vines and row crops that keep the Big Red Barn stocked with fresh produce year-round....
Moments after the last notes of "Taps" fade away from a lone bugler, you can hear the "ka-KER-ker" calling of nearby California quail. Two men in spotless military uniforms remove the American flag from a silver casket, triangle-fold it, and present it to a grieving relative. The honor guard is dismissed. From the lower branches of a big valley oak, the liquid warble of a meadowlark drifts upward. Another funeral service has ended at Bakersfield National Cemetery, tucked serenely into the rollin...
Longer days, warmer temperatures and changing barometric pressure have started bringing about the annual reappearance of snakes in the Tehachapi Mountains. They've been here all along, of course, but have spent the colder months tucked away in an old rodent burrow, rock crevice, fallen log or some other hibernaculum. This period of cold weather dormancy among snakes, lizards and tortoises is called brumation, from the Latin word "bruma," meaning "midwinter" or "winter solstice." While it is...
Although both Louise and Nellie Fickert, who owned the sprawling 25,000-acre Fickert Ranch that later became Bear Valley Springs, were mentally sharp until they died, other infirmities of age caught up with them in their last years. Dr. Vincent Troy was the Fickerts' doctor for many years. He was always there to help Louise and Nellie, especially after they became confined. Mary Farrell felt that the sisters looked upon Dr. Troy as the son they never had. For one reason or another – perhaps b...
In 1925, when I was 16 years old, my cousin and I got jobs with the remount unit at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, on the border with Mexico. The remount unit was responsible for gettin' horses broke and ready for the troopers to ride. We weren't in the cavalry, we were employees who lived in civilian barracks on base. There were 3,000 to 4,000 horses at Ft. Bliss at that time, and we got paid "$19 a month and found (room and board)" as remount wranglers. It wasn't easy, but it involved less wor...
David Schulgen, who made a career in the wind industry starting from its early days in the 1980s, had unambivalent feelings about wind energy when it arrived in the Tehachapi Mountains: "I hated wind turbines. We raised cattle in Oak Creek Canyon, and I liked to explore the hills around Tehachapi, and I didn't like the wind turbines coming in." His feelings toward the wind industry evolved. But it took some time. The wind industry still didn't exist in the area when Dave graduated from...
We usually have a big Easter egg hunt at our old farm on Cherry Lane for the children of family and friends. Of course it didn't happen this year because of the pandemic. But most years, a few uninvited guests leave with eggs: a couple of resident ravens help themselves to eggs that the kids hadn't found yet. Ravens don't just score a few hard-boiled chicken eggs, but even plastic eggs have proven tempting to those large black birds – I have seen ravens fly away with a brightly-colored p...
Although both Louise and Nellie Fickert, who owned the sprawling 25,000-acre Fickert Ranch that later became Bear Valley Springs, were mentally sharp until they died, other infirmities of age caught up with them in their last years. Dr. Vincent Troy was the Fickerts' doctor for many years. He was always there to help Louise and Nellie, especially after they became confined. Mary Farrell felt that the sisters looked upon Dr. Troy as the son they never had. For one reason or another – perhaps beca...
The incident occurred on March 15, 1870, in the mountains of Kern County where John W. Searles was on a general hunt with companions. He heard a California Grizzly bear and was seeking to locate it when the beast reared up, its nose not two feet away. Searles could not back away because of the dense brush. He pointed his gun toward the bear's jaw and fired. The bear pitched to its forefeet, gasping and pawing at its eyes where the flame of the cartridge had burned the hair – but it was not s...
Our ongoing spring storms, and occasionally sunny days in between, have brought out those little yellow flowers that most lawn gardeners detest: dandelions. But I must confess that I am the exception – I like dandelions. And until fairly recently, so did most people. This incredibly widespread plant is native to Europe and Asia but is now naturalized throughout most of the temperate regions of the world, and is found from coast to coast in the U.S. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is a l...
I had an interesting experience observing a pair of ravens in my orchard. I had gathered some eggs from my chickens that were blue, white and brown. These were in equal numbers. I placed them in separate color groups out in our orchard. The ravens soon arrived. They at first started to jump around the eggs and flap their wings, acting all excited. I guess this was to see if the eggs were alive or where a threat to them somehow. Next they threw dirt at the eggs. Then they approached the eggs and...
In 1914, there were only two cars registered in Tehachapi – one belonged to Phil Marx and the other one was my dad's. My dad had one of those old Baby Grand Chevrolets and Marx had a Winton 6. There were stockyards all along the railroad tracks then, down by Mill Street and where Tehachapi Lumber had their yard. They put all the stock in those pens and loaded them up on the train to take them out of here. People drove their stock on foot, right through town. Johnny Brite, he raised free-ranging...
When I turned 80 years old, I gathered my family together and we went snowboarding at Mammoth Mountain. I was fortunate to have all five of my children, as well as 11 of my grandchildren and 13 of the great-grandkids there. Part of my inspiration for choosing to spend my 80th birthday on the slopes was a marathon snowboarding session that I did in the winter of 1994-95. I started in November, and ended up snowboarding every single day without fail for 230 days, into the month of June until my...
As I drove slowly through the quiet, older residential streets east of Downtown Tehachapi, my headlights shown on a furtive figure in a mask who hurried across the road. It wasn't a person observing social distancing in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, but it was a local resident: a large raccoon, out for some late night foraging. These interesting animals are mostly nocturnal and tend to conceal themselves in hollow logs, trees or other hiding places during the day. Raccoons emerge at...
Gary Davies is a lifelong Tehachapi resident and military veteran who has found solace and satisfaction in hand carving assorted animals out of wood. Gary, who was born in Tehachapi Hospital in 1959, has many talents and has spent his life working with his hands. His father taught him to weld when he was only 11 years old, and he worked as a welder for the Navy and in Texas oilfields. He has also worked in vegetation management, landscaping, carpentry and masonry. The Veterans Administration...
Our family moved to Tehachapi in 1930 when my parents, Julius and Jeanne Fritz, swapped their home in Willowbrook for 47 acres of land and a farmhouse on Old Town Road, which had been there about 10 years at that time and was known as "the Burton place." The property was dominated by an enormous Gray Pine (Pinus sabiniana) and my Dad wanted to name the place "Lone Tree Ranch" but someone else was already using that name so he settled on the "White Feather Ranch," because he immediately started...
When my daughter Teagan was born, her father gave me a pair of 1-carat diamond earrings to commemorate her birth. They are the most meaningful pieces of jewelry I have because they represent Teagan to me, and all the wonderful things she's brought to my life. Her father and I are no longer married but those are my "Teagan earrings" and I wear them all the time. Recently I was cleaning out the rental unit where we had been living after most of our things had already been moved into the new...
There aren't many Tehachapi residents left who remember the days when almost every phone call made in this area required a person working at a switchboard, an operator who manually put a plug into a jack to complete a call. Pat Gracey, 91, not only remembers that time, she actually was one of those hard-working women who made phone calls possible. Patricia Davis Gracey was born in Mojave on September 2, 1928, the youngest of four children born to Chauncey and Maude Davis. She was raised in...
I used to sell a lot of beer when I owned the Monolith Store. It was all Acme brand – about as bad a beer as you could buy, but I bought from the Bohemian Distributing Company and that's what they had. I bought Ambassador Reserve wine from them, and they also had the Acme beer distributorship. The previous owner of the Monolith Store, Bert White, he was a pretty smooth politician, so when he went down to talk to the guy at Bohemian he always took down a dozen nice, big T-bone steaks to the b...
I was out irrigating a five-acre alfalfa field that we had at our place on Cherry Lane, moving 3-inch aluminum sprinkler pipe, when I saw something up at the edge of the field. It looked like a twisted piece of pipe. When I got close, I saw that it was one of the biggest gopher snakes I've ever seen. It was 'bout as big around as that sprinkler pipe. But it was dead. And there was a big ol' boar gopher sticking out of side of that snake. I guess that big snake had caught the gopher and...
While driving home from Bakersfield on the back way (Bena Road) between Edison and the Arvin Cutoff this week, I noticed that the earliest wildflowers to bloom in our mountains were beginning to show their first yellow color. These unique and interesting plants are Bladderpods. The extremely drought-tolerant Bladderpods begin flowering on the San Joaquin Valley floor, and then follow spring as it moves upslope. With egg-shaped green globes dangling from the stems, beautiful yellow flowers and...
It was late August, 1966 on a very hot afternoon when my husband and I pulled into Tehachapi for the first glimpse at our new community. In Colorado earlier that summer we had interviewed with the Tehachapi Unified School District superintendent about teaching jobs in Tehachapi. Yes, he said, they needed a math teacher at the junior high, and yes, he said, Tehachapi has skiing and fishing very close, and yes, it is the top of a mountain pass. We signed our contracts with eagerness and excitement...
A fire at Bear Mountain destroyed much feed and valuable timber. The fire started near Sycamore last Saturday and was not under control until late Tuesday afternoon. Many sections of dry feed on the west side of Bear Mountain were destroyed, the loss falling almost entirely on F. W. Fickert. The fire fighters experienced many hardships during their three strenuous days and nights on the mountain, often without food or water for many hours at a time and sometimes surrounded by the roaring,...
