Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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My husband and I joined the Southern Pacific construction forces at Caliente [in the early 1870s] to keep a boarding house for the men who were on the big work. Mr. Hood was in charge of the work and he was very kind to us, and gave us a big tent to live in until a house could be built. He used to drop in for visit quite often, and I wonder if he remembers teaching me how to make eggnog in that old tent? The work was rather monotonous, nothing but hard work day after day. The laborers were...
One time I decided to brew some beer at home, so I got some malt extract and made a big batch. When the fermentation is finished and you get ready to bottle it, the beer is totally flat so you have to add a little sugar back in and then cap it, so it ferments just enough to get carbonated again. Well, I made a mistake and used cane sugar instead of corn sugar or malt sugar. When I figured it was done, I took two six-packs and headed down to Mojave to share some with the guys I worked with at Sou...
While the cultivated crops ripen in the valleys below, there are some wild fruits growing in the mountains that also ripen in August and September. Among the best of these are the tiny but useful blue berries produced by elderberry shrubs, which have long been prized by wildlife, Nuwä (Kawaiisu or Paiute) Indians and settlers. Though elderberries are very tart, they can be eaten raw, but the best use for them may be to make beautiful and delicious elderberry jelly. Even with the requisite...
"I would propose that a naturalist is someone whose curiosity is boundless. He or she is interested in kinkajous and sticklebacks, in astronomy, French wine, magpies, baseball, prairie rattlesnakes, quantum mechanics, corn on the cob, great sperm whales, and even Bolsheviks and hummingbirds. A naturalist tries to delight in everything, is in love with the whole of life, and hopes to walk in harmony across this Earth." – John Treadwell Nichols I consider the above quote to be one of the best I h...
My grandfather, who was also named Lance Estes, owned freight wagons and teams of horses, and he used them to haul merchandise to general stores and trading posts in California. He sometimes had to travel across muddy plains, and oddly enough, it was easier to cross when the ground was thoroughly soaked rather than when it was only moderately wet, for when merely wet the adobe soil stuck to the wheels until they could no longer turn, and the mud could not be knocked off, but had to be cut off...
In June 1884, Katherine Layne Curran (later Brandegee) travelled from Bakersfield to Mojave; the trip must have been one of the most successful brief trips in California botanical history. On this trip, in addition to much other material, Mrs. Curran collected the types for no fewer than 14 currently accepted taxa (species or subspecies)! This feat was even more remarkable when one considers that the month was June, not a particularly favorable one for collecting in the region, and that much col...
A small knoll overlooking Meadowbrook Park in Golden Hills has long been home to about 30 Tehachapi pioneers. They don't live there, but rather their earthly remains were laid to rest there in hand-dug graves in the Tehachapi soil more than 100 years ago. After each death, a wagon pulled by a team of horses would slowly carry the casket up the rutted dirt track to the little cemetery on the hill, followed by grieving survivors in buggies, on horseback or on foot. Once at the cemetery, a...
When Jack Sprague was 7 years old, he and his dog got caught in a downpour in a portion of Sand Canyon at the eastern end of the Tehachapi Valley, and together they sat out the rainstorm inside a rock shelter that bore numerous ancient Kawaiisu (Nuwä) Indian pictographs painted on the ceiling. The boy and his dog spent a couple of hours in the shallow cave. Jack never forgot the experience and the impression it made on him. That was in 1966, and Jack grew up to have an abiding fascination with...
My best friend Martin and I were both in the Army during World War II – he was in the European Theater and I got sent to the South Pacific, stationed in both Papua New Guinea and later in the Philippines. Martin was in Italy, Germany and Southern France. While he was there, he encountered members of the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team, which was known as the "Go For Broke" regiment. The officers were primarily Caucasian, but all of the enlisted men in the 442nd were Nisei, which is the J...
I went to work at the Tehachapi Post Office one morning a few years ago, and pretty soon one of the other workers came in and said there was a bobcat underneath one of the cars in the employee parking lot. Most of the other workers were kinda scared and were peering out from the doorway, which was silly because bobcats don't normally attack people, unless they're trapped. I went outside because I wanted to get a better look. It was obviously a young one, and the bobcat was more alarmed than the...
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...
