Preface

The draft that you about to read was written some years back. While the title, in today's politically correct climate; would not be considered appropriate. I am leaving it as it is simply because that is the original title and text. This is a true story of the events, and the experiences I was a part of back in the late seventies and early eighties. A story as cliche as it sounds, of discovery. Of a lifestyle that I never knew existed and of a people that I was never fortunate enough before to know.

Again, suffering has its place in our lives. We grow, we change, and we learn. It is the human condition apparently. Please keep in mind that this is a rough draft! I will correct what I can, but I do not want to remove, damage, or change the story in any way. Please enjoy! Sit back, let your mind relive this experience! smell the fresh pine that lingers in the air, the pine needles on the forest floor, baking in the hot summer sun. The breath catching cold of swimming in the Salmon River to cool down, body surfing the rapids of this class A rafting river. Picture it all, absorb it and realize, this is a true story.

Casey Pearce

Today, thirty years later I can still remember the event as though it happened yesterday. The gentle rain was falling in what we would call, the Portland drizzle, upon the leaves of the nearby rhododendrons surrounding our large, enclosed porch. It made for a soft, steady, and melancholy sound which only added to the emotions welling up within me that day.

My father, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close in one of his famously wonderful bear hugs I was so accustomed to, whispered close to my ear “Be good for your mother.” When he finally released his firm grip, I weakly replied “I will dad, I love you!” Those were my final words as I slowly began walking down the large staircase to the cement walkway surrounded now, by a wet and soggy front yard. The light drops of rain against my face were in shocking contrast to the hot tears that flowed freely down my cheeks.

At thirteen I was not even capable of imagining what this day truly meant, other than I knew we were leaving my dad and my friends to move to California. My mom was leaving him, my younger sister and I did not have a clue, nor did we ask, we simply complied. As I climbed into the large moving van loaded with all of our most necessary items, I turned to look out of the foggy, water drop covered window. There on the front porch, my dad stood, like a sentinel, waving goodbye and I am sure trying to appear strong. Thirty years later, I know now that it was a final act of courage and strength, he had reserved for our benefit alone but did not reveal what was he was truly feeling inside.

With ample time to think, as the miles churned away under the large tires of the moving van, I was able to reflect on many of the wonderful memories I had of the only place I knew as home. Our neighbors on the left, the ones with whom we were always in trouble for having rotten apple fights. The neighbors to the right of us who had the highest, most inviting twin cedar trees on the block, and of course the trees that we were expressly forbidden to climb but, we did it anyway. The many cool summer nights, playing hide and go seek in the cul-de-sac with every kid on the street participating. The many inventions I devised that always required a test pilot, or “dummy” before they could be perfected, and of course a smile came to my lips as I recalled how many of those inventions were discovered through “testing” to be miserable failures.

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted as my brother-in-law, an ex-college football player and one of the biggest men I had ever known shattered the silence with his deep, rich, baritone voice, “Casey, it will be alright.” Be all right? How could he even say that? I was leaving everything that I ever cared about! The place where Thanksgiving took place, where Christmas happened, where my friends lived and most importantly where hours before, we had left my dad standing on the front porch. I felt the sudden sting of tears again and I turned my face towards the side window. My mind now silent, I wished only for this day, this year, and this life that had suddenly turned upside down, to be over.

We pulled into Redding sometime in the night; I don’t remember what time it was or what day it was. It didn’t really matter to me, but we had arrived at the location that we were going to store our household goods. This was not to be home, at least not for another year and a half but it would be home for everything that we owned. My memories are vague and clouded now, but I know we spent much time visiting family in Redding, seeing relatives I was not aware I had, and some that I did. It helped ease the heavy weight that threatened to crush the very life and breath from me, but relief was short lived as my sister and I found ourselves on the road again, making our way with my mom to what would be our new home for the next year and a half.

Through some of the most breathtaking country I had ever seen, the deepest canyons and highest mountains and most rugged terrain, and along the most beautiful rivers, we drove for seemed like forever…I was reminded as I looked at the time, of the oddity of travel. How going someplace new, always seems to take longer than it does the second or third time you travel there. I was suddenly aware that we had slowed and were passing through the last town before arriving at our destination; this was the town of Orleans along the Klamath River. I was also aware of the lawless look of the place, the rough and rather unkempt people that I saw walking along the side of the road and of the large group of American Indians seated on a lonely old building’s front porch, all of them watching us warily as we made our way past.

Relieved that we had bypassed this small town, my relief was short lived as we saw the sign approaching which identified our new home; “Somes Bar.” This was the place, and there was, as far as I could tell, nothing there! There were no shops, no town, no people, nothing but endless stands of pine and fir trees lining the road and a river that trailed off into the mountainous distance. We turned right, making our way from a highway lost in time, onto the Salmon River Road. It seemed like we traveled forever up the windy, narrow, and rock-strewn ribbon of asphalt when suddenly, my mom braked hard. “I almost missed it!” she said, putting the car in reverse and backing up past a lonely postal box perched atop a round, fir lodge pole that had been driven into the ground.

We made our way gingerly down the dusty, rutty road. This had to be the longest driveway I had ever seen. It seemed just a dirt road that traversed an expanse of forest and timber. But as we wound down further with one or two final sweeping twists and turns, we came into a small clearing. Sitting in the middle was a house with smoke rising in lazy spirals from the round stove pipe jutting out of its roof. Thirty or so feet in front of the house, was what looked like a shack, but it too had a stove pipe leaning to one side as it made its own exit from the rooftop of the crude and primitive structure. On the left-hand side of this clearing, and across from the shack, what looked to be an open air shed of some sort with the largest stack of cut and stacked wood I had ever seen.

The light squealing of the brakes awakened me from the state of awe I was in. This was something that I had never experienced before, this was going to be home. This was where my sister actually lived? My older sister, nephews and niece came outside to greet us, almost on queue as though to answer my unspoken question. As we piled out of the car and my mom and sister exchanged hugs, we re-acquainted ourselves with our nephews and niece and politely hugged our older sister as well. We were once again around family, and it felt good if not a bit strange. When you are young, there are many emotions that are experienced. However, at that age it is impossible for you to identify or know how to cope with them. While we were still extremely sad that we had lost our home and our dad, along with everything else we knew and had security in; yet there was a feeling of comfort in knowing that we would be staying with family that we knew so well.

A few days later, we watched as my mom pulled away and began the long, slow drive back up the dusty, rutty road. We waved until our arms were tired as she came into and darted out of view behind the trees and brush that lined the driveway until there was nothing left but the low rumble of the engine and the occasional squeak of the springs over the potholes. My life with the Indians was just about to begin, and an adventure that I will never, as long as I live, forget.

Life on “the river” became a daily matter of overcoming the extreme culture shock that we felt. While we didn’t understand its effects, or what to do about them, we experienced them just the same. My sister cried often as she thought about our dad and then cried as she thought about our mom. At thirteen, I was somewhat beyond tears, but I had a slow burning anger inside of me at being left in such a place. It was not directed at anyone in particular, I knew my grandparents were extremely ill and that my mom needed to assist in taking care of them and helping them recover. I was simply an angry, rebellious young man, and was looking for anything to quell the gnawing that I felt deep in my heart.

Days soon turned into weeks and weeks into months. We had made it through our introductions to the two-room schoolhouse we would be attending. In Portland, my elementary school was a four-story brick structure with well over a thousand students in attendance. Here, in Somes Bar California, two rooms one which housed kindergarten through fourth grade, and the other, fifth through eighth grade. They prepared home cooked meals in the tiny cafeteria and there were often incidents on the playground between some of the white kids and the Indians. I can remember one in particular between two of my friends, who were also friends with one another. It ended in Ron Frate being stabbed multiple times in the back with a fold out Buck knife by “Hawk”, his real name being Clarence. I had been away visiting my mom in Yreka when it happened, but I heard all about it when I returned. Oddly enough, they remained close friends even after all of that.

Over the period of time, we had also met many of the local adults as well. There was Clarence (Hawks dad) who had spent time in prison as a result of murdering their mother by cutting her throat when he found her with another man in their mobile home. He had been a former golden glove boxer, something I was to learn through experience with him and many of the other men of the tribe. Children and especially boys are brought up to be tough on the river. There is truly little room, nor tolerance for weakness in that place. They are treated from a young age, like adults. The men wrestle and box the young boys, and the women are taught many of the old-time tribal traditions.

As I look back, I can remember so many occasions where large bonfires were enjoyed by large groups of people. There was always plenty of weed and alcohol at these affairs, in fact there was usually plenty of both at any gathering whether of two or twenty. Boxing matches would inevitably take place, games of jumping over large bonfires by the younger boys, wrestling matches, with most of the kids taking full part in the drinking and smoking at such gatherings. I remember the look of so many of these proud people…Hard, cold, many of them with exceedingly long hair and missing more than one or two teeth. They were living on government assistance, and "commod’s" as we called them, or commodities provided by the government. The women were almost as hard and tough as the men were, this was a harsh land and a land that time had forgotten. Our list of chores read like something out of the 1800’s, with splitting kindling and firewood at the top of the list, gathering berries and acorns, and fishing for salmon, steelhead, and Klamath River lamprey eels a close second. Poaching a deer, or bear was always welcomed with open arms as well.

We used kerosene lamps for reading as there was no electricity and our water came down from a natural spring far up the mountain that loomed up in front of tribal land we lived on. There was even an outhouse for use, we had a bathroom but were using a septic system and could only use the indoor bathroom sparingly. We cooked with an old-time wooden stove, my sister making pies, breakfasts, dinners, and everything in between on that stove. During the logging season, when he wasn’t growing weed for a living, I had been recruited by my brother-in-law to help him with his logging job. He was a seasonal timber faller, and I will never forget the first few times I watched one of those huge trees crash to the ground! It was an awesome sight! My job was to carry his extra gas and oil cans and an extra chainsaw in case the one he was using failed for some reason or became damaged. I learned terms that I never knew existed before, like “Widow Makers” and a tree “Barber chairing” on some poor hapless timber faller.

I had been so used to living in the big city, so accustomed to wandering the streets and having so many neighbors close at hand. And now we were alone, nothing but miles of empty Marble Mountain Wilderness surrounding us and the Salmon River flowing two hundred yards behind the house. What was fun to do in the city, no longer applied here. Like so many other things, we had to learn and discover new ways of having fun and different means of recreation than we were used too.

Swinging from wild grape vines that grew from the tops of the shaded tree canopy above us in the forest, wandering on game trails just to see where they went, or body surfing the wild rivers rapids and diving from the cliffs on the other side became the order of the day. Going shooting, with .22 rifles in the woods, hoping to actually hit something that you could eat, or fishing for eels with the grown men at nighttime on the Klamath were what we did for fun and something, surprisingly that I grew to look forward too with great enthusiasm.

Danger was an ever-present companion in this country. Whether it was running into a black bear while hiking along a game trail they had made through mangled blackberry bushes, being bitten by a rattlesnake while climbing around on the cliffs, to the many mundane possibilities, such as careening off of an eight hundred foot cliff from the main road down to the river below, or taking a trip into Orleans and sitting on the “the porch” as it was called, yes, the one we had seen entering Orleans on our way to our destination, and being called out by another who was as drunk as we, were always very real possibilities. I remember sitting on that porch the day a “white boy” came walking down the main street carrying a .22 rifle. A local Indian youth whom I knew simply as “Gus” began to taunt him and jeer at him. It was not long before this white boy had crossed the distance between himself and “the porch”, and had Gus pinned up against the wall with Gus waving a broken beer bottle in the guy's face. It could happen just like that, and just that quick. Here, law enforcement only came into town once at seven in the morning and was available until seven in the evening at which time, they left. Whatever happened before, or after that time was fair game, so it was best to keep your eyes open, and your mouth shut if you wanted to keep yourself out of any trouble.

This was a strange land, inhabited mainly by the Karuk Tribe and yet with so many others who were drifters, or hippies who were trying to escape their own failures and past. This was certainly not a land most would move to out of sheer desire. You were either born here, or you were trying to escape from mainstream society. We lived with my brother in law’s grandmother; she being one, who was born here quite literally. She was one hundred thirteen years old when we moved in with her. Years later, she passed away at the age of one hundred eighteen. Grandma Tripp was what we called her, though her real name was Bessie Tripp, she would tell some of the most fascinating stories! of her seeing the first ever automobile come rumbling through a nearby town, she had walked for three days she said on the Indian trails that they used to get from place to place, just to see that automobile. Of the burial grounds that were on the property and the place where they had their original tribal huts, nothing but large round depressions in the ground now, one of which she was born in a hundred and thirteen years earlier.

The time spent living among the Indians was something that must be experienced in order to fully understand it. From the eating of traditional foods such as acorn soup and smoked salmon, to fishing for eels and the experience of dealing with a lifestyle that most have never had to live, are priceless memories that I will never forget. The many varied and colorful people that I met on the river, people like Juney Charles and Charlie Morton, Harold “Little Man” Tripp and so many others. Though they lived outside of societal norms, and far differently than any people I had ever met before, each and every one of them contributed something to my life whether for good or bad. It was there I learned to fish for salmon, and hunt for deer, but there that I also learned to escape from my problems through alcohol and drugs. On the river, I learned how to be, at least in the eyes of the Indians, tough and be a man, and it was there that I also learned how to hide my emotions and never let them out.

The remaining time passed quickly on the river, and I graduated the eighth grade from Junction Elementary School. I will never forget the speech I gave during my eighth-grade graduation; it was a seething poem that I wrote that did little to hide the animosity I felt for the teachers and the educational system as a whole. It belittled the meaning of mine and others graduation and as I ended my reading with a crooked smile on my lips, I felt that I had finally given everyone exactly what they deserved. The ignorance of youth can certainly not be underestimated. The summer had come upon the little house near the Salmon River and the time of year for relaxation, bonfires again, pit barbeques and drinking festivals as well as eel fishing, body surfing the rapids and enjoying the summer stars sleeping outside because it was much too hot in the house at night.

However, I was not to see any of those activities again. A month into the summer and after my last shot taken at the education system from my eighth-grade pulpit we received a call from my mother that she was coming to take us to our new home, a home in Redding. It was another move, another tearing away of friendships and relationships and the loss of identity. I was not certain how I would handle change again. It had come so suddenly the last time and this time was to be no different. It came without options, without arguments, and with the feeling of helplessness that was only rivaled by our last great move. A move back to a city albeit not nearly as large as Portland Oregon, but still much larger than Somes Bar. What would the rules be there? Would I make friends? I was a changed person at 14 a much different person than I had been when we moved to the river.

I was not an innocent 12-year-old kid anymore still possessing much of my 12-year-old mentality and simplicity. I was angry; I was rebellious and ready to fight anyone, or anything that would attempt to be my master at this point. The river had taught me that, taught me to beat down and rebel against anything and everyone who treated me any differently than I felt I deserved or should be treated. It had been a lawless land, a land with different morals and a different mentality. It was a place where you fought just to survive the elements, to have water to drink and food to eat. It was a place that now lies in sharp contrast in my mind to the things we fight for here. Everyone has the essentials, so the things we fight for are the material extras if you will, the excess that we surround ourselves with and in which we find our security.

Yet, there remains a place in my thoughts and in my memory where life was so much simpler, so much more appreciated. That place no longer exists now as the kerosene lamps have given way to electricity, the outhouses to real working and flushing toilets, the wood stoves, to oil and kerosene monitors and the quiet solitude of living in the mountains, to the noise and static of satellite television and home entertainment systems. It is all just a memory now, but one that I will carry with me forever, my life among the Indians.

Summary

Thank you for taking the time to read and hopefully enjoy this small look into the experiences, and the life that once did exist in Somes Bar. It is all still there, in one form or another. Certainly not in the way that is described here. But a shadow, an image still remains. To say this did not profoundly affect me, even to this day would be an untruth. It did, and it has. While many debates and studies have been done on the ever-divisive ideology of "Nature or Nurture" from my own viewpoint, I can say that it is indeed a combination of the two. The Bible says it this way, "Raise up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it." No greater, simpler truth could be said.

This retelling of my adventures in Somes Bar are dedicated to the woman who opened her home to us. I attempted to add a picture, but had no luck. The picture was taken while I was living in her house on the sand bars of the Salmon River. she was born there, in a small dugout which had a simple structure placed over the top for protection. Her name is Bessie Tripp, in this picture she was 114 years old. She gave me an Indian name in the native Karuk language, Ketchaketch, meaning Blue Jay. I found out later, it was because I talked so much. Go figure...

Of all mothers ever known,

And all of the love, by mothers shown,

With words of comfort, to children said,

And all of the tears for them shed…

You are the most wonderful mother of all…

Of sleepless nights with babies spent,

Prayers without number, to heaven sent,

Sleeping babies, infant breath so sweet,

Loving kisses placed on tiny hands and feet…

You are the most wonderful mother of all…

Of hardships and labors that cannot be numbered,

And nights all alone, while your little babies slumbered,

The worry and concern, far into the night,

Hoping and praying that it will all be alright…

You are the most wonderful mother of all…

Of heartache, and joy, the love, and the pain,

Only a mother feels, time and again,

The laughter of her children, the sound of their play,

Questions, silly games, sweet nothings to say…

You are the most wonderful mother of all…

Of years that pass, with the speed of a day,

And children that grow up, and soon move away,

Of the time that will come, when they are no longer so small,

And say, “YOU are the most wonderful mother of all” …