To continue my “Arkies” in The Valley stories, I thought I would explore the life of an “older” immigrants’ child. As Einstein theorized over a hundred years ago with regard to age and time, everything…
Posts published by “Brad Wiley”
When Hollifield came here and built his mill, everyone wanted to work for him… — Ken Hurst recollection, August, 2022 When I first moved to The Valley half a century ago, locals were still telling…
Very old friend Kenny Hurst is a great story-teller and journalist too. I found that out right away almost fifty years ago when he wrote a flamboyant report for the “other” Anderson Valley newspaper I…
Last week’s ‘Stubblefield’ book review ended with Susan and her Murray family poised to depart from their Missouri home and migrate to California, “the land of gold,” as her husband Cleveland described it. It took…
I had visited Susan Stubblefield’s grave in Evergreen Cemetery numerous times, had heard about this early Valley settler’s memoirs for years and finally got around to reading them last month while working on the Aunt…
I don’t recollect when or how Sammy “Prather Ranch” Prather and I first met. But I do know it wasn’t long after I arrived in Anderson Valley in 1971. Perhaps it was at the Floodgate…
My earlier report on the childhood of Donald Dukes, Bob Glover’s step-son, described his migration from a Kentucky coal camp to industrial Hammond, Indiana, to Bob’s ancestral Guntly Ranch all by the age of ten.…
Two weeks ago our story introduced us to the life of Aunt Blanche Brown, teacher, historian, community asset. The episode ended with the fire that consumed her Indian Creek home in January, 1956. This week…
Dr. John Brown, Aunt Blanche’s grandfather, settled in Philo in 1862, during the Civil War. His family had migrated to California, along with Iowa neighbors, the Prathers and Ingrams, in 1863. Brown family roots go…