Taken with permission from Mountain Springs The teacher argued that we were a class of wild hellions who needed discipline. The school board dallied, swayed by the suave mid-westerner. Finally, my mother presented them proof in writing from the parental protests, and the members of the board, given no other choice, sent the man out of our town, out of our county, and thankfully, out of our lives. My mother, I was learning, had her own brand of missionary zeal. Dropped from prospective juryship because she straightforwardly denounced capital punishment, she nevertheless waged fearless war against rattlesnakes and murderers. In the case of both, she maintained that our home territory was off-limits and inviolate. For weapons against this kind of encroachment she used whatever came to hand. Even more of an outrage than finding rattlers among the antique peonies and iris in our garden was discovering one stalking our chickens. Once from the kitchen window facing up to the Sierra Buttes, she was alerted by a terrified squawk that could mean only one thing. Out the door, with her apron strings flying like banners, grabbing a snow shovel on the run, my mother advanced for the attack. Sadly, the battle was a draw. My mother got the rattler, but not before the rattler got our beloved young rooster, Felix, raised from chickhood and saved from the stewpot because of his lovable antics. Another time, while I was running with total abandon through our raspberry patch beside the house, one of my legs froze in mid-stride as I heard that unmistakable warning buzz, a rattlesnake slid beneath my suspended foot. With a wild-fire reaction to my shriek, my mother came running, this time with a 22 caliber rifle. As for murderers, my usually timid mother proved once again there was a limit to encroachment on her family. One night, Cal, the more adventurous of my two older brothers, witnessed a scene highly suspicious for the usual sleepy tenor of our little mountain town. Parked on his bike in the shadows of a leafy tree, he saw two men wrestling a protesting woman out of one of our town’s seven bars and into a waiting car. He recognized the woman as someone who had recently come from the city to buy the fanciest house in town. The men were strangers. Two days later, the woman was found dead in her home, brutally and fatally beaten. Perhaps my brother was less than discreet about what he had seen because soon mysterious and malicious events were directed toward our family. Mountain Springs can be purchased at the Downieville Historical Museum, Sierra Country Store in Sierra City, Bassett’s Station, Graeagle Store, or directly by emailing lcrosen@yahoo.com.
Mabel, at seventy, with the Sierra Buttes in background