Tuesday, January 12, 2010

"The Cave!!!"

ROSS SHERBURN said...
ERNIE,if my bearings are correct??? just down the hill,from where the first photo was taken??
there was a CAVE we used to go into! it went back in the hillside about 50-75 feet,may have been man made?? a spring came out of the cave and a water line was put in there ,"I GUESS" to furnish water to a house farther down the hill!
EVER been to it?? i went over there several times with the Fulwilder kid!!!his mom was Peggy Clifton!!
OREGON???
HA!HA! yeah i've been to the back also! Fulwider showed it to me,of course. i also had nite mares about it for quite a few years!!!

On the right side of the photo about the post about Garberville below, and up a little canyon that is now behind the Scown Trailer Park, is the spot of "The Cave".

..."THE CAVE"...
Ross I remember the cave well. It was the source of many nightmares for the Garberville kids back in the '50's and '60's. It was about fifty feet long. The bottom was filled with water because the front of the cave had caved in several times. You had to have hip boots to get to the back. We dug out the front a few times to drain it enough to go all the way back.

When we were kids, we thought that the cave was natural, and we had made a great discovery. Actually the cave was dug by some old-timers looking for water. Somebody must have used it at one time because there were pipes leading away from it. Somebody bladed dirt over it to seal it off. The must have decided that it was an attractive nuisance because so many kids played in it. Go Figger!!!

As kids, we would go up to the cave and sprinkle red food coloring around it. Then we would mark up the trees and limbs around it. Then we would go find a kid and tell them that we found were the “Monster” lived. One of us would get in the back of the cave. When the “brave” new kid would approach the cave, see the opening and all the broken brush and trees around it. They would slow their approach way down and get real cautious. As the brave ones, that got all the way up to the cave, and proclaim that; “There’s no monster lives here!”, the kid in the back of the cave would make monster sounds. A lot of kids wet their pants getting out of there.

We told so many spook stories about “The Cave” that we had ourselves scared. And, we would always approach the cave cautiously… In case a bear or mountain lion had taken up residence there. You never know…..

We didn't have electronic games when we were kids, but I'm sure that we had more fun!

23 comments:

Ben said...

Ernie... You talked about a place you could dig fossils. Did the freeway take that?

ROSS SHERBURN said...

you guys had the easy way in to the CAVE from the town side! we had to come over the hill from our houses south of town.lots of Brush,stickers,vines&Berries to fight!!!

it was quite an adventure for a kid 8-10 years old!!!


did you guys ever go over the hill just east of town,there was an old abandoned house there,probably half way between town and Bear creek????? Sorry,hard to remember,its been fifty years now!!!

Ernie Branscomb said...

Of course!
There was a road that went up to it from the river. The freeway took the road out. The old shed was full of Palco Presto Logs. there was a sign on the building that said "Deep Freeze Canyon".

Were you ever over at the abandoned house across the canyon north of the airport, in that big field?

Ernie Branscomb said...

The house north of the airport had a hand crank record player in it.

There used to be lots of old abondoned houses back in the fifties. There was one about halfway to Briceland, on the old Briceland road. I remember that there was an old hand-crank telephone on the wall. None of the doors had locks on them, and nothing was ever touched or stolen.

Can you imagine that nowadays?

Ernie Branscomb said...

Ben
The place that I dug fossils was buried by the freeway, but there are tons of other places around that had "Fossil Banks".

Maybe my cousin "Oregon" knows some places. Both places that I dug them was taken out by the freeway. (East of Sherwood Forest Motel, and in Bear Canyon.)

Anonymous said...

I did most of my fossil diggin' below the old swinging bridge at Bear Gulch Crick. I'm sure all the sand stone bluffs, banks, along the Eel have fossils in them. I know the sandstone cliffs across the rive from Rio Dell are full of them.
I'm not sure if they are fossils as much as they are preserved shells. Some are like the Shell gas station emblem and I've seen them up to 6" in diameter.

Oregon

Ernie Branscomb said...

Somebody told me that the "Shell" shells were scallops.

My nephew Brent found a fossil snail shell about the size of a soft ball shaped like a regular garden snail, only bigger. He took it to a university in San Francisco to have it identified. They tried to take it from him "for research" after many tears and some adult intervention they gave it back to him. My sister still has it on her fireplace mantle.

Anonymous said...

Fun to listen to you fellers. In the library there is a treasure map to a cave under the big rocks under the slide that made the current Benbow drive one lane. According to a local Indian survivor that is where the Indians had stashed silver retrieved from the coast. This is in the Cook material. Do any of you recall the legend existing when you grew up?

Anonymous said...

Treasure map

Yeah, I remember the stash even. Ernie and I took it home when we were kids then covered the cave over again.
Dang, this all brings back memories and I thought my dad made me work all the time. Good thing he can't read this blog or I would be in big trouble.

Oregon

Ernie Branscomb said...

Yeah, I remember that, but I didn't know that there was any treasure map. The hidden treasure was actually Gold from a Spanish Galleon that wrecked at Big Flat over on the coast.

The state highway department used to use a Sluice Gun to wash the slide into the river. "Oregon” and I used to go up there and look for pretty rocks that they washed out with the water gun. We found the gold coins and took them home and never said a word until now. I still have most of mine. That's how I got my start in the world.

Thank God we found it too. Otherwise we would have been stuck doing something illegal to make a living.

Anonymous said...

Figured sharp cookies like you two would be on it!

Anonymous said...

Anon 7:32

Ernie is the only sharp one.I spent a small fortune on bullets during a 25 to 30 year stretch then
I moved to Alaska and spent all I had left on boats. Darn boats anyway.

Oregon

Robin Shelley said...

I MISS BILLY THE KID
(sung)by Billy Dean

Strapped on my holster low across my hips,
Two Colt .45’s with black plastic grips;
And I’d head west through our neighborhood,
And they’d say,
“Here comes young Billy and he’s up to no good.”
I rode a trail through the neighbor’s backyard,
Shootin’ the Bad Guys through my handlebars.
Known for my bravery both far and near,
Bein’ late for supper was my only fear.

These days I don’t know whose side to be on;
There’s such a thin line between Right and Wrong.
I live and learn, do the best I can,
But there’s only so much you can do as a man.

I miss Billy the Kid!
The times that he had!
The life that he lived!
I guess he must’ve got caught,
His innocence lost...
Lord, I wonder where he is?
I miss Billy the Kid!

Aunt Janet said...

Nothing like a kid's imagination! I lived in Scotts Valley, by Santa Cruz as a kid. We hiked over to a redwood stand with some gullible kids, (our next door neighbors) and told them to close their eyes, turn around three times and jump. They would be on Mars! It would look just exactly the same, but they would be on Mars. We then proceeded with the rest of the story.

My own kids grew up in Whale Gulch, where they carried on the imaginative Childhood. When I listened in on their conversations the phrase I heard most often was: "and then...."

I like what Tamara Wilder said last evening about kids raised in a primitive situation will make it just fine in the modern world, but the reverse would be a very difficult situation.

Keep the kids' imaginations alive!

ROSS SHERBURN said...

Ernie mentioned the CAVE as being one of the adventures or activities that kept us busy as children,being we didn't have video games or such back then.

another fun thing to do was using cardboard boxes to slide down the dry grassy hillsides.sometimes you can get up to a high rate of speed and have a good Crash!!!

Anonymous said...

Yep, and the refridgerator boxes were the best. The thin cardboard sliders got hot on a long hill.

Oregon

Ernie Branscomb said...

Ross
"Oregon" and I found a grassy hillside up the canyon past the end of Oak Street in Garberville. It had a long gentle slope with a flat at the bottom. The boxes that we were using for sleds weren't very fast and would only make it about half way down the hill. We found a waxed flower box that was about 1 1/2 foot wide and 1 1/2 foot tall and 4 feet long. We decided that it would made a "way cool" two man bob-sled.

We both got in it and down the hill we went. We realized right off that we were going way too fast, but decided to ride it out. We got to the bottom of the hill, shot across the flat and launched into the air over the bank below. We landed in the middle of a great big Blackberry bush. After we discovered that we were still alive we crawled out through the berry brush. Not a pleasant trip! The box is still there in the berries.

Ernie Branscomb said...

So when are we going to talk about our favorite "Tarzan rope swing".

ROSS SHERBURN said...

the rope swing does ring a bell???

you guys remember a WESLY HARRIS?? i think that was his name??

Anonymous said...

There have been a few rope swings in my life but I think most have been forgotten. I the one I can remember right off hand and one I really liked was the one that was tied to the bottom of the old Briceland bridge. The bridge below Garberville. I only bring that up as I know some of the names have changed in that country since I have been there. What names you ask? One comes to mind here "Eagle Point Viaduct." Of course that wasn't even there when I was a kid.

Oregon

ROSS SHERBURN said...

i was thinking there was a rope swing out East Branch,a short ways??

ROSS SHERBURN said...

did any of you guys have SLOT CARS?
wasn't there a track for them,downtown?

Ernie Branscomb said...

Suzy Blah Blah has left us and returned from her soul-quest as Suzy Blue Flint in the Abalone Woman Post