You Can't Go Home Again (In This Case, Literally)

[kevin_standlee]

After making a rest stop at the Honey Lake rest area on US-395, I decided to have a look at a place I lived for six months in 1977 when my father was stationed there with the US Forest Service.


Turning off US-395 at Milford, we drove up the Milford Grade to the site of the Laufman Ranger Station of the Plumas National Forest. My home town, Challenge, was the location of the Challenge Ranger Station of the same national forest. In a reorganization some years ago (I'm not sure exactly when), the USFS merged districts, reducing the Plumas NF from six districts to three, and two of the stations that closed were Challenge and Laufman, both of which were reduced to "work centers."


You can't get into the station site anymore, at least not legally. (This gate would have been easy to walk around, but we didn't want to leave the minivan unattended; besides, it would have been a federal trespassing offense to have done so.) This cattle guard is the site of a very unpleasant memory for me. In 1977, aged eleven years old, I fell through this guard and came very close to breaking my leg. I was lucky; I merely got a notch in my left shinbone and a scar that is there to this day.


There used to be a house on this site. On August 4, 1977, while most of the station staff were out fighting a couple of huge fires under my father's command, their spouses organized a birthday party for my sister. During the party, the sky turned red, as the two fires had burned together and generated an immense plume of smoke. Minutes later, ash fell from the sky and the birthday party quickly adjourned into the house.


This entire area used to be houses for the station personnel, plus the district ranger's office. Off in the distance beyond a work compound were spaces for mobile homes, one of which was the one in which we lived and which we were to live again when my father transferred from Milford to Challenge at the end of 1977.


Not being able to legally explore the place I lived for the last half of 1977, we drove back down to the bottom of the grade, where the Milford Store used to be but is not anymore, as it has closed. (I'm guessing that after the ranger station closed, there just wasn't enough business to keep it going.) The station was somewhere back up this mountain, although I don't know exactly where in this shot.

This was a rather somber visit, even though I don't have great memories of this period of my life. It was strange to see it all razed and the land reverting to forest.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That does remind me of my attempt to revisit the ranch near Mendocino where I lived when I was eleven. I too was unhappy there in many respects, but I loved the countryside. I didn't dare return for nearly 40 years, but when I did I found the ranch sold and a new locked gate across the access road. But I did see enough of the countryside - I walked the two miles down the dirt road from town, as I often did while living there - to bring back memories.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

We went to some of Big Harold's old haunts when we went back East this last summer. The city house and old schools have fared well.
The Summer House has been through some changes. First off, this was 50 years ago. Since then, a lot of the farmers in the area have been bought out, and much of the "Open" fields have reverted to forests. But the cabins remain, even the one Harold's family owned. They are small 2-4 room cabins with painted clapboard siding. There are two newish decks at "Harold's" cabin and a new looking propane tank. It is still loved by its people. Most of the people who "live" there have homes in NYC and visit on weekends and for vacations.
But Harold missed the open fields he used to play in, and the bright open road to his house, now has trees crowding it. And the General Store they walked to is gone. Everyone probably drives to a nicer one near by. The general post office inside the store has been replaced by those group mail boxes in several spots in the area.
His family owned One Car. His mother drove the family up at the beginning of summer, and Dad took the train up on Fridays, where she met him at the "local" station, a number of miles away. Now, everyone has many cars, some looked like they were kept at the country homes. There were major highways to the local small town, only then did we move to country roads. We took major highways to get to NYC. The whole mood was different, and Harold was not happy.
Thank the Maker, Queens was gentler to his memories. The main house still stands, still looks good. And his elementary school and church are still there, updated but much as he remembered them. It really brightened his mood. And the museums were even better than he remembered them. *whew*

[delosharriman]

By sheer coincidence, my father & his sister just took their mother to see where she grew up in the King City — Cambria — Paso Robles district. (They flew into San Jose & out of Burbank, taking a combination of Amtrak & rental cars along the way.) Apparently much of it is vineyards now, where her father used to raise wheat & cattle.