CELEBRATING NEW BEGINNINGS

The goldrush town of Jamestown is near enough to Murphys to stroll and spend an hour or two. We walked the town and took some pictures. The light was bright and imposing and warming for a coldish November day. Casting long shadows on flagstones. When I moved to the motherlode, both ends of town still had remnants of their old boardwalk. Gone, now.

The town wasn't exactly proud of its entrepreneur founder, but finally decided to recognize John James for whom the town is named. Something everyone smiles about now. At least he didn't get run out of town with tar and feathers. (Double click the photo)

The town burned down in 1885 so the oldest buildings date from 1887.

This tree, the owner of the building behind it, told me  was in an old picture of when his building was being built in 1887.

It is an evergreen that I don't recognize. He didn't know either.

Don't you just love that there was a time when people found it desirable and worth the time to make utilitarian objects, like door handles, so beautiful?

Jamestown is well known for its antique stores, there are many, and we poked around looking for a small table I would like to place next to my living room window. I found two I liked, but wasn't bright enough to bring accurate measurements. They looked to be the right size?

One store had this line of hanging animal traps with the sign at the bottom unreadable until I loaded my pictures into the computer. Not much of a deterrent to theft if you can't see it.

Economic recovery is slower in the mother lode than the cities. And we all worry about it. The Antiques stores are holding well, but several restaurants were gone. The Willow has been a landmark in Jamestown since before I arrived. I used to like their fondue, but I haven't eaten there in years, and we didn't stop for lunch because neighbor Jan was having a pot luck celebrating new beginnings, thanking her helpful friends.
It was afternoon of a day with a new moon, a new housemate for Jan, new opportunities for Leslie and...by chance, a new heart for a neighbor. The transplant was the day before yesterday.

Jan's friend, Dixie, is a Wiccan believer and she lit a sage smoker and gave voice to a spell for all of us, for new beginnings, prosperity and good health.

I was wearing a necklace that assumes any shape you put it in. Leslie turned it into the ying/yang life sign for me.  Dixie read an invocation and we all said a prayer for our hospitalized neighbor. Heart transplants seem common, but when it happens to someone you know, you suddenly realize how miraculous it is. We also remembered the person who donated a heart that someone else may live. Amen!

GHOSTS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD-HERE.

The Mother Lode has an abundance of ghosts and spirits that reside or at least visit local hotels. Why hotels? Well, each has its own story. Columbia's Fallon House, had a paranormal researcher use high tech instruments to see if they were haunted. His conclusion? "Yup, You've got ghosts." Visitors and employees have reported ghosts in the Murphys Hotel, Jamestown's National Hotel and Willow Hotel. Columbia's City Hotel, Dorrington's only hotel, Sonora's Gunn House, and Groveland's Hotel Charlotte. But, the most well known is the Hotel Leger in Mokelumne Hill. The ghost has been continually reported from the early gold mining days and people still get spooked in the old inn. None of the ghosts are dangerous, some hug men, others tuck you into your sheets or move things about. So, if you are looking, come on up and try one of the rooms. The employees know which rooms are most likely to experience a visit.

What gets my attention are stories from children who have no idea what sensationalism is all about. Like the 9 year old boy who told his mother, as they drove by a certain spot, on a street in their new neighborhood. "That's where the car hit me!"   She ignored it the first time. Then, when he described being on his bike, and dying. She objected, but he was so chillingly serious she became intent on debunking and defusing his constant attention to that place. She talked to people in the neighborhood, and discovered newspaper articles about a boy who was killed in that exact manner, at that exact spot, many years earlier.

If I knew the mother? But I don't. Still, I've heard a number of them and they give me pause. I have to ask myself, why would a mother put her reputation and that of her child at risk to ridicule? And what benefit does such a tale serve them? Unless it happens to me, I guess I'll never know.

STONE FENCES AND CORRALS

In the 1860's, livestock owners allowed their cattle or sheep to run unfettered anywhere they chose to graze. But, in the 1870s, California passed laws to protect farmer's crops from livestock. Ranchers were held liable for damage from their herds whether the farm had a fence or not. Tuolumne, Amador and Calaveras Counties have an abundance of rock fences and corrals. The native rocky terrain is the result of prehistoric volcanic flows, a material that was plentiful and cheap. These stone fences and corrals are clearly visible on private and public lands from the highways. The barriers kept animals from trespassing and also helped keep fires from spreading. They were built by Chinese laborers, stonemasons, ranchers, prospectors and homesteaders and are still serving as fences today, a testament to the stone workers craftsmanship of long ago since they were built without mortar. Its called "laid dry". Some of the oldest examples are found at the Russell and Twist ranches and the Crimea House near Jamestown on Highway 108 that date back to the 1850s.