Family Reunited My father had got married in 1907 to Nellie Wells, who had lost her husband in a saw mill accident. They were living in Slatington, near Kelso, not far from Placerville. They came to San Francisco and got me and took me to their home. I liked Nellie very much, she was very kind to me. I remember she had a canary and it laid eggs and tried to hatch them and she (Nellie) explained to me they wouldn't because there was no papa bird. How long I lived there I don't know, but my cousin Johnnie Roberts who had gone to Alaska with my Dad was there and I had a yen for frogs and I was always catching them and playing with them. He helped me catch a bunch one evening. Nellie tried to persuade me to leave them alone, but I got a lot of fun with them making them jump. We moved from there to Clarksville again, next door to where I was born on the main road. Then my father brought another kid home one day and I remember at this time Nellie had a baby and she called her Julisa (Julia?) Catherine. The little boy turned out to be my little brother Rafael, so I had someone to play with. We next brought Otto home, he had been staying with Phoebe at Doc and Rheas' home. It was different when Otto came, he was so much older than my brother Rafael and I. He always seemed to boss us around. My father had bought him an air gun and one day when he was shooting orioles in a fig tree I came along and scared the birds on him. So he shot me twice. One pellet hit me in the nose and the other hit me in the forehead. Where I was shot, blood was coming and I ran screaming to the house. My father cleaned my face and dug out the pellets. He went ouside and I followed him. Otto had run and hid behind the barn, but my father got him and gave him a good tanning and I remember he took the beebee gun and wrapped it against the side of the barn til it was smashed. I used to follow Granpa Wells around and I went prospecting with him a lot. He taught me to pan gravel for gold and every once in a while I found gold. He used to get a kick out of me panning and said, "someday you will be a good prospector." He and Grandma Wells were very king to us kids and I was her favorite. I knew I was the favorite with stepmother Nellie. Looking back, these were very happy years. Rafael and I were just a couple of little boys barefoot, a pair of overalls and a shirt on. We wandered the hills around Clarkville and tried to capture ground squirrels, and we knew where the birds nests, ever watchful for rattlesnakes. We followed Carson Creek down and sometimes carried a pan and would clean crevices and pan for gold dust, which we often found and hoarded it like little misers -- also quicksilver. Once I had the privilege to find one nugget that was worth five dollars. It was as big as my little fingernail. I put it in my mouth and held it between my teeth and ran home to show it. When I got home, in my excitement I swallowed it. My father gave me castor oil and checked my stools till he got it. I always used a little bottle to put the gold in after that. We roamed the hills in the spring, in February wading through the Creamy flowers. We knew where they grew the thickest and also where the Johnnie Jumps grew and ferns, then we loved to wade through the poppies when they were in full bloom. The happy carefree days of childhood. I went to the little school in Clarksville, met the other ranch kids -- names I hardly remember. Looking back, I realize that Phoebe was home with us only during the summer and she returned to Rhea's to go to school. I remember picking a water boiler of mushrooms. How I loved to eat them. We learned to pick only the fresh ones with pink gills. The grounds then seemed to be covered with them. One year we had a lot of turkeys sent out to us and Otto and I had to herd them each day to the oak forest, which was some three miles away from our place. Otto had his new rifle and I had to carry an old rifle my father had - a 40-55 - which grew very heavy for me. I remember coming by the cememtery and Otto said I couldn't hit a (marble) dove on a monument, so he dared me to try. I rested the rifle on the fence and aimed and blew the dove off. One day my father came riding into the yard pell mell. He jumped off his horse and I stood there looking at him wondering what was his hurry. He came toward me with his quirt in hand and the next thing I knew he was whaling me. Then Otto came out of the barn and he was after him. Afterward he came in the house where I had run and Nellie protected me and asked what the trouble was. He told her how he had had to pay five dollars for a new dove to the family who owned the monument as someone had seen Otto and I shooting the dove off. Nellie rubbed my back with lard covering the welts the whip had raised on my back. Otto had run(ned) off to the hills and didn't how up until dark. His back was as bad as mine. I had one good friend, Frank Griggs, who was a cripple who lived in the road about a quarter mile from out house. I used to go over and talk with him. He was my confidant. I remember he used to give me the devil for taking young birds from the nest and explained they were too young and that was why they died on me. He taught me how to snare bigger birds which would live longer in captivity. I remember when I tired him he would shoo me home, but most of the time he enjoyed my company and always asked me to come over anytime. He had flowers growing in his yard, which I always loved and would help him planting them and weeding them. to be continued . . .