The Yampa House

The Historian's of Moffatt County say that the Indian word for 'bear' is 'yampa'. I don't really speak Indian, so I guess I'll have to take their word for it. I know where your mind is going with this, but the answer is "no, I didn't wrestle a bear when I was in elementary school"! There were a lot of things in the small town of Craig named 'Yampa'. Mainly, the Yampa River. The Yampa River was a fairly good size river and ran through the valley where my hometown sat. Of course, that meant that the entire valley was called the 'Yampa Valley', and many things around town were named after the bear. For example, my Dad worked for the Yampa Valley Creamery. There was a Yampa Elementary School. And the main north/south street that ran through downtown Craig was named 'Yampa'.

That's where we were living when the above picture was taken. It was the 600 block of Yampa Street, and it was just North of Downtown Craig. The house is no longer there; it is now the parking lot for the Bank at the corner of 6th and Yampa. The house was old, even in the 60's when we were living there. The house was unusually shaped in my opinion. Basically square at the base, with a porch that ran the length of the front side of the house. An unattached garage in the back left side of the house. The unusual part was the roof. All four side of the roof ran up to an 8 foot square, or flat section at the top of the house. I found a picture of a similar house here in Nampa. Unlike the Yampa house,this one is in great shape and well taken care of...but the shape of the house is really what I want you to see.



If parents really knew what their kids did when they were not around...boy, what an eye opener that would be. My mother was struggling to get by in those days and I'm not sure who was watching us, if anyone. Perhaps one of my older sisters. Maybe Beth was somewhere else, and I was home alone after school?? I pulled some good ones there at the Yampa house.

My friend Andy and I were typical boys. We rode our bikes all over town. We made bow and arrows out of sticks we cut from a willow. It's a wonder we never put an eye out. The arrows flew pretty good considering it was all home made with a willow and some string. My fellow 911 employees would be saddened to know that I played on the phone one time (pre-911) and the operator finally shut the phone off. I remember being so scared that I was going to have to explain the dead phone to my mother when she got home. The operator turned it on before I had to do that...whew!! I didn't play on the phone any more. Oh yeah, there was the time I tried to make a homemade worm electrode. I had seen someone put an electrode in the ground which forced the worms to exit to the surface. So, I tried to make my own. A couple of wires attached to a screwdriver and whah-la. There was sparks, smoke, and a big black spot at the electrical outlet... but no worms.

We had endless hours of fun on the roof of that old house. From the fence by the garage, we could climb up onto the roof of the garage. Then, a 4 foot jump from the garage to the back of the house. Then straight up the roof to that flat section on top of the house. When we reached the top, 2 little 5th grade boys were on the top of the world. We could run down the front to the porch. Or down the back to the add-on roof. Both of the sides went to a nice 12-14 foot free-fall to the ground. So we were smart enough to stay off the sides. Still, it had to be dangerous. I'm sure my mother would not have approved. But she was working...and we were crazy fool headed boys. It's a wonder I did not fall to my death, or get electrocuted, or fall and crack my skull... hmmm... maybe I did...


Ahh, those were the days. I remember being at the age where I could follow a recipe and cook things at that house. I loved to make Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. I made them often. And yes sir ree Bob, I ate the cookie dough. We had never heard of salmonella poisoning in those days. Who cares if there are raw eggs in the dough. Yum-yum cookie dough. I liked my cookies crunchy, so I always almost burnt a couple of batches at the end. Just for me! I never got salmonella and died. I think I would have remembered that.

I do remember picking out a Birthday card for my Mother one year. I was so proud of that card. It had multiple pages, cute animations, nice things to say about good old Mom. And everyone gathered around the table as she read it out loud. I was so proud until she got to the end of the card and it read "From your loving Hubby"...and everybody burst into laughter. I cried in my room for at least an hour. And despite all the apologetic trips to the room everyone made...it still makes me sad today. Kids are fragile at that age I guess...and so are old men. Nevertheless, Happy Birthday Mom! Hubby was just not in my 5th grade vocabulary.

I think I'll go for now. I think I'll go make some Chocolate Chip Cookies.

P.S. I still like raw cookie dough.

My First Camera

Well, this is where it all begins. What's that you say? The idea for me to write this series of stories came about because my sister Beth posted the picture you see at the top of this blog. It's a picture of Beth and me in the front yard of our house on Yampa Street in Craig. Another cold winter day in the high country town of Craig. I saw the picture and immediately began remembering events and stories about the elementary age boy they called Scinton Clinton, Me!

My Grandpa Coulson lived in Compton California. When my grandparents bought their house, Compton was a nice place to live. My Grandparents house was just north of Long beach, California. It was a typical house for that time and area. A small 2 bedroom house with a single unattached garage. This is what it looks like today:


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When I was in the 5th grade, the house was younger and in much better shape than it is now. You're probably wondering why I am talking about California instead of Colorado. Grandpa Coulson was my Mother's Dad. He was not a homesteader, rather, he drove a Street Car. And, NO, it was not named 'Desire'. My Grandpa lived in California with my Grandma Coulson. Duh! They were Jim and Flo.

Well that house you see on Pannes street was a place we would visit periodically. It was an 18 hour trip from Craig to Compton in those days. I've lived a lot of places over the years, but I have never forgotten the address of that house for some reason. Sixteen-five-eighteen Pannes (pan-ez). I've forgotten a lot of the addresses of places where I've lived...but never that one. Anyway, that old house on Pannes had 2 Magnolia trees in the front yard. Those trees dropped leaves every day of the year. I hated those trees! Hated raking leaves too. Grandma had her cherished rose tree in the front yard. In the back there was an Orange tree, an Apricot, and 2 plum trees. (Plum jelly is the best!)

In the Garage, Grandpa Coulson parked his white Studebaker. In that same garage, Grandma had a little stove and she would cook her yummy sweet pickles in there. On the back of the garage, Grandpa had built a little shop. Grandpa also built a dark room in that garage. Yes, a darkroom, and it was there he would develop his pictures. Now Grandpa must have had a lot of spare time, (or he just needed a reason to get away from Grandma, because he had a lot of hobbies. For example, Grandpa had a wood shop, his darkroom, his Studebaker car; he built a swing set, fenced and maintained a large yard, built an enclosed patio, watched lots of baseball, worked a job, played a mean game of checkers, and kept my Grandma happy. Whew!

But for this story, the darkroom gets the spotlight. My Grandpa literally took and developed thousands of pictures. We had boxes and boxes of pictures. Sometimes duplicate after duplicate of the same picture. And Grandpa had 10 grandchildren, so you can imagine all the photogenic faces he had to practice on. Those old pictures are still floating around today. I think visiting Grandpa gave me the itch to want a camera. And you know how an itch will bother a 10 year old boy. He'll scratch it till it bleeds.

Now our family had a camera mind you. It was a brand new fancy 35 mm camera my Dad had brought home one day. I'm sure it was state of the art for the mid 1960's. The trouble was, if everything was not just right...the pictures would not turn out right. Can't tell you how many dark or blurry pictures we had in those days. But rest assured the numbers were high. Of course the little 10 year old boy was not allowed to play with the fancy camera. So, Skinton wanted a camera! A camera of his very own.

I can't remember when I got it. Probably a Christmas or a Birthday present. But finally I had a camera of my very own. It is actually a miracle if you think about it. We were in hard times about then. My Dad was gone. My mom was raising us kids by herself. She was working full time at the Cashway Store, trying to keep food on the table. We had moved from our nice house on the west side of town to one of the oldest houses in town. My older brother was working at Bill's Supermarket after school and giving all the money to my mother to buy groceries. And somehow, in the midst of all the struggling to survive...the 10 year old got a camera. Thanks Mom.

It was a small rectangular box camera. About 6 inches long and 5 inches high, and maybe 4 inches wide as best as I can remember. It looked something like this:





I was looking for a photo online, but the I had camera was so old and such a cheap camera, I couldn't even find a picture of one that looked the same. I only took black and white photo's with it. I'm not sure if it would have taken color photo's. When you took a picture, you would hold the camera about waist level, look down into the top of the camera to see what you were taking a photo of, and then snap the shutter and manually wind the film to the next position. Not the greatest of quality...as you can see, but it was my camera, and I was taking pictures. I'm not sure where the money came from to develop them. I know I never had my own dark room. We did have a pretty dark garage however. But that's another story.

So, there I am in the cold Craig winter holding up my shoeless little sister in the Colorado snow. I don't know who took the photo, but I'm in it. And I was looking like the toughest, coolest, big brother in all the world. Well, except for the hair.

A boy and his camera, have you ever heard a snappier short story? I shutter to think what I shall capture in my little square head next. Stay tuned for more....film at 11:00. "Good Night Chet"..."Good Night David".

My bad hair day!

OK. First things first. What is with that hairdo? I've looked at that picture over and over again. And no matter which way I spin the photo...I can't figure out how that little tuft of hair in the middle of my forehead got there. Granted, my mother did give me childhood haircuts. But even on her worst day of hair cutting, I can't see her giving me that Dracula hair style. Minus the wild hair, I'm a pretty good looking kid. And skinny! Ahhh, bring back the Wonder Years so I can be thin again.

At least Beth has her hair intact. Not that she always did. Poor Beth, when she was a little younger than we see her in this photo, her older sisters (we won't mention any names) would play dress up with her. One time they totally teased her hair so that her hair looked something like Phyllis Diller.



http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=16518+pannes,compton,ca&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.999937,50.712891&ie=UTF8&ll=33.889744,-118.201475&spn=0,359.987619&z=16&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=33.88366,-118.20179&panoid=ugzFbyCPTDq9i-Ea_bH-5g&cbp=12,78.33260840484462,,0,5&iwstate1=dir

Only not that styled.

But you have to admit she was cute. Then there was the time they took her picture with nothing on but a ribbon. I think the older sisters had too much time on their hands.

I suppose we all had our crazy doo's back in those days. (Don't make me produce the photo's) And you all know who you are! The really funny part is that we thought the doo's were stylish at the time. Still, none were as bad as the one I am sporting in above photo.

My Dad had short curly hair and pretty much kept it the same style his whole life. (At least as much as I knew him) As he got older, he had that little bald spot on the top of his head. He passed that on to me...thanks Dad. My Mom and Dad divorced before this photo. Regardless of all that, my Mom never really stopped loving my Dad. I remember one time she saw him in town in a crowd of people. She didn't talk to him, she really didn't even see his face. But she recognized his head and that bald spot on the top of his head. She said she would recognize it anywhere. And ya know?...For some reason, I always associate that story with my Mom still loving my Dad. I'm not for sure if it was because of something else she said at the time, or the way she said it, or the look in her eyes when she thought about it...but divorced or not...Don Gardner was always the love of Eva Gardner.

The Wonder Years. Not!

One never really knows what the human mind is going to remember. Especially when trying to recall events that happened some 40 years ago. Still, when I looked at that old photo of Beth and me...my old dinosaur brain kind of got an adrenaline burst. My mind was jumping from event to event and idea to idea so fast, I was even confusing myself. [OK, so that's pretty easy]

So, I took a step back and decided that the tiny few who actually read this blog, would probably get a lot more satisfaction from the reading, if I organized my thoughts a bit. Now I assure you this is not the beginning of another writing like the 'Wonder Years'. Even if it was, it would not be the 'Wonder' of the years; but more likely the: 'I wonder what the hell that kid was thinking' years?

I grew up in a small town in Northwestern corner of Colorado. The town was named Craig, and it actually has a very historic connection to my family. Not many people in this country can lay hold to the fact that their grandparents, or parents, homesteaded land in the United States of America. Well, my family can. The claim is thanks to my grandfather Art Gardner and his son Don Gardner. Of course, all that homesteading took place long before that picture of Beth and me was taken. I myself have never attempted any actual homesteading. Still...I do have that 'determined' look in my eye's...Wouldn't you agree?

Now Craig was really not all that small. The population was about 4000 when I was roaming the streets. To me however, it was huge. Now if you want to talk small town, then we should talk about the country where Art and Don homesteaded. When they went to town, they traveled down a rocky road to Greystone Colorado. There they could pick up the mail and get supplies. There was a sign as you entered Greystone that said: [Greystone: Population 2]. Greystone had the only working gas pump I had ever seen, or have seen since, where you measured the amount of gas you were purchasing visually. A customer would hand pump the gas up into the glass jar, and then disperse it via gravity into their vehicle. Hey, I saw it with my own eyes. Oh man, have we come a long way baby?!

The gas pump was along these lines:


There will be time for homestead stories I imagine. I really just want to provide a little history for some of you who have not heard the family tale before. The photo of Beth and me was taken when I was in the 5th grade. That would have made me about 10 or perhaps 11.

I was born in the month of October. So, when it came time to start Kindergarten, I was almost old enough to go when school started in September...but almost was not good enough and I had to wait another year to start. So, instead on starting when I was 4, and being age 5 throughout the majority of the school year, I had to wait until I was 5 to start, and was age 6 through the majority of Kindergarten. And, it was that way all my life. I was always the oldest in my class. And while most kids were 17 when graduating from High School. I was the older classman at 18. But I'm not bitter. I'm over it. I doesn't bother me much anymore. Actually, looking back, I think it made me a better student.

Craig! The town where I spent my elemantary school years. I remember the winters were hard. On the evening news with Chet & David, Craig was often listed as the coldest town in the Continental United States. The snow was heavy, but then again, I rode my first snow machine in Craig. It was a real Ski-doo! Probably considered vintage now days. Sledding was a fun memory too. Lots of winter sports. Well, that should give you a little glimpse into the Big Little City of Craig. I hope you enjoy hearing about the adventures of Scinton Clinton.

A Little Tease

I'm going to try to do a little series about my childhood in Smalltown America. Not sure whether it will be a really cool thing...or a bust. Perhaps, if I had some better writing skills, the potential would be greater. But alas, "I yam what I yam". I was actually going to do a single blog posting about the photo you see of 'me and my little sister Beth'. But I started typing and rambling and before I knew it I was babbling like Robert Redford in the Electric Horseman. It was obvious that I had a lot of stories and rather than cram them into one long posting I will try to compose a series of short stories about the boy they called Skinton Clinton. Who, by the way, was really 'Scinton Clinton' as my Mother spelled it in the day. I even screwed that up!