Were Those Really the "Good Ole Days"?

CHAPTER 1

T hey were packing up for a 2100 mile trip that Jake estimated would take them as much as 7 months. He was was also hitching up his giant horses that made up the team that would pull their Wiley Conestoga prairie schooner, a relatively light weight wagon, which measured eleven and a half feet from the ground to the top of the rear bows and the side panel was fourteen feet in length. The wife was busy tying up Piggy to the back of the wagon. Jake and Betty Joy Barker married each other when they were fifteen and it was truly love at first sight. She had a twin sister, but they had lost both parents when they were a year old and each was adopted by different families. She never knew what happed to Beattie Loy. The name Betty just sounded nice and gentle to Jake and after some research, he found that the language of origin is Hebrew, and it is used mainly in the Dutch and English languages. The name was first used in the 18th century.

Jake and Betty Joy were both 34 now. He was a brute of a man, a cabinet maker with a sweet nature and pale blue eyes that looked like they could literally see through a person. Betty Joy, on the other hand, was a frail-looking, petite woman and had beautiful brown sparkling eyes and matching long brown hair that she put in a bun at times, which Jake wasn’t very fond of. They were gathering up all the things that they could imagine for their exhausting journey. They loaded up flour, bacon, salt, sugar, rice and bread, salt pork, etc.; all of the things that they could think of that they would need. Jake hooked up his wonderful, strong draft horses.

Their names were Dasher, Dancer, Vixen and Cupid, Comet and Blitzen. Their names came from a poem written in 1823, so he thought it would be a tribute to the writer. The both of them were preparing to make their way across the desert and join the gold rush of 1849.

The greatest number of people would be arriving from the eastern states by covered wagon trains, usually by the Oregon-California Trail route. Leaving from the Missouri frontier, the 2,000 miles journey west took three to seven months. No one knows why they started off in the dead of a cold winter, especially since she was six months pregnant. Jake was the kind of man who believed that if a job was worth doing, it was worth doing right! The trip presented very few problems early on; in fact, things went without that many hitches and there were even some days that were not bitter cold and windy, but most of the other days made her want to turn around and go back to their nice, three year old log home with a wood burning fireplace that was quite cozy during frosty, winter days. It was obvious from the start that the squeaking Conestoga wheels were going to be a nuisance to both of them and there would be many, many breakdowns every few days or so.

The California gold rush, which started in 1848, led to a large boom in population, including considerable immigration. Between January 1848 and December 1849, the population of San Francisco increased from 1,000 to 25,000.

CHAPTER 2

T he rapid growth continued through the 1850s and under the influence of the 1859 Comstock Lode silver discovery. This rapid growth complicated city planning efforts, leaving a legacy of narrow streets that continued to cause traffic problems today. San Francisco became America’s largest city west of the Mississippi River, until it lost that title to Los Angeles in 1920. The population boom included many workers from China who came to work in the gold mines and later on the Transcontinental Railroad. The Chinatown district of the city became and is still one of the largest in the country; today as a result of that legacy, the city as a whole is roughly one-fifth Chinese, one of the largest concentrations outside of China.

Many businesses were founded to service the growing population that exists today, notably Levi Strauss & Co. clothing, Ghirardelli chocolate, and Wells Fargo bank. Many famous railroad, banking, and mining tycoons or robber barons such as Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland Stanford settled in the city in its Nob Hill neighborhood. The sites of their mansions are now famous and expensive San Francisco hotels, the Mark Hopkins Hotel and the Huntington Hotel.

He and Betty Joy knew that it was customary for the lady to sit on the hard oak seat without anything to cushion her bottom and the man was to walk beside the wagon. They never figured out why that was the case unless it was that the less the weight, the better for the team of horses to pull. About the first thing that Jake noticed was how much less stable the wagon was when loaded with all of their belongings as opposed to an empty one. They did, however make time to look and admire the ever-changing scenery, blanketed by silky, white snow.

The ice almost made it uncontrollable and the team lost their footing at times. Sure enough, in the middle of the third day, the horses pulled the wagon along with the entire family into a huge hole. Naturally, it jostled Betty Joy around, which caused some extreme pain at that stage of her pregnancy, which was already six months along. It took poor Jake, an unbelievably strong man, over three hours to get the wagon out of the nasty, muddy hole.

Obviously, the freezing cold did not help him either and of course, he ran a huge risk of frostbite and then followed by gangrene that would more than likely set in soon thereafter. This could be a big problem with his hands and feet, plus his face and his extremely large ears. His hat was constantly blowing off, so he had to stop and chase it down during the gale force winds, which by then had torn a gaping hole in the wagon’s canvas. Before leaving that morning, it was Betty Joy’s job to sew it back together. Once everything had settled down, Jake realized that one of the reins had broken in all of the panic time when both of his horses reared up as high as they possibly could. This meant that his only option was to ask Betty Joy to sew it up also, as she did with the canvas wagon cover. Once this was done and almost like new, it was time to trudge on and not get behind schedule.

CHAPTER 3

T hen, they started looking for a place with at least a bit of shelter from the never-ending wind. It was a good time for them all to relax and take a break and after that, Betty Joy would take charge in her outdoor kitchen . Jake thought that she cooked for him as though he were a king and he always made a point of saying a quite genuine thank you to her. Then, he would always give her a peck on her right rosy cheek. There was nothing better than an outdoor, campsite meal in their minds. She absolutely loved to bake her famous, tasty dough bread most of all. Jake loved it too, but high on his list, he was a venison, potatoes and gravy man through and through.

The only thing that he missed at every meal was not having Betty Joy’s delicious butter on his plate to go with her absolutely perfect biscuits, but of course, that was out of the question, because good ‘ole Bessie had not tagged along as was the original plan. That was a really sad story in itself, because she was on the ground when Jake went to hook her up to the wagon. It turned out that she had a bovine disease and she died right there where she lay within just a few moments. This was still an open wound for all of them, even for Max, their beloved Labrador/Kelpie dog from Australia, an excellent herding mixture. Max and Bessie they had become great pals over the years. Now, getting another cow would be the next priority before they could leave.

His next door neighbor had some good milk cows, some of which he was willing to sell for $6.00, which Jake knew was too high compared to market prices, but time was a wastin’ and he didn’t have any to spare. Their first two days and nights were totally uneventful, traveling 8 hours per day, except for Sundays, a day of rest according to the Bible. Generally, the surrounding ground was so bare that he had a terribly hard time finding enough twigs and small branches, much less large enough logs to make a significant fire, but after he got it going, it turned out to be fierce and hot. He always parked the wagon in just the right spot, to block it from the fierce, frigid wind. He wanted it hot enough to cook their steaks very well done, almost black, except for his. It must be blackened on the outside also, but red inside with no blood dripping. That was the only way that he would eat a good venison steak, preferably from the tender back strap, but he liked it just as well when it was dipped in milk, floured and he could salt and pepper to taste. He had particular mind set, because he could not stand it when his mean, strict father forced him to eat them rare, with bright red blood still pouring out of them. It would literally make him so ill he had to regurgitate over and over. His mom always was on his side, but that never worked to the benefit of six year old Jake.

CHAPTER 4

T he next morning, Max was barking loudly and at the same time sounded somewhat like a hound dog. Things had gone so smoothly up to then and he wasn’t on a leash, he was on a dead run toward a teeth-bearing puma. Of course, they tangled and rolled on the ground as though they were playing, but this was certainly no friendly game! Therefore, Jake waited as long as he could, not unlike stalking a deer for food with his 30*30 Winchester. Shaking and also holding his breath as long as possible, his lungs felt like they were going to explode at any second. Then, he gently and with all the calmness he could drum up, he let a round go and after the loud, booming shot, he closed his eyes, for fear that the worst had just happened. If this were to turn out to be a horrible judgment, he would feel guilty for the rest of his life on earth and would need to grieve for this unfortunate deed forever. Jake and Betty Joy both were aware that all creatures go to heaven, but now, surely it may well be that it