Page 117 - People & Places In Time

Yokohl Valley
Between the Sierras and reality the School was out and with my friend and neighbor
Yokohl Valley extends east into the foothills beyond Rocky Hill, near Exeter. It is the place that has remained a refuge to me for a lifetime.
It can be said that I’m my father’s son; this from my earliest memories of my dad asking “do you want
to take a ride?” Most often this would be on a Sunday afternoon, or after dinner on some warm summer evening. Just the two of us would drive out of town, past the Orange groves and rows of Thompson and Emperor Grapes east into the foothills. If not over Rocky Hill into Yokohl valley then toward Three Rivers. In any case into the Oak and Sycamore covered foothills with green grass in spring turning golden for the rest of the year.
A memory that is permanently imprinted in me from these early trips is the smell of Milk Weed; it’s there as the valley warms in early summer, growing stronger in the late afternoon. It’s present, whether driving with the windows down, riding my bike or just sitting down to enjoy the beauty of it all, a constant reminder that I’m in a comfortable place.
As a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, with a lunch packed by my mother; on foot or bicycle, my BB- gun at hand I was prepared for whatever discovery might lay ahead. On one trip that gun slipped from my bike’s handlebars. I turned just in time to glimpse the rifle butt, helplessly watching as it disappears into the waters of the Friant-Kern canal.
Black & white Schwin 3-speed bicycle that I road into Yokohl Valley - my Christmas present in 1956.
alongside, we are off. The early summer days are warm, but the bridge at Yokohl creek would provide perfect shade on the sand beneath, so for Steve Johnson and myself, here was our lunch spot of choice. Family, friends and our home were two miles and a steep hill climb away. This valley became our place of adventure, with freedom to explore without concern.
Later, in my teenage years while dove hunting on the Gill Cattle Ranch with my father, we came upon a dilapidated wooden water tower and a friend of mine Dave Shultz, who was hunting with us thought he might climb the tower, the consequences of which didn’t seem to matter. As David started up he intruded on a pair
of nesting snow white barn owls; the sight of the owls bolting the tower and my startled surprise as my friend dropped to the ground has never left me, and he did survive the fall.
I will always remember those late summer Dove hunting trips with my father and friends, especially
on Labor Day weekend; followed by a Bar-B-Que in
the evening that included six or eight families. Yet I’ve changed; I don’t feel that I’m able to hunt to kill anymore.
There were warm summer evening drives taking in the smells and long hikes to the top of isolated hills (during a time when they were still accessible; sadly posted “No Trespassing” today).
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