Page 39 - People & Places In Time

Jamestown to Tulare County
one factor in their relocating to Exeter have been the lack of snow it’s much easier to build a house without three feet of snow on the ground as was left behind in Colorado.
My Dad and his sisters Pearl and Velma grew to adulthood in this older home that my grandfather bought and remodeled before bringing his family to Cali- fornia. This became as well, the same home I will spend so much of my youth.
In the early 1930’s Roland’s nephew, Earnest Whitney moved to Exeter with his mother, my aunt Carrie, following the death of her husband in Washington. This was the beginning of Smith & Whitney Contractors and Builders. My grandfather with only a fourth-grade education had my aunt Pearl to do the bookkeeping; yet it was said he could figure the lumber needed to build a house, such that only a few small scraps remained at completion. Both men were superb craftsmen in all aspects of building. When they started a new house, they built every bit of it, from founda- tion and framing to the doors, windows and cabinets, then nailed down the shingled roof. I grew up in a house they built, and I’ve never forgot the since of quality their work conveyed.
As a company they built many homes throughout Exeter and about the area. In his early career Grandad built some of the buildings in a then mining camp, Miner- al King high in the Sierra mountains east of town. In 1947 they built the Sierra Motor Sales building for my Dad’s new Ford dealership. The King house south of town was a showplace with the look of a southern plantation mansion, complete with a grand curved staircase (that Grandad created by hand) inside the entrance.
From the time I was old enough, often with my father, I spent many hours inside the Smith & Whitney cabinet shop learning to build along side my father and
grandfather. No one has ever had better shop teachers than me. One particular time when I was trying to force a project together, Grandad stopped me and explained;
“if something doesn’t work as expected . . . stop what your doing, step back to see what the problem is . . . fix that and then move forward”. I’ll never forget this lesson on the importance of patience in construction or any project for that matter, even this book.
My grandfather was a good man and yet for the time I spent with him I can’t say that I knew him well. I rarly remember seeing him
smile, he was a stern man, but gentle, I always felt
comfortable with him there may be more of
him in me than I know. He always dressed the
same; gray wool slacks, a light blue, cotton
long sleeve dress shirt with a pencil and pen in
the pocket and his grey fedora.
My grandmother took care of the
home, the garden, the chickens, the laundry, the
sewing and all the time kept the cellar filled with
canned fruit and juice of all kinds. Lunch was important as far back as I remember. Grandmother prepared a meal every day at noon for Gran- dad to come home too. She used a black cast iron frying pan that I still own and use today adding sliced potatoes to be fried in bacon fat saved from breakfast and then a hamburger patty well done. There was a vegetable of some kind and a quarter wedge of iceberg lettuce over which he poured vinegar and oil from small flasks always kept on the table and salt and pepper. A hearty lunch for a hard-work- ing man one I could eat today but maybe not so healthy.
Main Street in Exeter at about the time my grandparents arrive from Bayfield, Colorado.