An Old Photo


 Lawrence (on the left) and Riley Davis.  

I don't know if I have shared this photo on my blog before or not.  My father, Lawrence, was a lumberjack in his younger years in Northern California, there in the coastal redwoods of Humboldt County...he probably worked up in the mountains of the neighboring counties as well, but I am not for sure of that.  

Perhaps I have shared stories of his before on here.  I am sure I have shared some on Facebook.  I wish I could hear him tell them again.  I don't remember him telling much about Riley working with him felling trees.  Riley was a sea man.  He and his second wife owned a ship and spent many years sailing up and down the East and South coasts of the USA. He had plenty of tales too.  I remember Shirley, his second wife, telling how she was swimming in a bay in Louisiana, or maybe it was Florida, and a gator was in there with her and Riley started yelling at her to swim faster.  My memory of her telling that is very vague, so I am not sure of the veracity of it.  Riley had some great photos of himself and his ship.  I wish I could find them, or knew who had them now.  Very likely they have long been trashed.  

It was, I believe, when I was in Jr High that Riley and Shirley came and lived on our place there in Humboldt County.  That was after he was older, in his 50s or 60s perhaps; his sailing days far behind him.  Daddy was glad to have his little brother there close to him, but there was a bit of tension too.  I am not clear what it was about.  I was only 12, maybe, and they kept most of the tension clear of me.  My brother probably understood more of it than I did.  But I think he was in the Marines at the time, so I am not sure. When their mother, my Grandmother Davis (strictly "Grandmother," never Grandma or Granny or anything shortened) passed I think my dad inherited the property there in CA.  So he promised half of it to Riley when Riley wanted to retire from his wanderings and settle down.  Riley did live there on the place for several years, maybe 8?  I am not sure.  But eventually he opened a locksmith shop in McK and lived there in the back room.  They never did get the land legally split, though they looked into it.  I think there were too many legal loopholes. 

At any rate.  The middle brother, Milton, was a school teacher who got into gold mining after he retired.  He'd take groups up to Alaska on gold panning expeditions.  I do wish that Daddy had been more adventurous and we had gone up there one summer to do that.  But perhaps Mom wouldn't have gone for that.  She wasn't much of a traveler; she was a strict homebody and didn't like getting too far from home, even overnight.

Well, none of this rambling has anything much to do with the above photo.  But I just want to get some memories down. 

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