You’ve heard of Jesse James? Bonnie and Clyde? The Dalton Gang? These were folk heroes of the dust bowl survivors during the Great Depression. The people who came out to the West Coast looking for work did not approve of these gangs, but, in a way, they admired their gutsiness to survive in a situation that was sometimes not survivable.

But have you heard of the Crannell Gang? Not train robbers. Not bank robbers. Not even hoodlums. Just a bunch of loggers’ sons who were a little bit wild. Members of the Crannell Gang participated in school activities at Arcata High School. Ken Gipson was Junior and Senior Class President for one semester each, and Student Body President his senior year. Keith Cole was Senior Class President for one semester. Weston Walch was the recipient of the White Letterman’s Sweater Award for most extra-curricular activities.

The Crannell Gang signed up for choir when the choir instructor, Ruth Carroll, needed more male voices, even though carrying a tune was alien to some of them. They went out for track with Coach Harry Stoddard and played football for Coach Frannie Moore.

Some of them were on the team that beat Eureka High School in football in 1948. In order to stay after school for practice, they missed the school bus going north. Since there was no activities bus, they hitchhiked back up Highway 101 to Crannell, usually in the rain. People in the area knew them, and gave them rides. If they couldn’t hitch a ride they walked the seven miles home.

The Crannell boys treated their girlfriends with respect. They did not sit in a car outside a girl’s house and blow the horn for her to come out. They went up to the porch, knocked on the door, shook hands with the girl’s father and looked him in the eye. They sat on the edge of a chair and made conversation with the parents while they waited for their dates to appear. They were clean, mannerly, hard working, and obeyed their parents, but they were … just a little bit wild.

These children of the Depression knew about hard times. As small children, many of them had gone to bed at night more than once on an empty stomach. Most of them got jobs as soon as they were old enough to work—in the fields weeding and harvesting carrots, or picking strawberries. Ken Gipson got up at 4 a.m. for his newspaper route to deliver papers before 5 a.m. when the men left on the work train for the woods. Then he got ready for school and ran back down the hill to catch the school bus by the Company Store. Summers, while going to high school and college, he worked in the woods.

Like most boys, the Gang wore shrink-to-fit Levi’s turned up at the bottoms to reveal white socks and dark brown or black dress shoes— brogans, wingtips, or loafers. Many rolled a soft pack of cigarettes up in one sleeve of their plain white T- shirts. They worked on old cars and drove them fast. The Crannell Gang was lucky and did not meet with any serious accidents, but more than one boy back then was killed on Highway 101 when he hit a redwood tree. Like most of their peers, the Gang smoked cigarettes and drank beer when they could get it, tossing the empty bottles over the roof of the car into the hedgerows of blackberry briers, as they roared down country lanes and skidded around the sharp right-angle turns that framed farm fields.

One night, they decided to go to San Francisco in Ernie Rohl’s Dodge coupe, a two-door car with one bench seat. They all chipped in what money they had. Ken emptied his pockets and found 41 cents. The others each had a little more. They decided they had enough money for gas and maybe something to eat. Three boys sat in front, and the other two climbed into the trunk, open to the inside of the car and big enough for the mattress Ernie kept back there. They lay down flat, taking turns riding with the boys on the front seat all the way to the San Francisco Bay area, a trip that in 1947 usually took ten hours, but one they made in five and a half hours. They drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. Got out and looked at San Francisco. They each bought a five-cent candy bar, turned the Dodge around, and came back home.

Ken bought a 1934 Buick sedan in mint condition he found sitting in a garage. One day as he drove the Buick around loaded with his friends, he “dug out” and broke the axle. That was the end of the Buick. Then he bought a 1931 Chevrolet and painted it the Arcata High School colors: black and orange. On top of this paint job, he had lettered “PEACHES, HERE’S YOUR CAN,” and “DON’T LAUGH, YOUR DAUGHTER MAY BE RIDING IN HERE.” One day the gang took their wheels to the Crannell baseball diamond that had once been a lumber drying yard, and skidded the cars around, burning rubber and sending up showers of gravel and dust. When they tired of that, they stopped for a smoke. Ken walked over to the Dodge where Ernie sat with the door open. Ken noticed Ernie held a three-inch firecracker down low between his knees. When Ernie touched his cigarette to the fuse. Ken slammed the car door shut. Instead of Ken getting blasted with an exploding firecracker, the firecracker went off on Ernie’s lap.

Vic Dobrec owned a Model T Roadster, a car with three pedals on the floor for shifting gears. One night, Vic and some of the boys drove the Model T up to Redwood Park in Arcata, weaving in and out and around the huge redwood trees. Vic accidentally ran into a tree, bending the yoke that held the wheels. He hooked one end of a chain to the yoke and the other end to a tree and backed up fast. When they reached the end of the chain, the yoke straightened out, and Vic could drive his car again.

The wheels on Henry Ford’s Model T automobiles were made with wooden spokes. On another occasion, Vic had a load of kids in his car and made a sharp turn in front of the home of the Arcata High School music teacher, Ruth Carroll. The pressure collapsed one wheel and scattered wooden spokes all over the street.

Tony Hyatt did not have a car, but his father let him drive his 1941 Buick 4-door sedan.

However, Reggie Davis was driving the Buick the day the car turned over on the way to Blue Lake. Reggie cut a corner too sharp and rolled the Buick upside down out in a field. Nobody was badly hurt, but they all decided to pretend to be dead when people in cars passing by stopped to help. Gas leaked out of the tank. Fumes filled the air. Luckily, no one decided to light a cigarette. To the great relief of the rescuers, the boys all got up, turned the car back on its wheels and continued on their way.

Freshwater Pool held diving competitions in those days. Admission was charged to see the show. Ernie would stuff as many boys as he could into the back of the Dodge on top of the mattress. Then he and one boy in the passenger seat would pay to get into the pool grounds. The rest got in free.

Ernie Rohl married Madge McKenzie. Weston Walch came home from the College of the Pacific to marry JoAnn McNabb. Keith Cole married Betty Nelson. These boys went to work in the woods, and moved their brides to houses in Crannell. Some of them went on to other things. Wes went to work in Chile and Indonesia for the Simpson Timber Company. Keith Cole narrowly escaped death in the woods one day when a log slipped out of its choker as it was being hauled up hill. The log barreled back down toward Keith who either was far enough out of its path to escape being hit, or maybe was able to throw himself into a slight depression so the log passed over him. He quit working in the woods that day and instead went to work driving a bread truck.

Ken Gipson went steady with Pat Bray through high school, but ended up marrying me when he graduated from Humboldt State College.

Tony Hyatt, son of Hammond Lumber Company woods manager Waldron Hyatt, whose mother, Audrey Hyatt, had been a schoolteacher, was maybe a little bit wilder than the rest, and he became sort of a leader in the Crannell Gang. Perhaps he needed to prove to himself that he was no different than the others, even though his father was the boss over their fathers. All the girls at Arcata High School seemed to like Tony Hyatt, but he went away to college and married a girl named Pat.

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The story above is from the Spring 2011 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.