The night after Eureka High School let out for the summer of 1939,1 went to Camp Bauer to dance until 2 a.m. to Jimmie Fasullo’s orchestra. The next morning at daybreak, my brother Jim woke me up and asked if I would like to walk to Mattole with him and our cousins Earl and Waldo Gossard. I was only half awake and said, “Sure.” Earl and Waldo’s dad, Ralph Gossard, Eureka’s jovial parcel post delivery man for many years, picked us up and drove the four of us to the Mt. Pierce geodetic monument above Rio Dell.

From Monument Ridge we took off on foot for Upper Mattole. The distance would be about 10 miles by air, but it’s more like 25 along the steep, meandering old mail trail down into the head of Bear River, then up over Rainbow Ridge, down Little Rainbow and across the hogback between the headwaters of the Upper and Lower North Forks of the Mattole, up over Van Choick (pronounced Vanscort) Ridge, around the east end of Everts Ridge above Pritchard (pronounced Pritchett) Creek, and finally down Mail Ridge to the Ida and Ernest Roscoe Ranch on Granny Creek.

We stopped to catch and release a few trout as we crossed the head of Bear River about 9 a.m. and ate our brown-bag lunches before starting the climb up the steep back side of Rainbow Ridge. By noon we regretted our premature consumption of the lunches. We were quite hungry by the time we reached “Vanscort” in the early afternoon and stopped by the cabin of Lloyd Brubaker. Brubaker was an old hermit my father had told us about before we left our house that morning. Dad said Brubaker was harmless but warned that he liked to talk to strangers and would probably invite us to stay for dinner and that we should decline.

As we walked up to the cabin we noticed part of a deer carcass hanging from the limb of a pepperwood tree. It appeared to be solid black from a distance, but as we approached we could see that it was only covered with blow flies. Dad’s prediction proved correct.

After we introduced ourselves, Brubaker said, “You boys must be hungry. Let me fry you some pancakes and buck steaks. I’m out of bear grease, but I have plenty of coon fat.”

We assured him we had just eaten our lunches and weren’t hungry.

Brubaker seemed disappointed but offered an alternative we could readily accept. “Well, you boys surely could eat some fresh strawberries for dessert. They’re just coming on strong. You’ll have to pick them yourselves, but you can eat all you want.”

For the next hour we ate strawberries from the patch of vines in his large garden while Brubaker regaled us with episodes from the semi-autobiographical novel he had been writing for the past 20 years on his rusty old Underwood typewriter. Its title was Why Ever So?, and at that point it consisted of more than 2,000 single-spaced pages.

It seems Brubaker had been in love with the silent and talking movie queen Ruth Chatterton prior to World War I, but she had thrown him over for some actor, and he was “pretty sure she was on dope now.” He was heart broken and had gone up to San Francisco and got a job driving a trolley car on the Market Street line.

Brubaker said he had a hot temper with a short fuse in his youth, and some ruffians who rode the line regularly got to baiting him to make him furious. Finally, he said, he’d had all he could take. The electric current that powered trolleys was controlled by a removable brass handle that was used to drive the trolley from either end. Brubaker pulled the heavy crank off its hub and dented the tormentor’s skull, possibly killing him.

Brubaker said he had fled the scene, leaving the trolley and passengers stranded, and made his way to Upper Mattole where he took to the hills and built his cabin on “Vanscort.” He never learned the outcome of the incident, but evidently the San Francisco police had made no effort to track him down. By 1939 he felt safe and frequently wrote letters to the editor of the Chronicle on the sorry state of civilization, using his own name. Some were even published.

Brubaker said he had a hot temper with a short fuse in his youth, and some ruffians who rode the line regularly got to baiting him to make him furious. Finally, he said, he’d had all he could take.

I never learned the source of Brubaker’s income, and though he lived mainly off his garden and fruit trees and wild game, he had to have some income if only to buy rifle ammunition, paper for Why Ever So? and a new typewriter ribbon every four or five years.

Following our harvesting his strawberries and proceeding on to Upper Mattole, Brubaker started coming down from his mountain more frequently than he had in the past, visiting the Roscoe Ranch, buying bacon and ham and some canned and packaged foods at the Petrolia store, and after a bit, taking the stage to Ferndale and on to Eureka to visit my parents, Stan and Martha, while I was going to college. Brubaker became a close friend of the family.

In the summer of 1942,1 enlisted in the Army Air Corps but was not called up until the end of the fall semester. I came home from Berkeley before my reporting date, and Brubaker came to Eureka to see me before I departed. He said he wanted me to help him buy a car so he could come to town whenever he wanted to.

I took him to K.B. McCarthy’s Dodge dealership between Sixth and Seventh on H Street. Brubaker liked an early 1930s Dodge coupe and surprised me by paying cash for it, including collision insurance, which the salesman was happy to provide and I thought probably a good investment, since Brubaker confided that he had driven “a Model-T a few times in the 1920s.”

Our first stop, with me driving, was the Department of Motor Vehicles office by the curve near the east end of Fourth Street. Brubaker assured the examiner he had driven a Model-T Ford and, in about five minutes, was issued a California driver’s license without a driving test. I drove out to what was then an empty field across the street from Sequoia Park and switched seats with my confident pupil.

He did surprisingly well, so I let him out of the field and onto the streets for a few blocks. No problem, so I decided to see what he would do on the steep, crooked road down to the park’s duck pond. As he approached the first sharp turn, I cautioned him to slow down, but he became confused and hit the gas instead of the brake. I reached over and turned off the ignition, grabbed the wheel, and steered us into the nearest redwood tree.

Brubaker was not dismayed in the slightest. “Quick thinking,” he said as we got out to examine the bumper and left front fender, which was bent down against the tire. I backed onto the road, we pried the fender off the tire, and within an hour of our departure, drove back to K.B. McCarthy’s for a good-natured insurance adjustment.

The following day I left for San Francisco to report for active duty, and the next I heard of my adventurous friend came in the form of the following letter, addressed to my parents, which they passed along to me at boot camp in Lincoln, Neb.

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A letter from Lloyd H. Brubaker

January of 1943;
Thursday the Seventh
Petrolia, California

Stanley Roscoe and the Threefourths of Wedded Twain,

Dear Ones, can you take a bit of originality as upper line there seems to jar the usual platitudinous reference to wedlock? Yeah; you find it easy to do so, and I’ll bet a doughnut against a breadcrumb, you’ll agree that this is an apt division of that sweetest bond. How would I know? O, ever since I was not much taller than a pretzel, long way up, and more or less. I’ve been observant; and surely was that quarter portion, once in my lifetime [evidently Brubaker had once been married and judged the female “better half of a married couple to be the “better three- fourths”].

But the gist of this letter is to relieve you of all thoughts as that I would fail to make the grades via Bull Creek Road to Petrolia. I made it, but nothing to whoop-it-out- loud, withal. And for interesting recital of adventure, here you have the entire writing of a thrilling ride.

Fine enough, I left Eureka after Stanley kindly drove the car through Eureka. Had not a least trouble anywhere on the way, until the foot brake went soft on me at the Bull Creek store. And there I noticed also a tire not as plump as it were to be if fully inflated. Even so, I believed I could make the ride with using low, in making the way down steepest places, so going very slow. The tire I believed to be a slow-leak, so it might possibly and probably hold up until the end of the way. However, the brake was the worst trouble whenever I should meet someone, and sure enough, I met a speed-demon near a curve, and with a sudden swerve to aside so as to miss him, I shoved the same fender into a road-bank, so kinking it some.

Then I prowled onward until away up near the top of the mountain, and hearing a sort of a queer grinding, I stopped, got out and found a tire too flat for moving any further toward Honeydew. Hell’s vicious populace!!! And it had not gone more than 60 miles from McCarthy ‘s careful collaborators!!! I had a spare ? 0, joy be unto that handy preparedness. I opened to see its beautiful plumpness, and LO; it was as lean as a bursted golf-ball.

Hell-en-a high cussedness!!!!! That quickly became greater than THAT. I had not a pump, nor a wrench, but it were an easy matter to get the latter from anyone passing; the pump a more probable no-have-‘em. Anyhow, I awaited all chances of some kind of fate to intercede wonderfully well. And this while, Charles Clark came from Petrolia, but no pump, no jack, no wrench; the jack immaterial because it is easy to run a car up on rocks or something, chuck it up, and dooky OK. Well, Charley grieved with me until another man came to drive him on his way; this fellow also as naked of tools as newly born kitten. But he, and another man with him, helped me with triple grief for a while. And after all condolences had again become exhausted they rode away, and I remained there the night.

I was pleased with the delicious soup that I’d eaten at your house, and was leastly peeved because I’d refused the larger bowl. But I had an excellent time there with listening to the radio, and running races with myself when three o’clock was hovering around the place so extremely chilliness causing activity. Time shall not wait for anyone’s grief, thusly moming came at last, and I had, I believe, solved the problem of that funnel with an indicator that should tell FULL CAN, or other opaque container.

And after the beautiful sun slid out from behind Earth, the mail-carrier, Carl Briceland came along. With using his jack, we hoisted the wheel in easy manner, unbolted it, and I went with him to Weeot [Weott], and all became well done? Not in your holy dictionary!!! I started out ahead, but a yell stopped me. A wheel looking for stumps and so rubbing severely on its tire became the rest of it. So we took it off, removed the tire from the removed wheel, and the tire from wobbly wheel, thusly creating a straight scooter.

Aye; very well done, but it was slowest meandering to get down to Honeydew on low, the great part of the ride. And all this while the emergency-brake was confusing whenever stopping. And above Upper Mattole I suddenly came to some men working on the road, and with firstly trying the blank-brake and then reaching for the emergency brake, I came near tipping over the grade-fill so as to land in the Mattole River. There the boys declared the car to be almost ready to tip over, but I could easily see exactly how to hitch on the front end so as to pull it back on the roadway. This I finally persuaded them to do, and all was well.

The rest of the ride was as tame as attending an old ladies’darning bee, so I got home in time to get my mail, and all of the trip now has become past thrills. But I am a fatalist, so nothing shall come to be, that was not my eventuality today, shall come tomorrow, and so I’ll float along through every dangerous approach until (?). However, today, and yesterday I would not perform otherwise than careful to not harm the other damn fool. No? ‘Nufsed.

So here am I tonight as sound as before this adventure, but if the car had not stopped on a solid rock, with half of the lower, as to position of the vehicle, the wheel farthest adown toward the river, lacking as leastly sliding to thereafter drop a sheer distance of about six feet, I’d have had a dandy rolling inside of the cage. But it was not to be, so I was truly as safe as though I were in God’s lap.

And while tinware of the car is leastly wrinkled in places, lean do the repair job very neatly. The wheel must have received much of a bumb [bump?], because the flat of central plate where the five bolts pass through is warped considerably. But now if I may have afoot-brake I’ll drive the cab to most anywhere, and with m.ore practice so as to overcome the heavy-foot of T-type days, all shall be well done, I think, but greatest care will enter all maneuvers.

One other grievance at McCarthy and workmen, they had not put on a fan-belt that were to turn the fan; a strip of felting had been draped around these pulleys but it was a flat piece of fiber where rightly it should have been three inches shorter and triangular for grooves. So what in technikology [sic] is the matter with that firm? Excuse me for swearing so broadly, please. Any more repairs will be done by Weeot Garage where the man perked up my wheel today for 50 cents flat. I’d have charged a one-plunker for the work of finding a small hole, patching it, and all the work of removing from wheel, and putting back with added air to fill it.

Tell Mr. H. [Harold “Wog” Horion, Martha Roscoe’s brother-in-law who played jazz piano by ear] that those songs [lyrics written by Brubaker] have never yet been sung, so, if it pleases him to allow me to better understand these melodies [accompaniments written by Horton], I’ll listen to the rendering of them while later on I may be in Eureka. Heck’s lead-chain! I almost now threaten to do them at that time if he will play the piano to drown my vocalization so offered.

I’m rather weary, so here’s a halt for this spill of words on the whiteness ofh writing paper. As with suggestions of all deario, cheerio, but no beerio.

Ever Sincerely Yours Truly,

LIFE

A Thirst no lapsing time may fully sate;
All quaff of daily-brews inadequate.
Nor Truths of Nectar in a breathing while.
More clearly known with flowing of Love’s Smile
Falls waning Thrill alike reverse of dawn;
Here wonder, fear, perhaps, then lastly gone.
No longer, here, with struggling through lives’ tears;Nay; sleeping there throughout eternal years.

Lloyd H. Brubaker.

POSTSCRIPT:

For years thereafter, the Dodge coupe rested on four chopping blocks in the yard beside the Petrolia post office, with all four wheels removed.

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The story above was originally printed in the Summer 1994 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.