Highland Christmas

Noted author and local historian Marilyn Cram Donahue shares her memories of Christmas from earlier times in the small town of Highland, California.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNFR9LppM4Y&feature=youtu.be

Love to Dance

When I was young, I danced in the living room with the carpet rolled back against the wall and my mother’s fringed light fixture pulled up by its chain so we wouldn’t bump our heads on it.

       I danced with Joe, who had rhythm. He had been my friend since second grade, and we had an understanding. He got to wind up the Victrola, and I got to choose the record. We danced while Frankie sang “Embraceable You,” Vaughn Monroe crooned “Racing with the Moon,” and Frankie Laine belted out “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” Then Joe moved away. I needed a new partner.

Washday At Cliffside

      

Great-Grandma Cram (Nancy Garner) was small in stature.  She wore long dresses and bound her hair in a tight bun.  Though she worked hard managing things at the big, seventeen room house by the river, she didn’t toil the way some pioneer women in the valley did, for the Crams had servants.  Fong was the Chinese cook, and an Indian woman from the Serrano tribe in the foothills came to help with the washing, which was heavy work in those days.  
            The house was located near the banks of the Santa Ana, which changed course in the flood of 1882, and moved farther to the south.  But in the early days, the river ran right in front of the house, and it ran all year.  My Grandfather said it was six feet deep when he was a boy, and the cottonwood trees overhung the water and made shade along the banks where the seven boys and one girl fished and swam.

The Baptism

When my grandfather was a young man, before he decided to follow his father’s lead and grow oranges, he took his wife, Kitty, and his children, Fred and Bess, to the desert to mine for gold.  They lived in a tent in a mountainous area near the present Palm Springs until my father was eight years old and my grandmother insisted that it was time for him to attend regular school.

When they moved back to Highland, the minister of the Congregational Church, a Reverend Hartshorn, reminded Kitty that young Fred had never been baptized.  He added that it was a serious offense to neglect securing your child’s place in heaven.

Mama was a Lady!

Coming Soon!