From the Notes of Frank L. Cram





         When Frank Cram was a little boy, he used to get to go to San Bernardino once a week on Saturday. He said they went many times to visit his Grandmother Wakefield when they lived down at Olive and ranched there (with the Barrs). His father, Lewis Cram, had a fine team of horses. They used to leave Highland at 5:00 a.m and arrive in Olive by 1:0 p.m. One time, as they were going down the Santa Ana Canyon, they met a team, and it was an old, one-way road down the canyon, so they had to back up a long way to pass.

            One time they went down to Newport Beach to fish while on a visit to the Olive relatives. They used to go out in a small row boat. This time they caught a seal (a young one) and grabbed it by the fins and pulled it into the row boat. They caught it by wrapping a handkerchief around the fins so they wouldn’t slip. They took the seal home to the Barr ranch and put it in a pod there, and  became a very tame pet. Frank said it was quite a thing for the kids to see and play with, and it learned many tricks. They had it a long time, but finally one day it got out, and they tracked it, and it had struck right out for the sea. They figured it finally made it.

           
           Frank remembered when he was just a small boy (6 years old) he went in the tunnel the made under the mountain for the water to go. This was when the tunnel was first made, and before they turned the water into it.  He went with his Aunt Mathilda, and they took a candle, and he recalls how big and black it looked to him.

     
          When Frank was little and they lived at Cliffside Ranch, the meadow by the City Creek opened into the valley, and it was very beautiful, with grass and trees everywhere. He used to watch the cattle with Will, his brother, and Jack Weeks, and a dog. They didn’t have fences then. The dog came back, just yelping. The boys went and found a big lion after the calves. Jack Weeks always had his shoes untied, and he jumped a fence in his hurry to run away, and he left his shoe, buit never stopped running. The dog ran home to the house, crying to get help, and Uncle Tink (Andrew Jackson) came on his horse to find the boys. The lion scared the horse, and it ran away with Uncle Tink. In the night, the lion got a big hog over at Tom Cook’s place, and while the lion was eating the hog, Tom Cook killed it, and he made a rug of the skin and always kept it in his house.


            Once Grandpa Lewis Cram had a man cradling grain, and the man got tired and went to sleep under a tree. When he woke up, there were two big grizzly beas looking down at him.The man waved his scythe at the bears and ran off. He never waited to see whether the bears ran or not.


            Uncle Rensslaer Cram never married and was a miner and prospector. He killed many grizzly bears in the hills and mountains. He was one of the finest shots in the valley. He taught Frank how to shoot. He could shoot anything, and used to set his gunsights himself. Frank went on one trip with him. They walked up City Creek and led a burro pack. They went all the way to Big Bear. Uncle W ill Cram went along too They walked for three weeks through the mountains. They went to the headwaters of the Santa Ana River. The water was so cold that it froze their teeth. Uncle Will got typhoid on this trip and nearly died when he got home.

            There were lots of coyotes. They used to trap hundreds.

            Several families used to have Christmas celebrations together each year. They would go to the big Cram house and get together on the back screen porch. It would be the Longmire, Waddington, and Cram families. They would have a big program and the kids would sing and speak pieces. They would have candy and lots of eats.

            They used to go for picnics up the creek, over to Crafton along the Zanja. The wash used to be very pretty and not a wash at all. They had a school just north of where the Beachcomber Club was, off third street. They used to swim in the Santa Ana river, as there were big, deep swimming holes in it, and it ran all the time. They would fish right there by the school house and there were big trees all over, mostly cottonwood and sycamore. Also there were some willows.

            1862 was the year of the great flood. That was when the wash was made by the flood that came down the Santa Ana. There had been snot eight to ten feet deep on the level all over the hills and mountains, and it was melted all in one night by a big, warm rain. People had to move out of their homes. The house where Kitty Longmire Cram lived was filled clear to the second story with mud.  So they just had to start over and use only the second story. Water was level from the bank at Redlands 400 yards towards Highland. Trees 100 feet tall came and rolled over and over and down the river. Great boulders came tumbling down like marbles. Much livestock was drowned. All that had been beautiful, fertile land, full of trees, good soil, and grass, was left as nothing but a sand and gravel wash.

            Indians came to the Cram house many times. They were the Piutes and Cowies, mean and dirty. They came and tried to sell pinon nuts and hides, and they wanted fruit and food in exchange. They used to steal horses and stock. Once they came and stole a lot of stock from the different ranchers, and the ranchers went and stalked the Indians and found them and shot at them. The Indians got away, cut they had killed all the cattle and horses with arrows.

            The Lewis Cram family had an old Indian washwoman for many years (20). T his woman used to bring her babies strapped on the board. Once when one baby got to crying, without saying a word, the old woman just went over and dunked the baby right into the ice water of the ditch that ran by where she was washing. It was winter. The baby kept crying, and she dunked it again, and held it under until it was believed the baby was drowned. But she pulled it out, and it sputtered and shut up. She just set it up against a tree, all wet, and never unstrapped it or anything. It never cried again.

            When Frank Cram was a small boy, there was going to be a circus in San Bernardino, and the family had been looking forward to this big event for some time. On the day of the circus, Frank was playing at a forbidden game of crawling in and out of the windows of their home. He slipped and fell, breaking his elbow. He missed the circus. They took him to an old doctor who set the arm in such a way (keeping it immobilized) that it would have been permanently useless. Then the doctor decided to manipulate the arm and kept this up until his Uncle Henry Cram, going with the boy to the doctor, saw the torture and made the doctor stop. As a result of such treatment, this arm remained still for life. Uncle Henry Cram re-set the arm himself, and at least it was later of some use.

            Frank Cram had the misfortune to have a severe crossed eye condition. One time when he was just about 15 years old, the family heard of a traveling specialist who was coming to San Bernardino. They sent Frank by himself to go into town to see this doctor. He operated on the bad eye, giving the boy no anesthetic whatsoever. He pulled out and tied off the muscles of the eye, straightening it. It was a terrible and painful experience, and Frank had to come all the way home by himself. He made it until he reached his driveway, and then he collapsed. However, his eye remained straight after the bandages were removed. However, he had to wear glasses all of his life.

            Two of the Cram boys had stayed behind in Michigan where they had married, and also the only sister, Mariah, who married Levi Miller. The two brothers who stayed behind were Chester and Sanborn.{Frank Cram said one was Horace, but other records say Chester.) Later, a son of of one of these brothers came out to California, but he didn’t amount to much. He lived in East Highlands and Redlands and had a family there. He may have been a good man, but the opinion of the family was not favorable.

 Goodcell Cram, who had  wife and three children on the trip across the plains, later remarried after that wife died. His children were  Albert, Lincold, and a girl. His second wife was bad. She was a woman called Terry with five children. She forced Goodcell’s own children to leave and forge for themselves.

John Cram never remarried.