The Clovis Unified School District’s adult education class of 1975-1976 published “Those Were the Days, Early Days in Clovis” that remains a historic treasure to review. George (Tink) Kastner and adult school Principal Charles Peterson initiated the project. Mrs. Jessie Myers Thun was the class teacher.
The class was composed of 28 members from Clovis pioneer families. The following are excerpts from their taped transcript recorded on April 11, 1978.
Lula McMurtry: “At Academy, if the wind was coming from the west, it would not rain. It would rain if the wind turned and came from the south or the southeast.”
Claire Ann Zylka: “When the tarantula crawls, you know that it is going to rain, as a country girl, I know that for sure.”
Elsie Wasson: “Ants crawl out of the ground.”
Florence Sanger: “Flies get sticky and swirls of black birds land in clumps.”
Sally Sharer: “Stars inside a ring around the moon indicate rain.”
Mary Martin: “The number of stars inside the ring will tell you how many days before the rain.”
Dr. Richard Wilkinson: “Power lines and PG & E lines will actually sing before a rain.”
Willis Ball: “I recall a cartoon where an Easterner came out here and he thought that we used the windmill to keep the cows cool.”
Nick Ubick: “When you get old and your bones start aching, it’s going to rain.”
Jack Sample: “Coyotes are always the most active for 48 hours before a storm comes up. Horses’ tails flair out from static electricity in the air prior to a storm.”
Cecil Wright: “Flying birds always perch more on the pole lines before a storm. And the slack of a rope tightens up before a storm. Campfire smoke goes downward toward the grass, or the fireplace smoke.”
Dr. Wilkinson: “Mrs. Sample told us last year that if a fox happened to bark in front of the house, somebody was going to die.” Emily Sample replied: “Bad luck in the family, not necessarily a death.”
Cecil Wright: “In my grandmother’s day, kids in the summer time all went barefooted. If you stepped on a nail with your bare foot, you put the nail in a can of water and set it on the back of the wood stove. If the nail rusted in sight of nine days, you might or you might not get lockjaw, but you could never remember which. The old range had a bucket of nails on it. The problem was to tell which nail for which foot.”
Jack Sample: “My dad always said it was bad luck to plant a weeping willow tree in the yard.” Willis Ball replied: “That makes sense, good sense. It ruins the plumbing and that is bad luck.”
Mary Martin: “I have been wondering why, this winter, Clovis has had so many black crows.”
Nick Ubick: “Do you remember Old Bob Turner? He had a pet crow. It could talk.”
Mary Martin: “We had a stage coach that came from the mountains, in town here once a day or two, and it had a very peculiar horn. This crow mocked that horn every time he heard it.”
Claire Ann Zylka: “My grandmother would never allow anyone to bring a peacock feather in the house. That was sheer disaster invited inside.”
Dr. Wilkinson: “You must enter and leave a house from the same door or it is bad luck.”
Mary Martin: “Well it brings company if you come in one door and go out the other.”
Mary Martin: “A live bird that comes down the chimney and gets caught in the house is a sign of a death in the family.”
Cecil Wright: “It is bad luck to have a bird fly against the window at night.”
The people quoted remain an important part of our rich heritage.