Humboldt County Historical Society
Heydays in Mattole: More Wild Tales of the Mattole Valley and the Lost Coast of
Humboldt County
by Stanley "Neb" Roscoe
Author Stanley "Neb" Roscoe explains Heydays in Mattole in the volume's foreword..
"I was born in 1920 and lived my first five years at the ranch of Ida and Ernest Roscoe in Upper Mattole, California. During that formative period I spent most of my time listening to and observing my elders. 'Little pitchers have big ears,' Grandma Ida would frequently point out - and wisely so, as I was soaking up everything including all the dirt from the beginning of my third year on.
"Most of my early memories are associated with mealtimes or evenings by the big fireplace in the living room. At such times most of our large family, and usually others, would be present, and all the day's gossip would come forth.
"Of course the talk was not restricted to gossip about doings in the Mattole Valley and the Lost Coast. The older folks had a wide range of interests, and a large family can have diverse views on any given subject, as well as different ideas about what is funny. Throughout history, telling tales around a fire or dinner table has been the primary means of passing local culture and social tradition from one generation to the next.
"My father, Stan Roscoe, was the fifth of Ida and Ernest's nine children, five boys and four girls. The oldest, Fred, was born in 1885, and the youngest, Ken, twenty-one years later in 1906. Among the old-timers in the Mattole Valley, Fred, Stan and Ken were known as story tellers of the first water. Ken's and Stan's stories ran to the funny side, and some were a bit raunchy. Fred's humor was more subtle. His stories captured the violence, sacrifice, hypocrisy, charity and good humor of pioneer life.
"In 1991, a few months before Ken died in 1992, I published a collection of his stories under the title Heydays in Humboldt. In 1992, thirty-three years after Fred's death, I published his account of early childhood in From Humboldt to Kodiak. I thought that would be all until Aunt Marie, Ken's widow, found another box of Uncle Fred's stuff.
"Fred's childhood autobiography had been well written, whereas these stories were sketchy, some merely notes evidently jotted down hurriedly before his death. Fortunately I knew most of the stories from my childhood at Mattole, not only Fred's versions but alternate versions as told by Ken and Dad and my mother, Martha. Some qualify as oral history, others as common gossip, and others may well be apocryphal.
"So the stories in this book about the early days in the Mattole area, while based largely on Fred's notes (and generally on truth no doubt), have been liberally embellished from my own recollections."