Letter: The Wild West days of Madera
Thanks to Bill Coate’s Madera Tribune article, I now know what Sheriff John Barnett looked like. I have heard stories about the man; but reading about him in the paper is even better. The following story about my grandfather gives a little more insight into the problems the sheriff was confronted with in the Wild West valley town of Madera, and how he rose to the occasion.
When I was a child, I was told about my grandfather, Joseph Edward Myers. He was a sheep herder. One time, when he came into Madera for supplies, a man kicked his sheep dog in the rump. Grandfather laid his rifle alongside the man’s nose, and threatened to take the mans life. His two brothers, Charlie and Steve Myers, had to quiet grandpa’s anger, and make him let the man go.
Grandfather and his brothers, Johnny, Steve, and Charlie were into music. They played in the bars and for public dances, and spent a good part of their lives tripping the light fantastic. They were known all the way from Happy Camp down to Visalia for their music.
Grandfather drove a logging train, and worked for the Sugar Pine Lumber Company. He was a happy alcoholic who loved to play his music and dance and sing.
He was over 6 foot 3, and had a red, curly beard and golden, curly hair and beautiful blue eyes. He had a craggy, chiseled nose and sharp cheekbones. He was a German Jew with a fierce temper, whose ancestry went back on his mother’s side, to a French soldier who came over to this country with Lafayette.
He was home-schooled by his father, a school teacher who caught “gold fever” and went to work in the gold mines. As a result of his home-schooling by his father, he could read and write and speak Spanish and English. And he was somewhat conversant in German. He could count and curse in German quite fluently.
Well one day when he and his brothers came into town to get supplies he and Sheriff Barnett got into a scuffle, or had words. Maybe the sheriff was trying to get grandfather to leave town; or trying to get him to part with his gun; or to go home and sleep off his liquor; or maybe Sheriff Barnett said something derogatory about grandfather ’s sheep dog.
When you said anything bad about that sheep dog or kicked it, you could get killed.
Anyway, something crazy went down because the next thing you know my grandfather chased the sheriff up the light pole and wouldn’t let him get down. Sheriff John Barnett was heard wailing into the air, “For God’s sake Ed, let me down.”
Grandpas brother came running to the sheriff’s aid and persuaded their irate brother to let the sheriff down and quit giving him a bad time. To my knowledge there was no account of Ed Myers getting arrested for that mischievous act of running the sheriff up the light post. But back then when Madera was still a pup the townspeople knew each other on a first-name basis. The people were more like a big, extended family.
Even the undertaker, Bob Jay was like a family member. My grandfather would greet him on the street and say, “All right Bob, get that gleam out of your eye, and that smile off of your face, I’m not ready for you yet.”
Everyone knew that eventually Bob Jay would get them and Jay’s Mortuary got my grandfather around Christmas of 1942.
Doc Ransom was a frugal man who studied hard and pinched pennies during the time he was studying and going to school and building up his practice. He wasn’t ashamed to wear patched clothing on his journey to success. Grandfather and others used to tease him and call him patches. He would always tell them, “That’s all right, you can call me patches now; but one day you will be coming around to have old patches patch you up.”
Doctor Ransom’s words came to pass. He became our family doctor.
Anyce Ruth Malone Hutchison,
Madera
