Your California Legacy

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Segment Title: Jones | Dad Dunnaway

From Farm, Rock, and Vine Folk, 1946
Idwal Jones (1887 - 1964)

California's gold rush was a formative event in the history of the Golden State, but even after the rush was long over, writer Idwal Jones found that the hunt never stopped for a hardy few who continued sniping for gold throughout the state.

Jones was attracted to offbeat characters, especially those who barely scratched a living in the northern regions of the coast range. In “Farm, Rock and Vine Folk” he brings us character sketches of these men and women, like the colorful Dad Dunnaway.

Dad Dunnaway, a forty-niner from Mizzourah… moved to Quartz Mountain, where I knew him when he was about ninety, a hobbling venerable with a sunburst of beard. He lived by himself in a shack, which he shared with a flock of hens that nested in the front room, a handy arrangement when it came to gathering eggs. . . . Dad Dunnaway was spare of talk, and it was mostly of rock, for he had been a miner all his grown-up life, starting at Grass Valley. One night, when the wind was howling among the pines like a thief, and the stove was glowing red, he was talking in scraps of that camp's young days. Something furry banged on the window screen, to cling with sharp talons and utter its cry.

"Them damn catty mounts is gittin' thick around hyar," he said balefully, without slackening the furnace-like draw on his pipe. " 'Tain't enough for 'em to take a hen, but they got to come in and get warm.

Idwal Jones was a multi-faceted author whose works include journalism, a collection of short stories, and novels, including The Vineyard (1946), set in the Napa Valley, and High Bonnet: A Novel of Epicurean Adventures (1945).

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