When conducting research, one can easily get sidetracked, while searching for a particular item, your eye catches something of interest. This happen to me recently while working on the post about Hobo Wells Hydroponics. On the same page the Sacramento Bee of August 16, 1977 had an article about that topic, there was a report about a forest fire on the Salmon River in Siskiyou County. The Bee Correspondent Marjie Lambert interviewed some of the residents there, which they chimed in the forest service was not doing well in handling fires. Sound familiar? Herewith is an excerpt on that topic.

”Les and Johnny Bennett and their friend, Vince Elliott, agree that fires are handled wrong these days. ‘All the Indians and miners and cattlemen used to do regular burns every year,” said Vince. ‘That kept everything nice and green. That way there wouldn’t be big forest fires.

”Then the U.S. Forest Service put a stop to the controlled burns. The three men nodded their heads, saying they had it coming.

”’Now when one of these things starts it wont stop until it burns itself out or maybe in September the rains will come,’ said Les.”

Tim