Sometimes I thought of him as Prince Val and at other times, Chairman Val. He was a complicated man, dictatorial and opinionated yet generous and surprisingly open minded. Living on Val’s land was a unique and magical time in my life. I moved to Val Pawek’s land in September, 1970. My boyfriend Wayne and I had come to Mendocino to get away from the Bay Area [...]
Yearbooks for schools are valuable research tools, containing names and photographs of young people from their freshman to senior year of high school. We can learn what clubs they belonged to and what sports they played. We end up with a snapshot of time when they were young, good-looking, healthy and hopeful. Although the first Mendocino High School graduating class was 1896, the first yearbook was [...]
To complement the current Kelley House exhibit, “Hippies Use the Back Door,” we excerpt here Tales of Mendocino: The Way We Were, local author Jay Frankston’s 2006 memoir of life here in the late 60s and early 70s. The exhibit runs Fridays through Mondays until November 30. People came here from everywhere, from the east coast, from Chicago, from L.A. Most were getting away from something like [...]
This portrait of a woman in her late 20’s or early 30’s portrays her as a serious person, with a sensible haircut, glasses and an understated pearl necklace. The name on the photograph says “Hazel Pruett.” We are wondering why Hazel’s photograph is in the collection of the Kelley House Museum. Ancestry.com lists a Hazel Pruett born October 8, 1890 in Ukiah to Robert and Cangrada [...]
A group of several unidentified men and women, possibly residents of Fort Bragg, CA, stand in the doorway of a building. The building could have been located at the corner entrance to one of the hotels on Redwood Avenue. The number on the building appears to be 424. Speculation has been that it is a new business or, since the people look as if they are [...]