holding the attention of the vicious, snarling animal at one end of the cage, while the other, armed with a flashlight, giving a careful, scientific inspection at the other end. The boys finally were separated from the girls, the girls were released, and the boys were retained to be sent to the various training bases, there to inspire our fledgling fighter pilots in the job they were learn ing to do! About the time this bit of important research was completed, the measured tread and heavy breathing of the litter bearers was heard as they toted their heavy cargo up the last stretch of steep trail to the mesa, where sat the guard station establishment. A quick inspection of the patient—as cheerful as anyone in the crowd—a transfer of the station wagon, delayed a bit while the handles of the stretcher were sawn off to allow the tail gate of the wagon to close, and they were off for Santa Barbara. A previously alerted operating room crew was ready and waiting at the Cottage Hospital when they arrived about four A.M., and, his surgery com pleted, the patient was resting comfortably in his bed before seven. Some two months later. Jack, now on crutches, returned to light duty at the fire suppression station atop San Marcos Pass. Today, still a valued member of our honorable, though seldom properly honored, Forest Service, he is a dispatcher at headquarters. Editors note: For a variety of reasons, stories of this sort are all but impossible for the editor to secure for publication in his magazine. Yet they offer authentic gbmpses of relatively small events in the past that can be preserved in no other way than by publication. Usually, in casual conversations with their friends, men will tell such stories as this one freely and with great effect; but, when an editor points out their unusual interest and their historical importance, and he then asks the narrators to set them down on paper for publication, there is instantaneous refusal. The average man, regardless of how good is his story, has no wish to seem to boast in print of his exploits. All of these factors were present when this terse account of accident, of great fortitude, and of matter-of-fact devotion to duty first was told to me. It is only after months of urging on my part that my good friend, Dr. Irving Wills, with considerable reluctance, at last has agreed to allow this story to appear in the pages of this issue of Noticias. I tell it as nearly as possible as it was told to me. Where necessary, I quote exactly Nat’s words.
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Our Treats of Long Ago By Frances Cooper Kroll When I was a child in Santa Barbara, we didn’t have bubble gum, Coca Cola or popsicles, but we did have dried abalones pried from rocks in the ocean and, in season, jerkey that we imagined still tasted of moun tain sage. Often we girls went about with a small knife tucked into the pocket of our pinafores, ready, in the intervals between Kick the Can, Statues, Run Sheep Run or other games, to laboriously hack slices off an abalone and pop them into our mouths; the jerkey was easier to cope with, for one had to tear at a piece with strong young teeth to enjoy a savory shred. We always seemed to be browsing. In the Spring it was the stems of Miner’s lettuce that grew wild in the shade of oaks, blackberries at the edge of a dusty road or sour grass that flourished all too plentifully in our U