Southwest Sierra #111 – Uncle Milt

Last week’s article ended with Uncle Milt, an Alleghany institution for about sixty years. There are two miners’ cabins on Kanaka Creek Road. His was the upper cabin surrounded by a garden with rhubarb plants delineating one edge and a patch of fragrant silver artemisia next to the pathway as you entered the yard. It is common knowledge that smells travel straight to the part of the brain that harbors memory, and true to form, I remember that plant and the beaten path next to it more clearly than the rest of his yard.

During the summertime, an abundance of Black Eyed Susans and Zinnias contrasted sharply with the orange pine-needle-covered ground surrounding the garden. Uncle Milt gave Mom some Rhubarb starts and advised her to keep it from blooming by cutting the flower stalks back. That would keep it from getting too stringy, he said. We enjoyed that rhubarb at the Golden Bear Mine for many years. Mom made rhubarb pies and strawberry rhubarb syrup for pancakes with it. Mom’s best friend, Jan Mueller, lived alone in the lower cabin, and Milt was her buddy. They watched out for each other.

Uncle Milt always had a twinkle in his brown eyes with a frequent chuckle. He was a big man, what the miners called “A Husky.” He was a retired gold miner by the time my family moved to the area in 1975, and he didn’t drive. Perhaps that was one of the secrets to his longevity: he “walked” up the hill to Alleghany almost daily. Our terrain is so steep that “walks” are more like “hikes.” Milton Alvin Sanders was born on June 3, 1893, making him 82 years old in 1975.

In the very first installment of this series, Uncle Milt is mentioned in relation to the wooden sidewalks of Alleghany. He remembered Alleghany before the big fire of 1933, and the wooden sidewalks were a favorite topic of his. Today I learned, from another who remembers him, that when he was young, he had a job building redwood sidewalks in the town of Eureka in Humboldt County. That explains his favorite topic! He would engage anyone who cared to listen to his stories of days gone by. There was a subtle tinge of melancholy in his manner when he talked of the past, and as I grow older, I understand. The memories of times, places, and especially people past, weigh heavily at times. He was a veteran of World War I, but that is something I never heard him speak of.

Uncle Milt was a strong old man. He carried his own groceries home from the Alleghany Supply Company. I particularly remember the large bags of dog food that he would nonchalantly hoist onto a shoulder and carry home. As a kid, those bags seemed huge, and I was duly impressed. I remember him saying that he had a shot of whiskey every day, and he attributed his longevity to that.

I saw the inside of Uncle Milt’s cabin once. It was Halloween night, probably 1977. My brothers and I were making the rounds trick or treating when we decided to walk down to Uncle Milt’s. When we knocked, he didn’t come to the door but told us to come in. We were a little dumbstruck as we entered. The tiny room was lit by a single light bulb hanging from a cord in the center of the ceiling. It seemed very bright; our eyes having adjusted to walking in the dark. Uncle Milt was sitting on an old-style iron bed against the back wall, and the floor next to the bed was covered with carefully laid out newspapers. In the center of the newspaper was a large coffee can spattered with tobacco juice, as was the newspaper all around the can. I don’t remember any clutter; the room seemed so bare. He was visibly annoyed and told us that he didn’t know what day it was. We skedaddled out of there as fast as we could. That was the only time that I ever saw him the least bit annoyed.

In 1990, Uncle Milt was still living alone in his cabin at the age of 97. That December, the snow got deep. A few days before Christmas, somebody went to check on him (no small feat in deep snow) and found him where he had fallen off his back porch into the snow. He was still alive, but he never regained consciousness and died in the hospital on December 23, 1990. On the one hand, it was a very sad Christmas for Alleghany; everyone felt bad about what had happened, but on the other hand, everyone agreed that Uncle Milt had been blessed with a very long and full life. His kindness lives on in the memories of all who knew him.