Looking back at 1906

106-year-old North County man recalls legendary
quake
By SARAH LEWERS, Staff Writer
A century is a long time. During the past 100 years,
transportation evolved from horses to automobiles, electric
lighting replaced candles and food now comes from the grocery store
instead of the garden.
Clarence &#8220Barney” Barnard, born Sept. 22, 1899,
remembers it all – even the 7.8 temblor that rocked his family’s
little log cabin west of Lake Sonoma on April 18, 1906.
Barney was 6 years old when loud noises and shaking woke him
early one Wednesday morning.
&#8220I was never so scared in my life,” he says, a hefty
claim, considering Barney has lived in three centuries.
&#8220It rocked the ground. I saw the floor of my room raise up
about six inches. It’s just surprising, the noises that old cabin
made.”
Young Barney had never heard of an earthquake, and the noises he
heard, combined with the movement of the cabin, scared him badly.
He was trapped in his room, now a tack room in the old log cabin
still being used as a barn, by a dresser that had rolled in front
of the door. Barney’s father had to roll the dresser out of the way
to get to his son.
&#8220I was so scared I could hardly talk. Dad came to see
me and told me it was an earthquake,” Barney said. &#8220I was
so happy to see him. Well, I was just scared to death…the quake
moved the whole house, and I saw the floor move up and down in the
room there, up and down.”
Over and over Barney recalls the noise and the motion, but not
many other details of the day the infamous earthquake struck. He
knows he didn’t go to school that day, but he’s not sure if it was
cancelled or not. Barney remembers his sisters, one older and one
younger, were scared after the quake, but doesn’t recall what they
said or did. He can’t remember feeling aftershocks.
Dressed in a blue Western-style shirt with pearly white snaps,
Barney speaks slowly from his recliner, blue eyes clouded with age
and, perhaps, memories. The room falls silent for a moment as he
sifts through more than a century of remembered moments to pinpoint
the earthquake experience.
Nothing in the cabin was broken, Barney says, &#8220But what
happened was bad.”
His mother kept fresh milk in shallow pans in a cooler in the
house, skimming the cream from the top to make butter. When the
quake hit, the pans spilled and milk soaked into thin redwood slats
down below in the cellar.
&#8220When it soured, it was terrible. Mother started
cleaning what she could,” he said. &#8220For a long time after,
the cooler…it just stinked.”
That’s all Barney remembers about the day of the ‘06 quake, but
he recalls vividly the family’s trip to San Francisco a few weeks
later.
&#8220My Dad had a brother in the Army, and he was stationed
at the Presidio, and of course, he was called for guard duty right
away,” he said, adding that the family traveled to &#8220The
City” every year by steam train and ferry.
&#8220Boy, that was a treat,” Barney said, remembering.
&#8220We made one of those visits shortly after the quake.”
He doesn’t remember what damage Healdsburg or Santa Rosa
sustained, but vividly recalls the devastation suffered by San
Francisco.
&#8220It was unbelievable…there was walls, skeletons of
buildings,” he said. &#8220I can still see it in my mind…it was
terrible. I’ll never forget how San Francisco looked after the
fire.”
Barney still remembers a story his uncle shared with the
family.
&#8220My uncle had his rifle, and he was patrolling and
there was a man (who was trapped beneath rubble). He tried to get
my uncle to shoot him because the fire was coming,” Barney recalls.
&#8220He didn’t want to live and have the fire kill him. My
uncle couldn’t shoot him and he couldn’t give (the man) his gun to
shoot himself. He had to leave him there.
&#8220So the fire killed him.”
With more than 100 years of memories to draw on, some things
stand out more than others. When Barney recalls his adventures, the
ones that had an emotional impact stand out the most.
&#8220You remember the things that scare you,” he said. His
failing eyes see clearly into a past filled with days of hunting
and helping his father on the sheep ranch.
Barney lived on the Flatridge ranch, now owned by the Trione
family, from ages 2 to 9. His father managed sheep for the ranch
owner, and young Barney had the run of the land.
He began attending school at the tender age of 4, he says,
because seven children were needed to form a school. Barney spent
his first days at school coloring and drawing.
&#8220Dad bought me a saddle horse when I was 6 years old,”
he recalls, describing how his father shod the horses by hand,
enabling them to traverse slippery winter trails. &#8220They’d
fall when you rode them, unless they were shod.”
Chores are never in short supply on a working ranch, and
neighbors often lent a hand when it came time to castrate, or mark,
spring lambs. Barney remembers being shocked at a neighbor’s method
for removing sheep’s testicles.
&#8220He was all blood on his shirt and his face,” Barney
said. &#8220I couldn’t get over that…he used his teeth to mark
a lamb.”
Many of Barney’s stories involve hunting.
Barney tells of dogs, kept by his father, that would bay up
anything that was an enemy to the sheep. Day or night, the dogs
would bay up wild boars and bears…and, day or night, Barney and his
father would go kill whatever the dogs had bayed up.
One night the dogs began to bark about a half-mile away, down in
a low saddle.
&#8220I went after supper with a big lantern, because there
were no flashlights, and you could smell the old boar smell,”
Barney said. The boar, large and smelly, had backed into a tangle
of trees that formed an enclosure – a goose-pen.
Barney and his father were trying to get a clear shot around
their dogs when the boar suddenly charged.
&#8220Dad killed him about four feet away from me; he put
the 30-30 between its eyes, and he got in there and pulled the
trigger,” Barney said. &#8220It was a good shot.”
Barney himself was a good shot, and still has a garage full of
antlers to prove it. He claims he would only shoot big bucks, and
always with his 1929 Winchester 30-06 – he even loaded his own
shells.
&#8220Well, I loved the hunting. I liked to hunt wild hogs,
though,” Barney says. &#8220I got to hunt until I was 95. I
went hunting at 99 or 100, I just didn’t shoot anything.”
The overriding sense when Barney speaks is his frustration that
his aged body slows him down. Hands once strong and skilled are now
age-spotted and shaky. Muscles once taut and able are now withered
and weak. But inside the 106-year-old body, lurks a playful young
man who would rather be working in California’s coastal ranges than
sitting quietly in a recliner.
Sometimes that young man surfaces.
&#8220I don’t want to look too good,” Barney says, before
smiling for a picture. &#8220Or a widow will come after
me.”
And sometimes Barney mourns the young man still inside of
him.
&#8220I can’t remember what I done last week,” he said,
lamenting his age. &#8220Everything just runs together and I’m
just wore out.
&#8220But I’ve still got a lot of young ideas.”