Fremont: Explorer For A Restless Nation

Foreword

Foreword IF THERE IS such a critter as a 110-percent Westerner, then surely it is Ferol Egan. He was born in the very heart ofCalifornia's historic Gold Rush country, Tuolumne County in the Mother Lode foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and is so zealous a Far Westerner that he considers anything beyond Mesa Verde to be "back East." Of Irish and Italian (Gianelli) descent, Egan was born in Sonora on July 25, I923. His Italian ethnicity predominates; he has always considered himself more Ligurian (Genovese) than Hibernian. He was raised, at first, as a smalltown boy, roaming the dusty, horse-manured streets of Jamestown although his family leased a small, 50-acre, cattle ranch just outside oftown. But after leasing the old Berry Ranch of 450 acres for some years, Egan's parents bought the place. So it was that the boy moved from Jimtown to a ranch house near the hamlet of Stent when he was about twelve years old. Henceforth, young Egan's life alternated between the routines ofschoolboy and cowboy. Each summer, for example, he and his mother would drive the family's whitcfaced Herefords up to National Forest land on the Clavey River, where the Egans had grazing rights. Meanwhile, Egan's father, Pat, ran the home place, now called the Egan Ranch. (Of passing "literary" interest is the fact that its irons burned the 2-U brand, the same as that in the classic cowboy song about the old Chisholm Trail. ) The young cowboy was a track star at Sonora Union High School (I9374I ). In a day when sprinters still wore steel spikes and dug toe holes in gritty high school tracks for want of blocks, he ran 9.9, even 9.8, heats and races without a Washoe Zephyr at his back, and when not competing in hundred-yard dashes was Northern California champion in the low hurdles. When Egan finished his schooling, he also bade adi6s to the 2-U beeves and took a job in the Standard Lumber Company's box factory in the little company town of Standard between Sonora and Tuolumne (city). But he soon sought a higher education and entered Stockton Junior College. This institution , later Stockton College and now Delta College, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the College of the Pacific. The junior college offered the first two years of study, while e.O. P. provided undergraduates with their upper division courses. In Stockton, Ferol Egan fell under the influence of the first of a series of mentors who, in greater or lesser degree, steered him in the right intellectual x FOREWORD direction. (However, he would change his heading by himselfa few times while en route to a distinguished career in writing.) The key individual at Stockton J.e. was an English professor who also taught at e.O.P., Irving Goldman. Pearl Harbor rudely interrupted Egan's pursuit of an education. He was disappointed at being rejected for military service (because of a broken neck sustained when a horse rolled on him) but went to work the summer of I 942 in Kaiser Shipyard No.2 in Richmond, helping to build Liberty ships. Eventually, the £langer's helper tired of crawling into cramped spaces as part ofthe war effort and returned to his studies. Ferol Egan enrolled at College ofthe Pacific in J942 and graduated in three and a halfyears, The future writer was both surprised and pleased to find the caliber of teaching to be high at e.0. p, (a cow college in the eyes ofBerkeley's Old Blues) and his instructors not only energetic and talented, but motivated. His geology teacher spent his summers as a Yosemite ranger. A favorite professor, Dr. Clair Olson, taught Anglo Saxon and Middle English during summer sessions at U.C. Berkeley. Egan's instructor in physical anthropology , actually a professor of biology who was doubling up, founded the college's marine research station at Dillon's Beach in Marin County. (Egan is still proud that he got an A in "anthro" when the rest ofthe class was composed of workaholic premedical students.) After securing his teaching credential at U.C., Feral Egan taught (I94849 ) at Arcata Union High School and served as its assistant track coach. But the frequent and often long-lasting sea fogs ofthe Redwood Coast did not provide an ideal climate for a youth accustomed to long, bake-oven summers in the Mother Lode. (He had had a bellyfnl offogs-ofthe tllie variety...