Rough And Ready Rambling
By Rosemary Freeland
The Cramer's and Cullum's Phillips 66
I drove up the hill in December to Grass Valley to meet with Dave Cullum at his business office on East Main Street. Good thing I took my Canadian Blondo boots and extra clothing with me since there was water running off snow pack and it was cold in that city that day. (It is surely true what is said about Rough and Ready’s temperate banana belt climate.)
Dave greeted me with a warm heart and office, however, and a desk top strewn with memorabilia ... photos of Rough and Ready, including Secession Days gone by. There were also photos of his family — parents and grandmother, and siblings — at the Old Country Store (corner of Mystery Lane and the highway) that once served as the post office. The Cramer Building when his folks leased it and ran a Phillips 66 gas station was pictured. Dave’s folks ran a gas station below the old country store when Jay Cullum suggested to Bill Cramer that town center would be a good place for a new gas station. So with Jay’s help Bill constructed the building in 1968 that presently stands across from the newest Country Store.
Mr. Cramer planned a contemporary design but Dave’s mother, Val Cullum, insisted Mr. Cramer build something more in keeping with the town’s Gold Rush history. She helped him with the building’s architecture. It now stands as “The Pickers’ Palace” and is used by the Fruit Jar Pickers’ band each Sunday morning. When Mr. Cramer passed on, his widow donated the building and the land to the Rough and Ready Fire Department. The building will be razed in the spring of the new year if plans for the new Fire Department continue to unfold.
Dave, age 50, contemplated progress and fondly reminisced about days gone. When he was 10 he helped to dig the hole that the gas station’s garage hoist was set in. “My folks tied a rope around my chest and lowered me down the shaft to dig out the last bit of dirt,” he said. “They teased me. ‘Well, Dave, maybe we’ll just leave you down there for a while.’” He also recounted the history of his father and friends staging frightening realistic street gun fights (using blanks, of course) as in the olden days with Jim West and others on Secession Day celebrations. Old-timers will remember the gas station and its proprietors, Jay Cullum and his wife, Val, and their old pickup they called “The Old Green Lizard.” They leased from Bill and ran that business for a couple of years before Jay moved on to delve in such trades as photography and painting, the latter in which he tutored his son, Dave, who became a licensed insured painting contractor in 1998.
Hanging on Dave’s office walls are framed newspaper articles that include his son, Matthew, mutton busting at the Penn Valley Rodeo. Displayed on a shelf is the magazine Sierra Alive in which he and his wife Sue and daughter, Chelsea are pictured walking a llama through Nevada City in a February Mardi Gras Parade. A plaque commemorates Jay Cullum’s volunteer work in 1991 for the Southwest Branch of Oregon’s National Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the disease that eventually took his life. Jay was cremated as was his wife Val when she passed on. They chose to have their ashes released into the Yuba River.
Dave carries on with his father’s legacy. The love of restoration and painting is in his blood along with pride of workmanship to the degree that he is featured in The Best of Grass Valley, a magazine published by Paul Law Real Estate, as their painting contractor of preference (a PS Pros “Pre-Screened Professional You Can Trust”) serving Nevada County. Dave Cullum and his family reside in Big Oak Valley. View family photos and historical documents and history regarding Rough and Ready at www.davecullumpainting.com.
(Article published January 16, 2009). You can read more Rambling stories on the Penn Valley Courier website.
