I Like It Here: Life Stories of Humboldt’s Bob McKee by Ray Raphael

A new book written by a long time resident is a love song of sorts–not just for the man, a third generation local, whose tales fill the pages of Ray Raphael’s recent creation–I Like It Here: Life Stories of Humboldt’s Bob McKee—but most especially it’s a love song for this place and its culture.

As Ray Raphael explained in a phone interview last night, “Bob’s life here–92 years–embodies so much of Humboldt from the logging boom to the Back to the Landers. His history is Humboldt’s history…Rarely, is a personal life as embedded in a place where that person lives.”

Raphael who is famous locally for his northern California books–Cash Crop, an Everyday History of Somewhere, and Two Peoples, One Place among others–more than for his nationally well-respected series of books on the Revolutionary War, once again let the voices of this community provide the narrative that fills another of his wonderful writings about this place.

Raphael said that he thinks that this book will be another one of his Humboldt classics because, he explained, “Bob is a Humboldt classic. He is absolutely homegrown. His grandfather was one of the first to settle in the Whitethorn valley, then he grew up in Eureka in a logging town.”

“I, like so many others, bought my land from Bob,” Raphael explained. He said that he purchased some of the first property available when McKee first split up a ranch in Whale Gulch into smaller parcels. “I was like number 10 or 12… .”

In this latest ode to Humboldt and it’s history, Raphael conveys his subject’s passion for this place. “Bob,” he wrote, “followed Whale Gulch with similar projects in Briceland, Petrolia, Honeydew and numerous places beyond. But even as he reached farther afield, he would neither buy nor sell land without first being there in person, getting to know it. Land should never just be reduced to lines on a map, he insisted; it was always to be experienced in the flesh.”

Raphael also conveys the somewhat loose relationship McKee had with rules in his book. “Bob was all about you get an idea and you do it,” Raphael explained via the phone interview in response to a question. “You don’t necessarily dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. He liked to do things with just a handshake. 90% of a time that works out, but it doesn’t always… .”

In this captivating book, Bob McKee explains that even he was worried about his maneuvers on the Whale Gulch ranch. He told Raphael, one of the people who could have been his victim if things hadn’t worked out,

[I]t took a long time to cure the title…[Meanwhile,] I was selling land that I didn’t legally own and people were building their houses, so they’re totally dependent upon me to complete this thing. I mean, I’m it–if the deal falls through, there’s nobody else to blame. So every once in a while I’d get butterflies and look down nervously to see if it’s working or if wasn’t…for the first ten minutes, and then I’d just continue. Well, it took three years to clear the title, and by the time we finally got everything fixed so the title could be transferred, I had all that land in Whale Gulch sold.

As Raphael then told us via phone, “When you basically say, ‘Just go for it,’ you aren’t necessarily considering all the ifs, ands, and buts and other people’s sensibilities.” He added, “I don’t want to give the impression he was impulsive, but he wanted to move forward…he wanted things to be actualized. A lot of the things he did were complicated and difficult” and, Raphael implied, McKee’s forge ahead attitude got them done.

And, his unconventional methods could have fortuitous results for the residents. In the book, McKee describes Thompson Creek Meadow, a large, lush flat area in Whale Gulch. “I thought, ‘What a shame to let just one party have this–everybody around would probably hate him? How about we let everybody have it, leave it for everybody to come to?”

Page 115 shows the Maypole at Thompson Creek Meadow.

Raphael added, “The only thing we ever put up was a maypole, and it’s still there. Giving the Meadow to the community was a stroke of genius, a gift that keeps on giving.”

In spite of his generosity at times, the story of McKee’s hardworking youth in Eureka echoes through his industrious life, Raphael said. “Bob’s mother had died when he was a year and a half and he winds up living in Eureka with Grandma Nettie who is living on her Civil War Pensions. By the time Bob is in grade school, he is getting up before it is light and walking downtown…and he is all eyes for the experience…He ends up helping with the family income when he is about seven years old. He starts walking around collecting scrap metal in his little red wagon and selling it.”

And, Raphel said, McKee was still collecting scrap metal–stuff he found in the woods or scrap from his businesses—until not long before he died and his son, Robbie would drive it all down to the Bay Area and sell it.

Beyond the wonderous character of Humboldt County and the marvelous storytelling of Bob McKee, Ray Raphael brings his historian’s precision to the piece so that for old-timers who have lived here for years, the names of loved ones, shirt-tail relatives, and respected institutions pepper the piece providing delightful bursts of recognition and lighting up long forgotten memories.

And, beyond all that are the images…old family photos, drawings of Whitethorn Construction, and photographs of the lush detailed architecture of Southern Humboldt homes and businesses. For those who love this place, the imagery alone is worth the price of the book.

“In one of the first interviews we had,” Raphael said, “I asked him why did he and his family come back to Whitethorn and he told me, ‘Well, I like it here.’ And that became the title of the book.”

And the way Raphael shaped the book (although he gives credit to many others as well), the book is told almost entirely in Bob McKee’s words. As Raphael told me, “Bob’s book is the best book I’ve never written. It’s really Bob’s book and I’m the midwife.”

And, that book, like so many of Raphael’s books, describes the love that his subjects and he have for this place–they just like it here and that passion comes through.

If you, too, like it here, or someone you know does, you can purchase I Like It Here: Life Stories of Humboldt’s Bob McKee at the link. Or Ray Raphael has generously given two signed copies to be offered to the first two people who donate $75 or more to Redheaded Blackbelt’s Freelancer Fund.

Please note: This reporter has loved Ray Raphael’s books ever since reading an Everyday History of Somewhere while I was teenager and have many copies of different books by him on my shelves–some for loaning out and some for savoring.