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Winter retains its icy grip on the Sierra Nevada mountains, another 8 inches (plus) fell in Twain Harte on Thursday.

This morning, the sun is shining, the sky is a beautiful shade of blue and the trees once again are snow-covered. The wet, black pavement makes a stark contrast against the blanket of snow. The snow began falling early Wednesday evening, gently at first, then gradually it picked up and was falling fairly hard for most of the night. But that was last night.

Today is a different day. Today would be a perfect day to spend playing on snow-covered foothills. At 4,000 feet we received 8-10 inches. The main roads are wet but clear of snow accumulation. However, the temperature is currently 30 degrees, so road warriers will want to slow it down and keep an eye out for patches of ice for at least the next hour or two.

Travelers will want to be sure to carry chains, especially if you plan to travel further East than Twain Harte on Highway 108. It is a little late in the season to be purchasing chains but most local Auto Parts stores and tire stores will still have them in stock. Auto Zone still had most sizes. Tire chains are no longer in stock at Walmart.

Good news folks!  Wayne’s Twain Harte Shell Station is now offering gasoline again. You never miss something until it’s gone — isn’t that the truth. I’m sure more than one person has ran out of gas in Twain Harte since the new California regulations made it cost prohibitive for independent station owners to offer gasoline pumps.

Thank you Wayne for providing a valuable service to Twain Harte!

2010 saw a lot of businesses come and go in the area, others have moved to new (perhaps cheaper) locations.

The Mug is open, once again (on Fuller Road, near the Post Office). I haven’t had the chance to stop in and check out the new menu offerings but I’ll make an effort to check it out this week. The new owner is Vinnie from 7-11.

Best wishes to all our local businesses for a prosperous 2011 here in Twain Harte.

“Whoever called it ‘the gold rush’ was wrong,” says Sam Sackett, author of “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” a novel about the gold seekers who swarmed to California in 1849-1850.  “There wasn’t anything like a ‘rush’ about it.

Sackett’s point is that travel in those days was very slow.  “Today you could go from St. Louis to San Francisco in a few hours by plane,” he says.  “But in a covered wagon pulled by oxen the trip took months.”  The heroine of his novel started from Pike County, MO, in August 1849 and arrived at tghe Hangtown mining camp the next spring.  “Covering 25 miles a day was good time,” according to Sackett.

The “Sweet Betsy” of Sackett’s novel is a minister’s daughter, 18 and pregnant.  To escape the shame, she and her lover join a wagon train for the Hangtown gold fields.  Her experiences help her grow into a strong, independent woman.  The story is based on the folk ballad of the same name, which is reproduced in Sackett’s book.

Sackett is a retired university professor and a former president of the Kansas Folklore Society.  His nonfiction books include “Kansas Folklore” and a children’s book, “Cowboys and the Songs They Sang.”  Most of his fiction appeared in science-fiction magazines.

When the Rev. Elias Potter refuses to let his eighteen-year-old daughter, Betsy, marry nineteen-year-old Ike McNab, the two young lovers take matters into their own hands. With a baby on the way, the two decide to leave Louisiana, Missouri, in 1849 and journey to California to join the Gold Rush.

Betsy and Ike have no idea what the passage will entail, and it is not an easy one. Joining a wagon train, the two face danger and hardship as they climb mountains, cross the desert, and ford rivers on the long and arduous journey to California. Betsy and Ike must not only survive the passage itself, but must learn to eke out a living in the rough-and-tumble gold mining camp of Hangtown.

An epic poem in prose, Sweet Betsy from Pike follows the famous frontier ballad of the same name in tracing the story of a sweet girl who leaves Missouri and grows into a strong woman who learns to take charge of her own destiny.