Unsullied Memories of Yosemite Column by Eli Setencich August 10, 1999 - The Fresno Bee A half-century ago, it was God's country, heaven on Earth and as safe as your mother's arms. The only beasts in the neighborhood were the bears, and they pretty much knew their place, as did the summer help that worked for less than car fare - at kitchen sinks and hotel loading docks, in tented cabins and stables, doing windows and potties, pitching horse hockey and old shoes, each a dirty job, no question about it, but somebody had to do it. Room was free, and no one ever got bored. Whatever the job, the remuneration was about $14 a week and all you could eat. Minimum-wage laws were off the books, and the only danger was gagging on a greasy spoon. That was Yosemite 50-plus summers ago, before humans turned animal, a wonderland of serenity and security and spilling over with luminous coeds from the big cities north and south marking time between semesters, their only fear the mosquitoes and poison oak. Protective mothers sent their daughters with confidence and heedless advice. Be polite, write often whether you need money or not, stay out of the midday sun, watch your step around slippery rocks and hormonal busboys. For the young and the restless, it was the place to be in the summertime, away from the hot and dusty flatland, not only glorious to look at but safer than dragging Fulton Street. Days off were spent lollygagging along a riverside or clambering up Half Dome - on the sissy side, of course, with the footholds and cables. Summer after summer, we returned to jobs in the valley beneath the granite walls, hundreds upon hundreds of us, mostly college age, some aging and footloose but still not grown up for honest work, many aimless and home from war, all drawn by a common bond and an uncommon love - Yosemite, the gem of our devotion. Tents, anyone? Tents everyone, actually, in Camp Curry during those summers, underneath which you spent your nights unless you drew the graveyard shift at the Ahwahnee. In our salad days, we tossed and dressed it in the kitchen of the grand old rock pile of a hotel, bused tables in the Lodge, spent the nights hanging in Curry, named after the old Curry Co. when it stood for family and was all heart so long as you didn't soldier on the job. Except for the work, it was vacation with pay, short as the checks were: Half Dome in the light of a half moon, the strains of Sid Hoff's band or the Mariposa Musicals playing '40s favorites on Saturday nights, beer busts on the sandy banks of the Merced, nature walks in pine-ringed meadows, leaps off Stoneman Bridge into the icy river, the nightly Firefall from Glacier Point, late hamburgers down the road at Degnan's, an antiquated joint that gave greasy spoon a bad name. Unlike those idyllic days, now more than 3 million visitors clog the park each month in the vacation season, standing in lines and sitting in gridlock, generating fumes and garbage, as much as 20 tons of it a day. It's no longer what it used to be, but still is in most ways, still awesome and inspiring as it ever was, drawing old workers back year after year to refreshen memories beside eternal falls. Yosemite never changes, only the people do, some now and then for the worst.