Tom and Ella Jones had a little store at Beasore Meadows. Johnny, being a youngster who didn’t like to see cans and papers strewn on the ground, spent time helping to keep the area clean around their store. After a couple of years, Johnny moved in with the Joneses. People would say, "Is that your boy?" and Ella would reply, "Yeah, that’s my boy." Thus, Johnny grew up as Johnny Jones and made his original last name his middle name: Johnny Alberta Jones. He joked about having this "Welsh-Indian" name.

He lived on the Tom Jones Ranch, about four miles north of Coarsegold, west of Highway 41. He spent the winters there and followed the snow up into the Sierra as it melted in the summer. Tom Jones was a cattleman and one of the old-time packers who conducted pack trips into the high country. As Johnny grew older he began to take over the packing trips. Thus began his career as a leading guide. He learned "search and rescue" from the Indians and the "old-timer" mountain men in the area. He had many occasions to use those skills in the rugged Sierra.

In the old days, to get ready for a pack trip, groups usually had their food, bedrolls and tents with them. That was before the time of sleeping bags; "I didn’t know what one was. I slept in some blankets and I’d get back in the high country and it would get cold! I’d use the horse blanket — saddle blankets — to make a pad." Some of the parties departed from Beasore Meadows or farther up near the backpacking trail. They used both horses and mules.

"At Beasore Meadows, there was a little old store and a campground. A lot of families stayed there and we had, in the meadow, two or three milk cows. Around the Fourth of July we’d have to round those up, put the calves in the corral overnight, and in the morning steal the milk from the cows for the campers. I’d walk that hundred acres for hours in the evening bringing those cows and calves in, like a sheepherder with a stick; it was cold and the grass was wet! I put the calves in the corral where they wouldn’t suck their mamas at night, so that the cows would have milk in the morning. We’d strain the milk and bottle it. Some people, with their children, stayed at Beasore for months.

"We even packed refrigerated hamper stuff. Some of the trips were first-class: we’d pack cots and beds; we packed portable toilets — you name it! Anything they’d want, we’d take it if it were possible. But it was an interesting life.

"You never knew who you were going to meet . . . . One day there was a couple, a man and wife, and come to find out, it was Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan. I took them in for about a week . . . . I had ‘Fibber McGee and Molly’ for years [Marian and Jim Jordan]. The first year they came out, they didn’t want people to know who they were, so they just called themselves the Jordans."

Johnny was asked to lead a special pack trip, but he declined, saying he couldn’t make it; but the pressure was put on him by some people with "clout" saying, "no matter what the cost is, we have to have you."

"It was sort of a ‘hush-hush’ thing; we didn’t know who it was. Gee, it was spooky. I wasn’t feeling good about it, but I said, ‘Well, I’ll do it.’ We were going to have 11 people, so we brought 22 head of Curry Company horses and mules to Mugler’s Meadow and kept them in the corrals two days ahead of time.

"Then all the provisions came in — the food, the beds — oh man! This was pretty special. I saw the special hampers, and I said, ‘Oh, oh!’ So we took all the saddle horses ’way in, in the early morning, and left them. Then we came back and got the mules, 11 mules for 11 riders, a pack per person. We left the tops off the packs for personal belongings they would be bringing with them.

"I’ll never forget what happened as long as I live. We took off with the mules. All of a sudden I heard a noise and I looked back and there were two great big black limousines! It was kind of spooky as they were coming by. They had dark windows and I could see some hands waving as we pulled off the side of the road with the mule train.

"I thought, ‘Oh my Gawd, is it the Mafia or something?’ I was scared! They went on and were all unloaded by the time we got there with the mules. Everybody was walking around — four security guards — armed men.

"Then I recognized Governor Reagan by his little old cowboy hat he wears all the time. Two security guards went with us on the tour. Two drove the limousines back to Yosemite Valley and waited there for us until we went cross-country to Yosemite National Park. We went to a part of Sierra Forest near Chiquito. We were gone about five days and, sure enough, when we got down the trail to the Valley, here came the security guards out of the bushes, right on the job.

"Nancy Reagan was along; it was neat. The first day was a little hard on her . . . . We got to playing the harmonica and singing together at the bonfire, and Governor Reagan told me, ‘Well, Johnny Jones, you’re well known. I got to tell you something. You remember years ago, when you were probably just a kid, and you took eight young ministers-to-be . . . and stayed with them back in the park?’

"I said, ‘Oh, yes, Governor Reagan, I do, yes. Don Moomaw was one and Louis Evens was one.’

"‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Don Moomaw was a big football star, but they were all going to that same seminary and Don was my minister when I was in Hollywood. Don told me about the trip and said if I ever went in those mountains I’d find Johnny Jones.’ That’s why they kept bugging me!"

In 1983 Johnny was in a bad automobile wreck. "I was opening my mail...you know how you just tear envelopes open with your fingers. All of a sudden I got this — it was a beautiful letter from President Reagan and Nancy. Boy, my eyes opened up and I sent for some Scotch Tape and I taped the envelope up real nice. I felt bad about the envelope. The letter was something special and it made me feel good. I think he’s a beautiful man; he really is, and I was so impressed. I have a picture of President Reagan which says, ‘To Johnny, with best regards, from Ronald Reagan.’ I had previously received a letter from then Governor Reagan dated July 16, 1973 [about the pack trip into the Sierra]."