Published locally by longtime Coos County dairy farmer, historian, and former commissioner Gordon Ross, Yester Years is a collection of humorous and homespun stories documenting the trials, eccentricities, and daily realities of early rural life in southwest Oregon. Drawing heavily on family lore, handed-down anecdotes, and personal recollections of the Ross Slough and Coos Bay regions, the book captures a vanishing landscape where neighbors survived through grit, improvisation, and close-knit community cooperation. Through lighthearted and unpretentious prose, the text preserves the rich oral history of pioneers, farmers, and loggers who shaped the rugged frontier. A keen insight drawn from the work is how regional humor functions as an essential survival mechanism; by chronicling the absurdities and hardships of frontier isolation with witty storytelling, the narrative reveals that laughter was just as vital as physical labor in subduing an unforgiving wilderness.