Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.
Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading.
Thank you for reading! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.
Welcome! We hope that you enjoy our free content.
Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribe purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribe purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Thank you for signing in! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.
Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Please purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Your current subscription does not provide access to this content.
Sorry, no promotional deals were found matching that code.
Promotional Rates were found for your code.
Sunny skies. High around 95F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..
Clear. Low 61F. Winds light and variable.
John Crass , 93, a developer and manufactured home dealer for four decades in Tuolumne County, recently sold the lot where his Jamestown business, Custom Manufactured Homes, used to be on Highway 108 at 5th Avenue.
John Crass in the early 1950s when he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps. This photo was probably taken in Alaska, Crass said this week in Jamestown.
John and Marcia Crass in a photo taken in the mid to late 2000s. They have been married 15 years.
John Crass has been bowling since 1960, he used to bowl at Sonora Bowl, and more recently he bowled at Black Oak Lanes. One year he had the scorest average in Tuolumne County. A 299 score is one point from a perfect 300. It takes eleven consecutive strikes to reach any score above 290.
John Crass , 93, a developer and manufactured home dealer for four decades in Tuolumne County, recently sold the lot where his Jamestown business, Custom Manufactured Homes, used to be on Highway 108 at 5th Avenue.
John Crass in the early 1950s when he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps. This photo was probably taken in Alaska, Crass said this week in Jamestown.
John and Marcia Crass in a photo taken in the mid to late 2000s. They have been married 15 years.
John Crass has been bowling since 1960, he used to bowl at Sonora Bowl, and more recently he bowled at Black Oak Lanes. One year he had the scorest average in Tuolumne County. A 299 score is one point from a perfect 300. It takes eleven consecutive strikes to reach any score above 290.
John Crass, 93, a developer and manufactured home dealer for four decades in Tuolumne County, recently sold the lot where his Jamestown business, Custom Manufactured Homes, used to be on Highway 108 at Fifth Avenue.
The manufactured housing market locally and up and down the Golden State has changed dramatically over the past four decades, Crass said Wednesday.
“When I first came up, there were a lot of these little cracker-box manufactured homes,” Crass said. “Nowadays we’re putting out much higher quality homes. We’ve gone from the days of $20,000 manufactured houses to $200,000 manufactured houses. The big thing is the quality. These days manufactured homes are built with the same materials as site-built homes.”
Asked about housing shortages locally and elsewhere in the state, Crass said part of the problem is that builders can produce only so many houses, the factories can turn out only so many manufactured houses.
“There’s been a shortage of materials the past few years,” Crass said. “Due to numerous factors. Main thing is I’m proud of the quality we put out. It’s much better than it used to be.”
Aside from his business ties as a builder in the Mother Lode, Crass is well-known in the local bowling community. He has been bowling since 1960, he used to bowl at Sonora Bowl, and more recently he’s bowled at Black Oak Lanes. One year he had the highest scoring average in Tuolumne County. In February 2003, he bowled a 299 score, one point from a perfect 300. It takes 11 consecutive strikes to reach any score above 290.
He’s been decades in the Mother Lode, and he and his wife, Marcia, plan to stay in Jamestown. His story began in March 1929 when he was born in Myrtle, Missouri, which he described this week as “genuine hillbilly country” where “English was our second language.” He grew up on a general purpose farm helping raise chickens, hogs, cows and hay, and he graduated from Couch High School in Oregon County, Missouri, with the class of 1946.
Crass joined the U.S. Army Air Corps two weeks after he graduated from high school at age 17, and three months later he was in the Philippines working radar with an aircraft control and warning squadron. In 1947 the Army Air Corps/Army Air Forces became the U.S. Air Force.
Crass also worked out of Osaka, Japan, and completed three years with the Air Corps/Air Force in Tacoma, Washington, then joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which manages communications and information systems. He spent most of his three years with the Signal Corps in Fairbanks, Alaska, before Alaska became a state in 1959.
“We handled all the communications for Alaska territory,” Crass said. “Including telephones and telegraph, all civilian communications.”
When he got out of the Army he went to work for Boeing in Seattle as an electronics inspector and instructor. He worked five years at Boeing and took night school classes for those same five years to learn aerospace engineering. He then went to work for Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale in Santa Clara County as an aerospace engineer helping develop satellite systems for military and civilian clients.
Crass first came to Tuolumne County in the late 1970s when he purchased Sugar Pine RV Park in 1978. He began building and selling manufactured homes in Jamestown in 1979. He worked 25 years at Lockheed, retired in 1985, and moved to Tuolumne County the same year. He’s lived in Sugar Pine, Twain Harte and Jamestown over the past four decades.
He originally called his business Woods Creek Home Sales and eventually changed its name to Custom Manufactured Homes. He says he and his employees used to tell prospective customers “If you don’t enjoy it, we won’t sell you a house.”
He stopped bowling when Black Oak Lanes closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Black Oak Lanes has since reopened, but he hasn’t gone back because he says he’s getting older.
He and his wife Marcia, who live near his former lot at Highway 108 and Fifth Avenue, plan to move into a house in Jamestown.
“We’re staying,” Crass said. “We love the people and the climate. We’ve been here longer than any other place now.”
Entrepreneur James Evans recently bought Crass’s lot and has opened his new business, Yosemite Homes, at the same location. Crass said he’s going to miss being in business in Tuolumne County.
“The joy of working with my customers, and all of the folks in the county, the building department, the planning department,” Crass said, listing some of the people he will miss. “My employees and everyone, everyone has been a joy to work with.”
Contact Guy McCarthy at gmccarthy@uniondemocrat.net or (209) 770-0405. Follow him on Twitter at @GuyMcCarthy.