DoxA

A Firey Forth

Last week I was sitting on a beach with my family (sans Aubrey who is currently in Nepal on a mission trip) in Cannon Beach, Oregon watching children run around on the sand with huge smiles and squeals. There were families gathered around fires cooking hot dogs and waiting for the big boom and glare of a fireworks display which, by the way, was really incredible. As I watched this I was taken back in time to my childhood and how we celebrated the Forth of July in Ferndale. I'm sure it wasn't much different then most small towns, I mean we had your typical barbecues and fireworks, the high school marching band assembling for a rousing rendition of the “Stars and Stripes Forever” and so on... but we did something in our little town to this day I've never heard done elsewhere... We had firetruck rides.

Mind you, this was before the establishment of OSHA, car seats, childproof bottles and skid resistant bathtubs. So, it may surprise you that if you were a kid in Ferndale and your parents would let you; you were given ability to jump on any of the four fire trucks housed at the volunteer fire department just off of Main St.and ride them… But no, not just ride in them but ride on them. There were kids on top, hanging out the sides and if you were lucky to grab a spot… off the back. No seat belts, no straps, nothing! It is amazing to think now that parents would line up on the sidewalk pushing their little darlings up onto massive hunks of sheet metal that would hurl down the street at 40 miles an hour with the whistle blowing and lights flashing! Trust me, for a kid not only in my small town but in ANY town; this was all too terribly exciting. Today it would just be terrible!

The best thing about the morning firetruck rides was the Bazooka bubble gum. Most of the time you would get on a truck for a ride and a volunteer fireman would hand you a couple of pieces, but some of the firemen would just set the open box out leaving the gum for a “first come first served” basis; meaning only a couple of kids would get gum on that ride. Other than the Fourth of July the only other time we knew you could get handfuls of gum was Halloween. That’s why I think we were so eager to empty the box of neatly rowed, individually wrapped pieces of gum. Back then you could buy 2 for a penny at the store. Now I don’t know of anything in my life that you could get two of anything for a penny. But then I was seven years old and had no concept of value so if it’s free and plentiful and you can have as much as you want you just grab as much as you can.

There was a reason why you did this too… well, two reasons; first because we could but the other reason is you needed backup. What I mean by backup was another piece of gum to replace the flavor of the gum that would quickly fade. I think this may have been where the term, “snowball effect” started. Many people think it has something to do with rolling a snowball down a hill and as it rolls and gains speed and it gets larger as it continues down its path. The problem is I’ve been on a hill with a snowball and I’ve never seen one roll down a hill collecting more snow let alone people and various large items in its path, like we’ve seen in the cartoons. But I have experienced a small piece of gum quickly lose its flavor, only to be refreshed by another piece again to lose that flavor… this time in about half the time as before, to again be added with another, but again the flavor fades even more quickly then before and as the practice to replenish the flavor continues soon you have a wad so large in your mouth you’re upper and lower jaws can no longer connect and you have pink gum juice flowing off your chin.

Jake Thomas was driving the truck with Jake Jacoby who were best friends growing up and they relished the fact that they both had the same first name. They both worked at the Challenge creamery and they both drove the same car a Mustang. So, it was no surprise when they both join the volunteer fire department the year before. We knew that if we got on their truck we would have a good chance of a box of gum just left open for our picking and that they would drive a little faster and farther than some of the older firemen; which is exactly what they did. And we were convinced we were getting the best ride of all the trucks that went out that morning.

When I looked over at Bill Wallens who had a massive wad of gum in his mouth but could still manage a stupid grin, I started to laugh but then gasped. We could see the look of surprise on the Jakes’ faces too because as we passed the old Nielson feed store at the city limits which had one of the two fire-whistles that were used to summon all the volunteer firemen in the case of a fire, we could hear it blaring over the already loud fire whistle on the truck.

Looking up into the cab of the fire truck we could see both Jakes having a very animated discussion. Which meant every third word was a curse word…

“What the bleep?”       

“Hear that bleepin’ whistle?”

“Who would bleepin’ believe a bleepin’ fire would bleepin’ start this bleepin’ morning?”

“I can bleepin’ believe it! Bleep! It is bleepin’ right here!

“Bleeeeeeep.”

Sure enough as we slowed down to make the turn back toward town we could see smoke billowing out of the Silva home.

            

Jackie Silva’s husband, Don, was killed almost ten years prior on the opening day of duck season. It was a freak accident as they say. But if you have ever been within earshot during the predawn hours of opening day you would think it may have sounded something similar to the invasion of Normandy. Which is why no one was aware when Don’s duck blind tumbled over the deep embankment of the Eel River holding him under the current, entangled in the overgrowth.

Jackie was now left the burden of raising their two sons Tom and Jerry named after the cartoon characters. But when Tom graduated from high school he surprised everyone by enlisting in the Navy and soon found himself on a ship in the south Pacific leaving his mother and Jerry the younger brother to keep the farm. Which wasn’t a prudent decision because his mother was advancing in years and Jerry was known to be a little low on the IQ food chain; which wasn’t a surprise then when he landed himself in Jail for bank robbery. As the story goes; Jackie stopped stocking the pantry with some of Jerry’s favorite snacks. When he asked why she told him that ever since his brother left she was having a difficult time managing the dairy and they were running out of money. So, thinking of the only thing he could do he went into Eureka where there was a Bank of America. So, when he walked in he grabbed a deposit slip and wrote a demand note for the teller, which read, “This is a stickup” but as he stood in line writing the note he began to think maybe the person behind him could see what he wrote so he got nervous and left. To which he proceeded across the street to the Empire Bank where he could just walk up to the teller and present the note. Upon which the teller after reading it could tell by the spelling he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and told him she could not accept this note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and therefore he would have to go to Bank of America. To which he politely excused himself and walked back across the street to where he was quickly apprehended after the teller called the police.

It only took eighteen months for Jerry to be released on parole and confined to his mother’s care which was going to break her heart knowing that the demise of a small section of her house was due to her quick trip to the county fairgrounds to meet several of the ladies preparing for the VFW picnic. She wanted her son to come with her but when he objected she could understand his reason for not wanting to socialize with a bunch of old maids making Jell-O salads and ranch beans. But his real motivation for staying at the house was to look in the Deluxe 64, box of Red Devil, safe and sane fireworks which were purchased from a makeshift plywood shack outside the Blue Stamps redemption center over in Fortuna the day before.

Even though Jackie hid the box it took him less than five minutes to find the bright red and white container holding the evening fireworks show. He carefully removed the boxes of sparklers a snakes which were boring and given to the little kids and pulled out the long, mounted sticks of explosive which would later spay brilliant sparks of light in colors of red, blue, green, yellow… sometimes all at once sometimes in succession. Some were cone shaped, some had a square base. Some had two sections and some would promise to make noise when lit. They were called the screamers or whistlers and they were Jerry’s favorite.

Knowing that everyone was in town and could hear the fire whistles on the trucks carrying children he decided no one would hear a “whistler” if he were to just light one for his own personal pleasure. So, Jerry walked into the kitchen and grabbed the box of matches from the junk drawer and walked outside. It only took a moment to strike the fuse and hear the shrill sound, however being the daylight he didn’t see the extent of the sparks flying out of the stick on the ground and was surprised to see the bush next to the house suddenly engulfed in flames. The fire then quickly moved up the side of the house and caught the eves in a near flash.

Mirella Leman who was next door making potato salad saw the burning bush and new right away that it wasn’t a religious experience. So, she called the phone number for the fire department but no one was answering the phone because everyone was outside managing the children wait for a ride. Finally, Mirella called her brother Frank who lived over at the next block across from the gumdrop trees and had him run to the station and alert them of the fire.

Jake pulled the truck into the driveway of the Silva home thinking the rest of the crew would be in tow. But the other three trucks including the water truck were close to the station when the whistle blew. Now the water truck was an important part of fighting fires in Ferndale because there were no fire hydrants but all the trucks were still at the station waiting for the Jakes to return.

There were six of us on the truck. Me, Bill Wallens, my cousins Greg and Allen and my boyhood pal Rick and his brother Tim. By this time the fire had spread to a good portion of the roof and it was apparent to even us kids that action was needed fast. Jake noticed the water tower next to the barn which was filled by a windmill that was attached to a crude pump which was sourced by a subterranean well and started toward the water tower. But as the other Jake began to ready the pump and lay out the water hose we could see Jake on the water tower struggle with the hose. So, the rest of us created a human daisy along the ladder to lift the feeder hose up the water tower.

When Jackie arrived at the house it only took a matter of seconds for the rest of the volunteer fire department to show up and help extinguish the fire; Shortly, all the ladies from the VFW arrived. Soon the soda, popcorn and candy booths which were set up at Fireman’s Park for the afternoon softball game were reassembled in the field behind the Silva home. Barbecues, hauled in on the back of pickup trucks began emitting the aromas of hotdogs, steaks and fresh caught Pacific salmon. Mirella’s potato salad was the first to go and everyone got stuffed on fresh corn on the cob and deviled eggs; there was plenty of Portuguese sweet bread and homemade pies.

That night the parents seemed to pay particularly close attention to their little ones running around with sparklers in their hands and I think perhaps a few parents began to question just how safe it is for children to be hanging off the back of fire trucks.

It was an unusual day, but then again holidays like the Fourth of July are meant to stand out from all the others and this Fourth definitely stood out from all the other Fourth of July’s in my small town.

It was a day when unlikely heroes went to extraordinary measures to save a home. A day when unaware inhabitants… clueless of what they could loose… careless to protect their possessions were rescued by the goodness of neighborly welfare. Which is what makes this country so great and what makes me proud to be an American.

Let’s not lose sight of the value of our freedom. Just by the nature of the name freedom it doesn’t mean it’s cheap. And just because we enjoy plenty of freedom in America, that doesn’t mean it has no value. Therefore, let’s not allow our freedom to snowball. What I mean, is lets not allow it to drift far from where it was and attach a whole lot of things to it. We must keep our freedom pure.

We need to get back to the simple things: The things that matter and the things that made this great country great; like family, freedom and faith. So, hug your kids, call your parents, organize a family reunion, support our troops, encourage freedom for all people in all places and have faith, not only in each other but in God. For it is God, not man, who is the author of freedom. However, because we have the opportunity to promote freedom we must uphold the responsibility to defend it today. For it was the faith of good men and women who laid the foundation for our freedom by sacrificing home and security; who fought and died, not for the field but on the field, not for the life they were living but for the living and not just for today… but also for our tomorrow.

I hope when my grandchildren are teaching their grandchildren about Independence Day we will still be celebrating the Forth of July by watching children stare with gaping wonder at a sparkler in their tiny hands, having simple cookouts on the beach and having families gather together to the boom and glare of an incredible fireworks display.

Giant Ambition pt. 2

It was the summer of 1974 and I had just matriculated from the eighth grade and was awaiting my freshman year of high school. Meanwhile the Oakland Athletics were on their way to winning their third World Series in a row. It was during this time my cousin Greg taunted me into game of baseball. After a year of hearing my stories of the A’s and engaging in fervent baseball card trading, he asked me if I was going to do something with that bat. “You mean like, sell it?” “No.” he said. “I mean like, play with it.”  The thought really never occurred to me since I wasn’t a baseball player but during the doldrums of the summer in a small town you’ll do just about anything. Greg had a baseball glove and I had a bat and we scrounged enough money to buy a baseball from the Red Front Store in town.

My grandmother had a field out behind her house and soon the two of us were imagining ourselves to be our hero’s during vicious games of our own version of “over-the-line;” me as Joe Rudi and he as his hero Pete Rose. Oddly, enough it was the A’s and the Red’s vying for baseball dominance at the same time.  That summer I learned to hit a curveball, appreciate an unassisted double play and that playing the game was more fun than talking about it. It was also the summer my bat lost its color, got waterlogged from laying on the dew-drenched field overnight and for all intents and purposes lost its value.

I remember one day playing a hotly contested battle between Oakland and Cincinnati, when as occasionally happened the fire whistle started to blow. This was the means by which all the volunteer firemen would be summoned for a pending emergency. For the citizens of the valley floor it was always a curiosity to see how long it took for the sixth and final whistle blow to end before we would hear the fainter and quicker sirens of the fire engines.  They were amazingly quick for how far many of the men had to travel to the side station off Main Street. As Greg and I stood on the field listening the smaller sirens grew close and eventually loud as they passed by the field behind my grandmother’s house. Turning northwest they were headed toward the mouth of the Eel River where on the horizon we observed smoke.

On this day, a call came from the part of the valley known as Camp Weott. Which was the first port on the Eel River during the early part of the twentieth century allowing transport for the many redwood trees being shipped down to San Francisco. It is mostly cool, damp and windy and even on a summer day can elicit a fire in the kitchen stove, which for many of the near century old Victorians was the only source of heat. One such home was owned by the Jorgensen’s. A patriarch family to the valley they were well known and beyond themselves in years. On this day Cliff picked a particularly sappy piece of alder to place in the stove and like many old homes the right combination of soot laden chimney pipe and heated sap created a classic chimney fire which in turn ignited the down wind shake roof which spread to the third floor of this old classic home. By the time the fire had reached the second story of their six bedroom home Cliff could smell smoke and walked outside only to discover his own home in flames. Realizing his wife of sixty two years Evelyn was upstairs in the second story sewing room likely asleep as was her afternoon custom, Cliff was helpless as his arthritis no longer permitted him to travel up and down stairways. In a panic, Cliff had only one option as the telephone line had already been severed from the heat, he went behind the house to the old milk shed which was recently converted into a crude but livable space by a college dropout named Bob.

Bob had received a baseball scholarship to Cal State Berkley. And in two short seasons he had made a quite an impression on the local talent scouts. He was offered a chance to play for the Giant’s triple A team in Stockton but he turned it down to further his education. It was an uncertain time with images of Kent State and flower power to  remembrances of the Black Panthers and the Sibianese Liberation Army; world-views were radically changing. It was also the same time of the Jesus Movement and Bob had “found religion.” And now anti-establishment and resembling a hippie, it was not popular on the Berkley campus to leave your mind to the submission of faith. Soon, Bob found himself like many discarded “hippies” seeking refuge in the shadow of the redwoods.

When I met Bob it was several years later and just after I committed my life to Christ when I started milking cows for a Danish drunk, affectionately known around town as, Getty. Getty’s farm was the backyard of the old gutted and burned out house of the Jorgensen’s and close-by was the converted milk house, still in tact and still the home of a would be baseball player. Bob was in a wheel chair the result of rescuing Evelyn from the second story sewing room years earlier. As the story goes, though Bob never talked about it, was he was hit from behind by a collapsing burning timber from the second just after he got Evelyn across the threshold to safety.

The summer of 1977 I spent almost every non working moment with Bob. It was during that summer I learned how to play chess, appreciate a Monterey Jack grilled cheese sandwich and to “hit” the Bible. It was Bob’s way of referring to reading the Bible. Because Bill was a hermit, by choice and by circumstance, he also was a student of the Bible. You could ask him anything and he would know the answer, cross-referenced and annotated. His mind was amazing and his faith encouraging. However, I remembered thinking had I not come along who would he have been able to share it with?

At the end of that summer while we were discussing the attributes of God during one of our many chess games, I said, without thinking, “You ever gonna do something with that bat?”  He looked at me with a blank stare. “What?” “You ever gonna do something with that bat?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Yes you do.” I was raising my eyebrows and turning my head in just the right positions as if to say, “Come on! You know what I’m talking about.” Just a couple of nights prior after coming home from a movie in Eureka we were listening and singing our lungs out to countless songs of Daniel Amos, Love Song, Gentle Faith and Larry Norman. We called it worship… after moments of his silence I just started singing one of those songs.

“I am a servant, I am waiting for the call…
I’ve been unfaithful so I sit here in the hall…
How can you use me when I’ve never given all…
How can you choose me when you now I’d quickly fall…
So you feed my soul and you make me grow
And you let me know you love me…
And I’m worthless now and I’ve made a vow
I will humbly bow before thee…
Oh please use me… I am lonely.”

We finished our game mostly in silence until it was time for me to be off for the afternoon milking.

That fall I entered my senior year of high school. The Oakland A’s didn’t make it to the World Series but then again, it didn’t matter. Joe Rudi was playing for the California Angels. I enrolled in UCLA but promptly decided to attend LIFE Bible College instead. Bob, well he moved to Redding, eventually got married and I hear is the pastor of a small church somewhere in Lassen County.
I often reflect back on that time and realize hero’s make a difference in our lives. Their impact is far reaching and we probably aught to exercise caution when selecting a personal hero. It’s someone you look up to, a person you want to be like, a person who when making the right sacrifice, in other words,  when giving to others  while risking a personal cost can make a personal impact and change your life forever.

It’s funny, I haven’t seen or heard from Bob in over twenty five years. Joe Rudi, on the other hand, just sent me a nice note… and a personally signed baseball bat.

But that’s another story.

Giant Ambition pt. 1

I'm sorry it has been over a week since my last post. But as we are winding down the basketball season it's time to think of baseball and here is a baseball story from my younger years. It will be in two parts... I hope you enjoy it.

When I say that I grew up in the small town of Ferndale, California it could be misleading. Although most of my formative years, as they say, were spent in the charming Victorian Village, there was a period of four years we were exiled to parts elsewhere in this fine Golden State. This was due to my step father being in the Navy and his having to work at two other naval stations prior to his retirement and our return to the north coast. Two of those years, my fifth and sixth grade years, were spent in the town of Dixon, California. It was a town of tomato farmers and Almond growers and like its nearby neighbors, Davis and Vacaville it was quickly becoming a bedroom community for Sacramento. It had a main street, one elementary, one Jr. High and one High school, a town library and like Ferndale it too was home to the county fair. It was on the fairgrounds that my Boy Scout Troop, Troop 72 met regularly and it was through my Scouting I picked up a newspaper route for Mr. Collins who was an assistant Scoutmaster and local distributor for the Sacramento Union.

My life in Dixon was as near to the “Rockwellian,” existence I knew in Ferndale. It was there I developed an appetite for music by playing the coronet. It was in Dixon that I took interests in photography and science and it was there that I discovered baseball. Unlike most, I didn’t play Little League. When I was in the third grade I didn’t have a ride to the tryouts and by the time I was eleven I was too old to start. So I, like a few other of my friends, started collecting baseball cards and following the local teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. It was during these years that the A’s developed its most illustrious history. Charley Finley was the eccentric and wildly popular owner of this bay area team who was only overshadowed by his talented players: Players such as, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Campy Campaneris, Rollie Fingers and of course Reggie Jackson.

One of my friends was a kid named James. He too had recently moved into town and as boys will be boys James became the target for their typical pre-adolescent cruelty. Not claiming sainthood myself, I dished out my fair share of immature verse. I can remember relishing in the self exalting pleasure of humiliating a girl named Georgia. A homely girl everyone knew in the fifth grade, she was a loner, different and unwilling to defend herself. So during recess some of us would gather around where she would be playing tetherball by herself and recite, “Georgia, Peorgia, puttin’ in a pie. Kissed the boys and made them die. When the boys came out to play Georgia Peorgia ran away.” And then she would.

James was a target because of his cleft pallet. He talked and looked funny and that alone was enough for any fifth grader to craft his assault. However, James didn’t help himself either. Because of his looks and nasally lisp he was equally rude in defense of himself. But because James came to school near the end of the school year I easily remembered the ridicule I, as a new kid, received at the beginning of the year. And had he not joined Troop 72 and likewise become a paperboy I could have easily kept him at arms length.

James was the one who got me to start collecting Tops Baseball cards. Today I’m sure he still has all of his, mine however decayed decades ago as they were gathered in old shoe boxes sitting in a drafty and wet garage out on the farm. However, it was James who had all the stuff a boy could want when it came to baseball. As an only child from an upper middle class family, he had the jackets, the caps, the pennants and frequent trips to Candlestick Park. I on the other hand got to watch the games on television.

To get new subscriptions the Sacramento Union would run promotions urging their paperboys to canvas the streets and solicit what they called “starts” door to door. Each new subscription was one “start” and collectively you could redeem them for various prizes. One morning on top of the stack of papers delivered to our doorstep, yet needing to be folded, rubber banded and put in the canvas bag stretched across the handlebars of my bicycle, there was a bright yellow sheet announcing for only a ten new starts you could be treated to a one day trip to Oakland Alameda Coliseum and see the A’s play the Chicago White Sox’s on “Bat Day.” Ten “starts!” I thought, “I already have six. Getting four more is a synch.” So, I went out and hustled and with in a couple of days had what I needed to sign up… So did James. Which was alright, but I thought it would be nice to able to do for once something that he hadn’t.

The day arrived and James’ mom drove us into Sacramento to catch the bus. Little did I realize that in the sixth grade this was the first real adventure I had ever taken without my parents. Although, it was exciting and freeing, I was still a bit intimidated and unsure of myself to even order a hamburger at McDonald’s. When we arrived at the ballpark there were people everywhere all filing into the tunnels that bore through the concrete to the green grass yet unseen. At the turnstile I handed over my ticket granting my entrance and in step was quickly handed a shiny, kelly green, 28 ounce Louisville Slugger. I quickly looked at the signature on the bat. It read, Catfish Hunter. Without thinking I started asking around all the other boys who had been on the bus, “You got a Joe Rudi? Joe Rudi, do you have one?” “Yeah,” one replied. “Trade ja!” “Whatdya got?” “Catfish Hunter.” “Sure.” And the deal was done as we walked into the stadium lower deck, right field. You think I would have been happy, that’s were Reggie Jackson played but Joe Rudi was the left fielder… and he was my hero. Quiet, humble and a steady player he was a recipient of three golden glove awards, was runner up to the league MVP in 1974 he had a knack for doing the right thing at just the right time…especially in the World Series. But my hero wasn’t flashy and unlike many of his colorful teammates he was content to be just a plain ol’ Joe.

I couldn’t tell you won the game, although I’m sure the A’s did, but I do remember getting one last hotdog for the road and with bat in hand started walking back toward the bus ready to go home. What I wasn’t ready for was the thief who quietly ran up behind me and yanked the bat from my unprepared grip and in stride darted through cars and busses. Pathetically I ran after him shouting, “Give me that back!” But losing ground all I could do was feebly throw my hotdog at him. But having never played Little League my aim was no where close to a strike so, in the middle of the parking lot of the Oakland Alameda Coliseum I just stood there and cried.

On the bus the other boys were understanding, in fact one who had more than one bat, don’t ask me how but I was suspicious… gave me one. The signature on the bat: Dave Duncan. “You don’t happen to have a Joe Rudi do you?” I asked. To which I got a, “Nope” and no one offered. I sat quietly by myself the whole way back.

Several months later my step father had signed off his twenty three year career with the Navy and I’m sure through the prodding of my mother we were packing up and heading back to Ferndale just in time for me to enter the seventh grade. On the morning of our departure James showed up like a stack of papers on our door step he didn’t knock, he just sat there. When I walked outside he was holding a green bat. “Trade you for a Dave Duncan.” And he held up a signature Joe Rudi. I had no idea that he had one. When we made the trip into Oakland he quickly made friends with another paperboy who wore leg braces and had to sit at the front of the bus. “But,” I said, “You don’t like catchers.” “I don’t like the A’s remember. I’m a Giants fan.” And with that I ran to the box where my bat was packed and we made the exchange and that was the last time I ever saw or heard from James.

It All Started When

My earliest memory of Ferndale is, well, my earliest memory.

I remember looking out over the Eel River toward the town I would spend most of my formative years and hearing the noon whistle blow. From what I can recall of the memory, it was cool and breezy with a gun metal sky and I was well above the porch railing; which leads me to believe I was in the arms of my mother. I’ve asked her about this because I know none of the houses in we lived in looked over the river toward town. She too couldn’t remember a place were we lived that had such a view but later told me of a place we stayed after moving back to the north coast when I was about eight months old for just a couple of weeks. She remembers it because the woman who lived in this house would not allow my mother to smoke inside; which explains why I would have been in her arms on the porch. My mother was very good at managing a cigarette while occupying both hands. However, my grandmother was the master. My sister and I would watch in amazement at just how long the ash would grow before it finally broke off and fell to the ground or her lap or the soup… but rarely into an ashtray.

Like most who still live in the Eel Valley, my family is a mixture of immigrant heritage. My grandmother’s parents came through Ellis Island in the twenties as Juan and Maria Martinez from the Azores Islands of Portugal. They settled as John and Mary Martin; hard working dairy homesteaders on the bluffs of Centerville overlooking the Pacific Ocean. My grandfather, who himself arrived from a small colony on the Italian-Swiss border, died when my mother was two and we know little about him. My grandmother remarried again after both of her second husband also died from cancer and remained married to Van, her third husband until she died just a few years ago.

My grandmother was a large woman who spent most of her time in the kitchen. She was a renowned cook and was known to out drink the toughest of the tough. Among many of the Portuguese dairy farmers she could be relied upon to host huge and ruckus parties; most of which included unusual fare such as abalone, duck, venison and plenty of fresh caught pacific wild salmon. She had a vegetable garden and canned everything. She had an entire garage full of canned goods which she readily doled out to the extended family as though she were a one woman food pantry for the homeless.

Ferndale was a community of primarily two ethnic groups, the Dane’s and the Portagees. Each had their respective halls at the end of town which were used for various celebrations and gatherings. As a child I was glad to be a Portagee because our annual celebration was a Catholic excuse for eating and drinking not like the stanch protestant affairs over at the Danish Hall. Oddly enough, our event is called the “Holy Ghost Festival” but more on that later.

The town has an idyllic setting; it’s nestled into the green hills of the northern California coast, comprised of one main street, aptly named Main Street with several streets crisscrossing to modest neighborhoods of its sparse population. Among many small family owned shops there was a volunteer fire department, a grocery store, a five and dime store, a bakery, post office, three gas stations, the local newspaper called the “Enterprise” and two establishments known as “The Palace” and the “Ivanhoe” which served adult beverages until very late hours of the night. There was an elementary school for kindergarten through eighth grade and a four year high school. Ferndale is home of the Humboldt County Fairgrounds and boasts to have the world’s largest living Christmas tree. It also has a gothic old cemetery that would have been a perfect setting for the old television show, “Dark Shadows.” Our house, in the mid sixties, was just across the street from this cemetery and each weekday afternoon this ghoulish soap opera was haunting my mother on our 23 inch black and white TV with tin-foil, covered rabbit ears.

At a quick glance you would think Ferndale is an overtly Christian town with it several churches; many which have tall, white steeples that jut up over the Victorian homes and storefronts which are clustered together and surrounded by green, dairy pasture. Hardly the place you would typify as a good versus evil playground. In Ferndale it seemed as a boy growing up that it was all good. But little did I know outside my boyhood wonders lay grownup realities that would be the perfect battleground for evil forces and hidden truths where dark shadows did exist.

The Catholic Church was a large influence on our family at a very early age. Although my mother wasn’t devout my great-grandmother was and located perfectly between the parish and our home as the matriarch she was. My upbringing brought first confession and first communion, catechism and confirmation. It even began before that with unusual stays at the Nunnery, a house where the local nuns lived and provided daily watch over my sister and me. At the time we never understood why we went there and when I finally realized that it was to be a regular event for some time I began to dread those visits. Those ladies were so strict and nap time was always in a bed made so tight I could hardly breathe. It was during this time that I learned to make the sign of the cross as a preface and finale to prayer. Although I knew it was the right thing to do… I didn’t want to do it. Not because I had an aversion to the trinity but because I had to say, “Ghost.” I was tremendously afraid of anything, ghostly.

For some reason, as early as I could remember, I always… and I mean always, had bad dreams. I hated bedtime with a passion because of the horror that awaited me. There were so many different dreams like finding something in my bed or experiencing the floor give way sending me into a free fall. However, the most common dream was getting chased by an eerie, dog-like monster toward the bedroom door that would not open and me screaming to the top of my lungs to be let out. I always woke up just as the ankle biter got to me.

Needless to say I made it difficult for my mother when it came to bedtime and I’m sure it was something of a relief to her sometime around the age of six when I started sleeping through the night.

My mother and father met when mom was still in high school. I know very little to this day about their courtship and wedding. I’ve been told they moved after the wedding to the bay area where I was born and shortly returned because my mother was not accustomed to the pace and population of the city. From what I now know upon arrival back to Humboldt county things began to unravel for the two of them. It would be only a few short years after my sister was born my parents would separate. I suppose as a three year old child you never quite understand the way life is supposed to go until you’re well past the events that were never supposed to occur. Such was the case for me as I never noticed the tight lipped arguments and lonely nights.  It wasn’t until the day my father in a fit of rage took a hand painted plate from the kitchen and walked into their bedroom and struck that plate against my potty-training chair. This plate was no ordinary hand painted plate, if there is such a thing; it was a plate given to my parents on their wedding day commemorating their marriage. As I walked in just in time to see the pieces shatter I actually knew what this meant. My dad was very mad at me. Later when my mother tried explaining that it was because daddy was angry at mommy and wasn’t coming home anymore and they were no longer going to be married, I understood it to mean that I broke up their marriage.

My sister and I began spending a lot of time at my Grandmother’s house. We practically lived there for several months only occasionally seeing my mother. I saw my father once more when he came by the house to say goodbye. He had brought a small bag of candy and handed it to me when he left. I don’t remember if I cried but I do remember treasuring that bag of candy. In fact, I intended to save it as long as I could. Don’t ask my why, but I felt the safest place to keep this small treasure was to bury it deep in the bottom of my mother’s closest among her shoes. Safety, oddly enough, can come in the strangest places. I never did get hurt in my dreams and I never had a vampire bite from Barnabas Collins; the two things that frightened me most… oh, and one particular nun named Sister Francis. But I never felt so safe than when I was at my Grandmother’s house, even as a teenager and even more so when I would come home from college. Grandma’s house was the first place I would go. Her house was a constant; a harbor in a sheltered cove… a place I knew would be the same every time I entered through the back porch door. it is what we get the word family from… It’s familiar.

Likewise, a small town in itself is something you do not want to see change. Since the years of my boyhood, many stores along Main Street have changed owners. Some of the stores changed from one thing to another and some simply have gone away because those stores were family business that had no family left to carry on the business. There has been some development and of course there is always redevelopment and restoration of the old Victorian architecture that is so much the pride and heritage of this small coastal community. And though my grandmother is no longer with us and I have long forgotten much of the memory of Ferndale first hand, each time I drive across Fernbridge and enter that lush green valley I feel safe, familiar and a part of something that makes up life… I feel at home.