Practice(ing)
by Todd Walton
Marcia and I were walking on Big River Beach yester day, the wet sand firm underfoot—Big River swollen and muddy from the recent deluge, a light rain falling.
Category archives for:
Essays
When Violence Rules
When, in the summer of 1953, my family tipped our hats to our Chicago home, piled into our Kaiser four-door and drove the 2,400 mile stretch of US Route 66 to our new home in the City of Angels, the little boy living next door was exactly my age. Happy for the companionship, we became [...]
Landmark Trees
Scattered through the mountains surrounding Anderson Valley are many natural openings that had been in grass mostly since man came to the Valley. Over the last hundred years or so the open land has been increased by slashing and burning and many a man nowadays wishes they hadn’t done it for they, in their quest [...]
Passing Strange II
Last fall I wrote a short piece, ‘Passing Strange,’ about the detention of my son, Franklin, by Customs and Immigration officials at Heathrow Airport. Franklin had flown to the United Kingdom in early September to interview for a job in Africa with a representative of Oxfam International. For reasons still unknown, the Customs officials denied [...]
Mineral Wrongs
by Cody Hoover
We boarded an airplane at San Jose’s Mineta Airport in December, taxied down the runway until the nose pointed to the sky and we lifted up over Silicon Valley. I watched the mountains through the small window. Soon we were over the central valley, the white- topped Sierras, The Great Basin and the Rockies in [...]
The Dry Year
Back about 1925 or so we had a dry year, the last I remember. It quit raining in February and it didn’t rain again until the following December, after nearly a full year. It was a warm, dry year and the forest trees suffered for moisture.Subscribe now to access our entire site—only $25 for 1 [...]
Going Postal
by Todd Walton
“I claim there ain’t Another Saint As great as Valentine.” — Ogden Nash The notices currently taped to both sides of the glass doors of the Mendocino Post Office proclaim that starting February 14, 2012, our post office will henceforth be closed on Saturdays, and postal business shall only be conducted Monday through Friday from 8 [...]
Looking For James Dean
If you go, take a full day trip to go round trip. September is the best time to go. That’s a qualified best time because it’s the James Dean Memorial Junction — where State 46 meets State 41 outside Paso Robles — where James Dean and his infamous car crash occurred on September 30, 1955. [...]
Something’s In The Air
by The AVA
Prison is a hustler’s paradise where only the strong survive. It’s full of buyers and sellers and everyone is a con-artist.
Crazy Memory
by Todd Walton
I used to know a loquacious drunk who punctuated his pontifications with the disclaimer, “Of course, memories are, at best, only fair approximations of what actually happened, so please don’t quote me.”
Advertisement
