Valley People

THE BOONVILLE PANTHERS, young and inexperienced as they are, gave Potter Valley a scare at the Boonville Fairgrounds last Friday night, finally succumbing in the fourth quarter to the visiting Bearcats. You might say a star was born Friday night. Make that two stars. Freshman Jared Carter passed for more than 400 yards while Cesar Soto, also a freshman, caught everything thrown his way, while Otto Fraser scored his first-ever touchdown on a perfect end zone pass from Johnston. And you've got to give major attaboys to Coach John Toohey for keeping his team's spirits high as he loses players but those remaining fight on through a tough schedule. The Panthers travel to Rincon Valley (Santa Rosa) Saturday afternoon. JV's at noon, varsity kicks off at 2pm.

CINDY WILDER WRITES: “This is the time of year when many of us are scrambling to preserve the parts of our harvest that can't be used right away. We use methods such as canning, dehydrating, freezing, lacto-fermentation, tincturing (mostly of herbs). For some people, some of these techniques are a little mysterious. Those who have been using them for years can have much to share. On Saturday, October 20 at the Boonville Farmers' Market we hope to have a variety of people to share their preservation techniques. We realize that not everyone will be able to make it to this important event. So we would like to do some of it online. If you have a technique that you have learned or even developed yourself, please share it with us by replying to this message. Even if it seems obvious to you, to a beginner it could be just the thing they need. We'll compile the ideas and send them out to all. We might also print some of them up to share on the 20th. And if any of you would like to come out on the 20th to present your method, please let us know. If we can all learn to preserve our harvest for later on, we can all become more self sufficient and begin to really EAT LOCAL.”

THE COMMUNITY is invited to a coffee and tea klatch to meet with Jared Huffman, candidate for U.S. Congress in California’s Northcoast Second Congressional District, in Boonville on Saturday, October 20, from one to three in the afternoon. This community meeting with Jared Huffman is hosted by John Lewallen and Barbara Stephens-Lewallen. It will be at MendoDragon. To find MendoDragon, go south on Lambert Lane by the Boonville Hotel, and follow the Huffman signs at the first left. MendoDragon is the house at the end of the road on the right. For information, call John and Barbara at (707) 895-2996.

INTERESTING CHAT last week with the always interesting Lucille Estes of Boonville's Airport Estates. Among her many gifts, Lucille is among the County's top gardeners, if not the County's absolute top gardener. Lucille suggested we serialize the late Effie Hulbert's fine account of her Yorkville youth among The Valley's last Native Americans, an account not only of Mrs. Hulbert's own experiences as a Yorkville native, but an account of what she had been told by Anderson Valley's native people about their lives in The Valley all the way back to the arrival of the Spaniards circa 1820-1830. Lucille knew Effie and Harry Hulbert. She'd first met the Hulberts when they were responsible for a sheep ranch adjacent to the Estes homestead on a ridge above Guerneville. "Harry Hulbert was the most handsome man I'd ever seen," Lucille remembered. "He looked like Tyrone Power." And she said Effie was "quiet and soft spoken." Lucille had visited the Hulberts at their Yorkville home where, Lucille recalls, "Effie had the walls of her livingroom covered with Indian baskets."

LORNA BUCHANAN is Effie's daughter by Effie's first husband. Ms. Buchanan, a nurse, lives in Capitola. She is Effie's sole descendant. I would think Ms. Buchanan owns the copyright to her mother's important book, although it's printed and sold by the Anderson Valley Historical Society. We understand in a roundabout way that the many baskets and other artifacts Effie possessed at her Yorkville home — she died in the middle 1960s — somehow wound up on exhibit at the Trees of Mystery just north of Klamath, Del Norte County, which is Yurok territory.

REMINDER: Don’t forget that notification letter a few weeks ago from Diana Van Duzer, PG&E's “Planned Outage Coordinator,” warning us that the infamous power monopoly will turn us off the evening of Saturday, October 13th at 9pm, and turn us on again at 8am the next morning.

THAT SMOKE at the north end of Anderson Valley and most of the Ukiah Valley last week was, according to Mendocino County Air Pollution Control Officer Chris Brown, coming from wildfires burning tens of thousands of acres of forestland in central Washington and Idaho.

THE ELK COMMUNITY SERVICES DISTRICT, which oversees local tax assessments for its fire department, has never held an election since its inception some decades ago. The original board was appointed by the county supervisors (circa Norman de Vall) and since then board membership passed on from friend to friend (the Acker downtown coalition). And in other politburo news: The Harbor House, the flagship B&B of Elk is owned by mainland Chinese investors through an SF holding company who purchased it from its previous owner, a rather patriotic Republican from Texas. $4 million.

GOVERNOR BROWN has signed several bills aimed at full funding for keeping state parks open. These bill will also ensure, the Guv says, that there won't be a repeat of state officials suddenly “finding” the $54 million State Parks had deliberately squirreled away earlier this year. It was the Parks deficit caused by the hidden money that inspired a statewide movement to keep the parks open and to prevent them from being raffled off to private businesses.

TAKEN TOGETHER, the bills establish a two-year moratorium on park closures, provide about $30 million in funding and give the department that manages California's 278 state parks new means for raising outside money.

MUCH LOCAL ANTICIPATION at the soon-to-be open Aquarelle Cafe and Winebar at the site of the former Alicia's Restaurant, central Boonville opposite the Boonville Hotel. The work of an enterprising local woman, Christina Jones, who went out into the world for chef's training, worked out of San Francisco and Hawaii before returning to the Anderson Valley where we now all look forward to her kitchen magic.

MEANWHILE, down the street, there are rumors that the restaurant space recently occupied by Mis Potrancas will re-open under new owners.

AND DARNED if that wasn't JJ Thomasson woman-ing a cash register at mom and pop's Anderson Valley Market the other day. An all-everything basketball player at Anderson Valley High School not so many years ago, JJ went on to become a CDF, now CalFire, fire jumper and a mom, and from all accounts is as charming as ever.

JOHN McKELLER lives up on Greenwood Road. It was the sunny Sunday morning of May 6th, and McKeller was setting out for his regular yoga session in Ukiah. A friend had mentioned that Fish and Game had set up an abalone stop, a checkpoint at the Boonville Fairgrounds. McKeller is a youngish man who drives a sporty black Dodge Durango with tinted windows. He knew his vehicle was a kind rolling invitation for law enforcement to pull it over for a look. Assuming he'd be checked for purloined abalone, McKeller rolled all his windows down for easy viewing and proceeded within the posted speed limits through Philo. “I never speed through the Valley,” he said. “I live here, too, and I know it's dangerous.” As McKeller rolled through Philo and picked up speed to the Indian Creek Bridge, a CHP cruiser, the white, lightly marked one, “whipped around and pulled me over at the driveway to KZYX,” McKeller says. “As the officer walked up to my window I released my seatbelt. The cop said I was driving without a seatbelt. How could he even see my seatbelt driving the other direction at that redwood grove at the bridge? It's the darkest stretch of road this side of Navarro. And besides I was wearing my seat belt.” Officer Babcock, something of a legend on the South Coast for eagle-eyed seat belt violations real and imagined, proceeded to write McKeller a seatbelt ticket. An incredulous McKeller soon visited the CHP office in Ukiah. He asked if he could look at the videotape of his alleged seatbelt violation, and was surprised that the duty officer immediately produced it. “There it was right on tape,” McKeller says. “It shows everything — the officer doing a u-turn to catch up with me and me unhooking my seat belt as he walks up to my window.” McKeller's next stop was Judge Nadel's courtroom. “You have it on tape?” the judge laughed. “Yes, I do your honor,” McKeller said, “and here it is.” At the end of the viewing, the judge said, “I'm putting this over until Tuesday the 9th of October at 11am. I'm going to bring the officer in and make him explain this one,” she said.