On the Avenue of the Giants: Phillipsville Memories

The chilly April morning was spent packaging samples of last fall's marijuana crop into tiny plastic bags, then double vacuum-sealing the eight strains using several pairs of disposable vinyl gloves to keep them clean of any green debris for their fragrant-free trip out of the area to a friend to smoke or eat. It seemed like bad form to try to mail the package with a fake return address at my local post office, although probably no one would care, so a drive to the next town over was required to pull off this rainy day caper.         

There was a line of about five people when I brought in the package and some cash for money orders calling for a few more miles up the Redwood Highway, exiting onto the Avenue of the Giants, and parking in front of the tiny Phillipsville post office. 

It was very quiet, no other cars, with an overwhelming smell of cat piss outside the open main door, the inner lobby locked and a sign saying it wasn't open until 1:00. What? It was only 12:15. Back in the car I stewed for a minute and considered my options: drive back home and waste expensive gas, mission unaccomplished, or take a stroll around the little town to kill an hour. 

I walked down the highway with rain lightly falling looking for the road to the old softball field and found the Riverwood Inn closed down and for sale. Highlights of Saturday nights popped up like the time we were dancing on a first date, my pants were loose because I had forgotten my belt, and she took off her bra and gave it to me to fasten my trousers right on the dance floor! (Don't get the wrong idea she had said, later at her house in Miranda she issued me a pair of sweats to wear.)

Another time I was walking in, Tera was walking out, and she said “Paul! Come dance with me!” She took my hands and dragged me into a rollicking scene.

“Take off your jacket,” she said. I started to, she took it off the rest of the way, and then I was happily dancing with the most beautiful girl in the room.

“Can I lead you?” she asked, still holding my hands. “Just watch my eyes.”

She lead me, I lead her, and then she tried to teach me some twirls and whirls. I dipped her low and she said, “Oh! I think I flashed you!” Ken Hollis and his band blasted their music on into the night.

Once I invited a woman to my softball game down the hill and standing on the mound on the hot afternoon pitching while she shielded her eyes from the blazing sun I thought, “Really? What the hell am I doing?” After the game we had a drink up at the Riverwood on a date I changed my pants three times. 

It was surprising how massive the Riverwood building was as I walked around it and down the hill to the ball field where the bright green meadow was abandoned and the backstop and fences removed. When we played there in the eighties, about fourteen teams, it was the largest social event of the week in Southern Humboldt: every Sunday a few hundred players, families, and hangers-on enjoyed the festive atmosphere. One morning when there was only time for one at-bat before a big golf tournament I slugged a line drive home run over the fence, rounded the bases, jumped in my car, and roared out of there to the Benbow golf course. (In 1983 when CAMP started raiding, the whole Blocksburg team didn't show up one weekend and the league fell apart the next year.)

Wandering down the highway toward my first visit to Billy Rosenbaum's organic farm, where the motocross used to be, I passed the old Sawblade Tavern where early in the century when it was already shut down and turned into low-cost rentals I sung “Helter Skelter” in the big empty room with an audience of only Jessie Groeschen, the woman who chainsaw-carved the skinny old man statue out front. J-dog, living nearby in a trailer, told me about the time he went down to Billy's farm and surprised one of the gardeners topless, the beauty I remembered fondly when she was selling peaches at Isabella's booth at the Garberville farmer's market one Friday. She held her hands over her sweet melons while they talked for a few minutes.

I climbed over the green metal gate, walked along the weed-filled dirt road past plowed up areas and an abundance of old fruit trees, and then looked into the huge cluttered barn at an ancient tractor, a basketball hoop on the wall, all kinds of gardening equipment, many types and sizes of boxes for fruit and vegetables, and an old rusted grow light hanging high above.

That piece of land was fascinating, walking along the roads and trails, and though my shoes were getting wet from tromping in the high weeds I couldn't resist following one more path on that beautiful flat by the river—it seemed like about ten acres but  could have been much more. At the end of a weedy road was a small automobile graveyard where a couple of Mazda pickups and a van from Idaho were abandoned under some trees.

The pump house was humming nearby powered by both electricity and a Cummins propane generator next to it. The sun started shining brightly then more rain fell as I retraced my steps and wandered back out to the highway in my hooded rain jacket wondering how much Billy paid for the place twenty years ago and how I could find out.

By then the post office was open and I climbed back over the gate, onto the berm of the highway, and walked past The Sawblade, firehouse, The Riverwood, and back to the car after a fifty-minute excursion. I got my money and package out, went in the main door, and waited till the sole customer came out of the lobby. 

When he passed by he looked familiar and I recognized Dr. Morton, my former dentist who had retired with a bad back and sold his Redway practice to Di Bari back in 2008. I introduced myself, he said he remembered me, and asked him to say hello to Coco, his wife who had been his dental hygienist. She had always been very supportive, complimented me on my home teeth care, and encouraged me to keep it up--the kind of affirmation I'm never gotten since. She was also a talker and shared stories about dealings with people up Salmon Creek which surprised me but it's always fun to hear the dirt and my questions probably kept her going.

I told Dr. Morton that I'd had one bad experience with my old country dentist, asked around, and found a new one in Eureka who some Southern Humboldt people, including  a friendly couple sitting in their car outside the Eureka Open Door clinic, had recommended. (As I was also looking for a car I had asked them about their Subaru.

“We love it! We call it a Lesbaru,” Betty Miller said.)

“I need a dentist too!” Dr.Morton said. It's funny, his first name is still unknown.

“Well, try Grayson Palmer,” I said. “He's expensive and has all the modern equipment. He's young and will outlive me. He's done good work for me. He took over the practice from Dr. Harris on Harris street.”

In the lobby I handed my package of California dreams over to the postal worker who got it right after the second or third try on the machine and charged me media rate for the two books in the small parcel sandwiching the weed. She couldn't get the safe open where the blank money orders were stored and said, “It's very old, from the fifties. This happens every day although this is the longest it's ever taken.” 

To kill some time I wandered down the street to the nearby Deerhorn market and read the notices on the large plate glass window. The clerk inside was a woman who came home with me from a party back at the end of the last century: when we got to my house she opened her purse and took out her Micky Mouse pajamas. A couple years later when I was looking for a place in town she told me about one which was going to be for sale soon, an acre on the river just outside of town, and she earned a fat finder's fee for the tip. She noticed me through the window then continued her checking.

I wandered back into the post office, a truck drove up at the same time, and a pretty woman with a friendly little boy got out leaving the dude behind the wheel. She put some cat food down for the stinky cats and when she came into the lobby the postal worker told her someone had left a twenty on top of the cat bowl, the bill had been nibbled on, Ben Schill found it, and she bought a big bag of ultra-nutritious cat food.

“Yeah, that cheap stuff makes them sick!” said the pretty young mother. Whoopie, more cat piss!

The safe still hadn't opened, she got on the phone to get some advice, and yet it wouldn't budge. By then she had had enough of me and the money orders in the safe. “I haven't even put out the mail in all the boxes yet,” she said. “I can't mess with the safe anymore. You can go up to Miranda. Are you familiar with the area? It's just three miles up the road.”

“Well, I'll call first the next time I want to buy money orders here,” I said. She smiled.

I drove up to Miranda wondering why I hadn't thought of that before, an hour and a half ago, upon discovering that the P-ville P O was closed. It turned out to be four miles as I was measuring the whole trip to see how much gas the excursion was burning. 

I hadn't been to the Miranda post office since just after 911 when trying  to mail a videocassette to Chip Tittman, a recording of him appearing on the David Letterman show when that consummate talk show host had moved his production to San Francisco for a week. He was doing a segment featuring Californians with odd names and “Tit Man” got a laugh.

They wanted me to put a return address on the parcel but I mouthed off for no good reason and told Sherby and the other person at the office that it was meaningless because I could just write any fake address on it, right? I left the now-suspicious package and found out later that Chip never received it.

I parked in front of the post office and found they were closed for lunch! There was a husky woman with a chipped front tooth, probably around eighty, waiting outside her car with a stack of papers on the hood and I started talking to her. 

“It was snowy and sleety and I didn't  know if I'd be able to get off the mountain with my tax stuff,” she said.“I need to get some forms in there.”

“Oh, you live up Salmon Creek?” I asked. (I hadn't been up there since I went to the Hallowe'en barn party with some friends about fifteen years ago. A hot young woman dressed only in bra and panties had walked by us and I had said, “You're my dream girl!”)

“I'm very disgruntled,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Oh, what this whole area has become. People need Jesus,” she said. “That sheriff Joe Arpaio down in Arizona had the right idea how to deal with inmates.”

I asked her some more questions and found she had bought the original Early ranch house in 1970, the best piece out there although it had burned down, later her husband died and she built a small cabin nearby. Recently some big grower had moved in next door, discovered he needed more water for his crop, and when she wouldn't give it to him punched a hole in her water tank.

“You mean he was taking your water?” I asked. 

I told her about walking through Billy's amazing farm in Phillipsville and how I wondered how much he paid for it.

“Oh, I don't know that,” she said. “He's been buying up land for years. Billy's alright—he's a hippie.”

I had been thinking recently about all the old ladies, and old hippie guys too I guess, still living by themselves way out in the hills. “Maybe it's time to sell your country place and buy a house in town?” I said.

“Oh,” she grimaced, as if town life would be unbearable.

“No, it doesn't have to be like that,” I said. “I got an acre just outside of town so it's like I'm still in the country. I sold my place in Whale Gulch after forty years in the hills.” 

She was originally from Pennsylvania, had been working for a shipping company vice president in San Francisco, and was a hippie within but had to dress straight. She had grown tired of all the pavement in The City and when she found Salmon Creek she and her husband moved up. When our conversation turned to weed she told me about being busted by the feds in 1987 with 147 plants. She ran away from the house and garden then shouted angrily at the raiders from the woods.

She got to Federal court in San Francisco wearing her wrap around hippie skirt and the judge said, “What are you doing here?” 

A well-dressed lady stood up in the gallery and said, “I'm representing her.”

“Someone was looking out for me,” she said. “We went down to the public defenders office and I met another lawyer.”

“Lisa Hefferton, do you know what you're dealing with?” he said. “Five years in prison mandatory minimum and confiscation of your land. You go home and think about that.” When she came back to court a few weeks later the judge gave her five years probation and she got to keep her land.

“So you couldn't grow anymore?” I asked. This woman could go on and on and it made me wonder about people like that. Are they lacking company so they can't stop talking once there are some ears to listen? Are they lonely? Self-obsessed? I couldn't stop asking her questions but why didn't she ever ask me even one? 

“Well,” she said with a grin. “Here was everyone else growing and I...” 

Just then her phone rang and I made my escape, out of the rain with soaked socks and shoes, and into the post office where a very friendly woman named Bridgette sold me the money orders. When she asked me how my day was I gave her a synopsis about running around between post offices.

“Oh yes, Phillipsville called and told me they couldn't open the safe. Same thing happened in Weott,” she said.

Driving back home down Highway 101 (not The 101—this isn't fucking Southern California) I remembered the beans left cooking three hours earlier when I had headed out for just a quick errand. I started feeling stressed, looked at my flip phone, and saw a text telling me the Sherwood Forest Motel in Garberville was on fire. (I hadn't been to the Sherwood since early in the century when I saw this doctor a friend told me about who had pulled up in his van from Nevada, rented a room, and was selling 215's, medical marijuana recommendations, for $150.)

I knew I should go straight home to rescue the beans but stopped at the liquor store in Redway to pick up three copies of the latest Anderson Valley Advertiser which had put a story of mine in the week before. Outside under the overhang was a homeless guy I had talked with last fall about giving him all my worthless weed, seeded to boot. 

“I can make hash and give you half,” he had said.

“No, I don't want anything,” I had said. “Where should I leave it for you?”

I reminded him about the pounds and asked if he still wanted them. “Maybe I could leave them here at the liquor store for you,” I said,  only half-joking. “Where would you stash it if I brought them by?” 

He didn't like that idea and pointed to his backpack. “That's why I wanted to know where your trail was so I could leave them there but you get all cagey when I mention that,” I said.

He started getting paranoid again and as I went back to my car kept telling me to “have a nice day,” which roughly translates as “get out of my face you possible nark.”

I smiled at the absurdity of it all, raced home past the smoldering Sherwood Forest, and found the pot of pinto beans simmering comfortably in the crock pot.