THE FLOODGATE, RUSS EMAL WRITES: Butch just after buying the Floodgate. He stands next to the previous owner Margarette…
After talking to Butch about this picture he tells me this was taken just before the final signing of the paperwork. Butch worked the store with Margarette for about a month. He was being trained! All during the month she all but backed out of the deal. Margarette told Butch she had been there 26 years. It would be very hard to leave. Butch said that all he could think was …how crazy that she had been at the Gate for 26 years. That took place, Butch tells me, about 40 years ago.
NOT THAT MANY of us around anymore, but I'll bet those of us still upright would like to see a restoration of the FloodGate as it was with the Averys and the Paulas, a unique little country grocery and six-(?)-stool counter with Brad Wylie at one end and Mick Bloyd at the other. Failing that, Kathy and Jerry Cox's Floodgate Cafe.
THE AV FIRE DEPARTMENT is trying to hire a mechanic, but the perfectly qualified guy who said he was interested in the work soon said he refused to do all the required insurance paperwork. Good for him. It's past time to just do it, and let our occupying army of a so-called government impose whatever penalties on the off-chance they even become aware of the alleged violation. So long as we comply with nonsense rules the rules will keep on coming.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING, especially for the little ones, the Christmas display in Navarro, where Dave Evans and crew seem to outdo themselves every year in brightening the winter gloom.
AND CENTRAL BOONVILLE isn't quite as spectacular as past holidays, but plenty merry and bright at night, thanks to the families who gift us every Christmas.
BILL KIMBERLIN: I found these two stones after walking around my property in Boonville.
Don't these look like someone made them. Too perfect. Indians?
IN A FEW WORDS, Northcoast old timer, Ernie Branscomb, nails the disappearance of fish from Northcoast streams: “Nice fish story about the Eel River and my Dad, Everett Branscomb, and my Uncle Eddie Downing. That’s back when anybody could catch a fish. I think that the fish disappearing goes far deeper than the dams on the rivers. The ocean is way overfished by foreign trawlers. And the ocean is sick.”
BOONVILLE JOB OPENING! Pennyroyal Farm is seeking a cheese-loving chef to join our team - please share! This position in our Estate Kitchen will serve up beautiful cheese and charcuterie boards and other farmstead snacks using produce from our culinary garden and estate-raised meats. Email resume to hr@navarrowine.com or mail PO Box 47, Philo CA 95466.
This culinary team position would begin immediately and work with the Manager, and other staff to prepare cheese tastings, charcuterie and cheese boards, and other farmstead fare, and maintain a clean and organized kitchen. They would also be required to deliver and articulately explain the cheese plates to customers on our patio. In addition to preparing and serving our tasting room Farm Fare menu, the chef will help plan special menus focusing on estate meats, garden produce, cheese and wine, and then carry out those menus. Hourly rate for Culinary Team Member is $19.00 - $24.00 per hour. This is a full-time position and offers medical, dental, and life insurance coverage, paid holidays, and paid vacations. All employees are eligible for generous product discounts.
CHLOE GUAZZONE, of the Anderson Valley Health Center, laying it on super-thick: “Anderson Valley’s aging adults are unique and their care should also be unique. We are looking at how we can provide supportive services for aging in place, spaces for community groups and palliative and end-of-life care.” (Come on over, Chloe, Mendocino County's beloved weekly is produced by two geriatrics who mos def are definitely aging, if not aged, in place. A weekly neck rub would be most welcome.)
AT THE MENTION of geriatrics, here's a tiresome tale for you. I was walking to my compost pile in a geriatric fog trying to remember where I was headed on Tuesday noon when suddenly I felt like someone had slugged me in the jaw. “Wot the heck?” I quickly realized it was a toothache, onset of. I couldn't remember my last one hitting so suddenly and with such force. I try not to be the kind of wheeze who, you say hello to, and you get a complete medical history, but some of what follows may be of use to my fellow geriatrics.
FIRST STEP, pain meds, as I chastised myself for growing weak and needy in my dotage. My colleague, The Major, offered Numbzits and Tylenol. “I said meds, Major, not palliatives. Hard drugs, comprende?” He replied that he “wasn't a criminal and had no intention of becoming one at an advanced age.”
FIRST GUY I called for serious drugs, said, “Well, I've got Oxies, Percocet, Zoloft…” He's probably under police surveillance but I'd buy from Trump to stop this throbber. I scored three Oxies to see me through until my Thursday afternoon appointment with one of America's great dentists, Dr. Sapna Chandra of Fairfax, located in the same ancient building on the same floor as the legendary Dr. Fong, dentist to three generations of my family. Dr. Chandra is an entirely worthy successor to the fabled Dr. Fong.
DR. CHANDRA is much in demand, but if she can fit you in, you won't be disappointed. She didn't put it this harshly, but what had happened to me was that extreme tooth rot had occurred where root canal had aged out. I thought root canal was permanent, but as the great wheel of existence spins ever faster, permanence in anything seems to have been flung clean off.
DR. CHANDRA electronically transmitted a prescription for antibiotics, which I filled at the battered, failing CVS store in the Red Hill Shopping Center, at whose doors sat an obese woman with a child of 5 or 6. Her sign said “I'm a single mother and have no money for a Christmas present for my daughter.” This low energy mendicant's begging bowl was stuffed with fives, tens, even twenties. I looked furtively around before contributing only a pair of ones.
CVS has been in the Marin news lately as it’s beset by bands of feral junior high boys on motorized bicycles who, working in packs of ten to a dozen, ride boldly through the doors of the place, zooming up and down the aisles for quick grabs of whatever, preferences being chips, soft drinks and candy, then out into the vast anonymity of the parking lot.
THE STORE has perpetual ads in its windows for help. The shelves are about a third bare because CVS can't find workers to re-stock them. Combine low wages for this kind of work and rents in Marin — and everywhere else in the Bay Area — and labor is priced out or living ten to a room over in the Canal neighborhood.
I STOOD in a line of about a dozen people, hoping the feral marauders would attack to relieve the monotony, but the only excitement came when, twice, well turned out women of 50 or so, barged straight up to the windows. I squeaked out a weak, “Hey, we're in line here,” but Marin being one of the great Karen centers of America, the entitled pair didn't even look around. And the Asian women at the window waited on them, probably being accustomed to the Karen-heavy county and its famously entitled citizens, rightly concluding that ignoring the women wasn't worth the fight.
I HAVEN'T got a prescription for anything in years, and was surprised when Dr. Chandra said the process was electronic these days probably, I assumed, because the old paper scrips were regularly forged and otherwise abused by the drug community.
DR. CHANDRA sent me on to Dr. Dallas Hickle of San Rafael and Novato to get the two bad teeth extracted, and I'm here to tell you that if you want a zippo-bang tooth extraction, this man gets it done fast and with no pain I could feel. (Older old timers might remember the infamous Painless Parker of Market Street, SF, who was an early advocate of laughing gas while he, a big, strong guy, jerked the troublesome fang out of one's mouth, only occasionally the wrong tooth, but enough of them to make Painless Parker something of an urban myth.)
TEETH OUT by 10am, bleeding stopped by four, zero pain. Antibiotics commenced, Oxies stored for the next person who might need them on a hurry-up basis.
MARY PAT PALMER (Philo): In the midst of everything else, I feel moved to put together a presentation of what it was like to have an illegal abortion prior to 1973. Mine was on G (for Gynocology) Street in Tijuana. I was 17. Mine was relatively professional and still I became infected and was lucky enough to have a family doctor who treated me for the infection despite what charges could have been brought against him. That was 1965. Women growing up after 1973 did not, and I am thankful, have to experience an illegal abortion. Many are unaware of what it meant and most of us who did have them don't talk about it much. I recently listened to a very good presentation on KPFA and we could use that but I feel a more personal/Mendo County connection would be important. Hopefully we will not return to the time of illegal abortions. But let's help our younger sisters, daughters and granddaughters to understand why we are passionate about this issue. Let's be proactive on this one. Like my cancer group, this is a group that I hope very few will belong to but please IM me or call 895-3007 if you can help.
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