Recollections of Fort Despair

The original AVA compound, aka Fort Despair, was the Boonville headquarters of the America’s Last Newspaper, but also ground zero for an ongoing social experiment featuring a non-stop parade of visitors, victims, concerned parents, perpetrators, rednecks, hippies, pot growers, redneck-hippie pot growers, jocks, artists, writers, bureaucrats, law enforcement, ex-inmates, future prisoners, and lunatics of various shape and menace. The fact that HQ launched its trajectory to the dim stars while also a group home for juvenile delinquents and wards of the state only added to the intoxicating (sometimes surreal) broth that was Fort Despair’s stout brew, especially in those vintage harvests from the late 80s through the 90s. Enjoy then these few beggar’d sips from the dire flagon of Chateau AVA, bottled and aged the old-fashioned way: with tears, blood and laughter; anarchy, and occasional gunfire. 

* * *

Captain Fathom — I am standing on the deck when I see sprinting up the driveway a bearded man in hobo clothes and rasp-barking, “Bruce! Bruce? Bruce! Bruce!” I glance at the rusted bandsaws adorning the greenhouse wall, preparing to battle this crazed interloper. But before I can muster a counter-attack, the fleet-footed stranger breaks into a lopsided grin and offers me a hand-rolled marijuana cigarette. “No, thank you,” I say, noticing more joints jammed behind his ears, and a necklace of white driftwood proclaiming the word “Owl” in hot pink nail polish. 

“I’m Captain Fathom,” he grins, transferring the joint from hand to mouth, “And believe it or not, I just got out of the nuthouse in Ukiah.” Trust me, I can believe it. “Is the Marvelous Miss Mellon here?” Who? “The Marvelous Miss Mellon,” he cackles. “You’d know if you saw her! Most beautiful lady between Comptche and fair Albion, depending on the barometric pressure. Just don’t ask her to poach yer eggs, if you know what I mean!” He bursts into hysterical laughter, takes a long drag on his joint, then erupts into a fit of black lung coughing not witnessed in the Western Hemisphere since Thatcher closed the coal mines. Wheezing, Captain Fathom fumbles in the pocket of his frayed tweed coat, finally producing a tiny can of V8. He pulls the tab and toasts, “Compliments of the warden.”

I’m wondering if the chief of the nuthouse is called the warden, when a woman’s shriek erupts from somewhere near the front gate, forty yards hither, “Captain! Captain, your chariot awaits!” Down the driveway is a dust-caked vehicle of indeterminate make, likely abandoned by dust bowl migrants right around the time of the Reichstag Fire. “She’s either right on time or thirty years late, but for the Marvelous Miss Mellon I’m doomed to wait!” The Captain shakes my hand. “Far out. But Bruce has it all wrong about one thing, man. It’s the People’s Republic Submarine Fleet that’s ruined the salmon fishing at Noyo. Crabs and abalone too. I’ll swing by next week with the photographic evidence, plus the sonar readings. Take that, Colombo! And triple the cannons at Ten Mile Bridge!” The Marvelous Miss M. leans on the horn, but the Captain fixes me with a serious look: “Look, Bruce is the only gaucho ‘round here with the balls big enough to take on the Forbidden Palace. And did I mention the Chinese menu I found washed up on the beach at Big River? An all-you-can-eat lunch buffet special for only $4.99! Do the math. They lure you in with the fried wontons and sexy kimonos and the next thing you know you’re sucking farts out of Peking Ducks in Outer Mongolia!” He giggles manically, salutes like a drunken sailor, then darts back down the driveway, while sing-songing: “Miss Mellon, oh Miss Mellon, I have saved you a miniature can of vegetable tonic!” 

* * *

Mr. Underwear Hat — Again, I’m standing on the front deck when a person unknown saunters through towards the main house. He looks like someone kicked out of the Manson Family (who had their own Navarro roots) for being too weird and unstable. Then I noticed his choice in headwear: a pair of Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear, turned inside out, with nature’s bounty spilling from its cornucopia. “I’m here to see Bruce Anderson,” he says. “I got a beef.” He has an apple and a few grapes too, if his chapeau is any indication. I make a mental note to always have a jug of petrol and a lighter handy anytime I venture onto the AVA’s deck, when Bruce appears and asks if he can be of service. Mr. Underwear Hat says that he doesn’t like something that Bruce wrote about deadbeat drifters on Peachland Road, and how squatters are almost always legal experts property rights. “Are you a deadbeat drifter?” Bruce asks. “It’s a free country,” says Mr. Underwear Hat. “And I’m keeping an eye on you, Bruce Anderson.” “I’m keeping two eyes and a tangerine on you, Free Country,” replies the editor. As the fashion-forward maniac drives off in a beat-up Volvo, I turn to my dad: “That was inside out underwear on his head, right?” “Yes, that was underwear.” 

* * *

Life from the Geneva Drive-In — One of our former boarders calls from South San Francisco, shouting and distressed: “Bruce, the n*****s are after us! It’s me, Ralph, and I’m down here at the Geneva Drive-In in South San Francisco and there’s n*****s attacking me and my brother! Ah geez, Bruce, ah geez… First they took our popcorn and… Oh no, we’re surrounded! What? There’s a n***** on the roof! I think they got my brother!” Then Ralph screams: “Holy sh—!” The message ends abruptly. Bruce looks at me and says, “I guess their movie turned into a double feature.” 

* * *

A Man Called Banjo — My brother and I are watching college football one afternoon when there’s a light rap on the library door. A man we’ve never seen before walks in, sits down on the floor directly in front of the TV, then flamboyantly levers from his warped feet his crude and misshapen sandals, likely stolen from a Peshawar used tire merchant. “My name’s Bruce, is Banjo around?” He slaps his knee and chortles: “I mean, I’m Banjo, is Bruce around?” I tell him that the editor is in Willits (or maybe beating a hasty retreat to the Sierra Madre). 

Starting to pick at his dirt-caked toes, Banjo senses on some primal level that he has a captive audience. Thus encouraged by my courteous lack of courage, he begins to filibuster: “They call me Banjo because that’s my instrument, my passport to the other side.” My brother, the sensible one, gets up and leaves without a word. Banjo doesn’t seem to notice: “I come bearing glad tidings from the Tree Gods. While the exchange of knowledge and feasting lasted for days, if not eons, the gist of the dig is this: there will be a gathering of the tribes, a crown of fire atop the magic mountain, for the great slumbering king will see his people in great torment, and his empire bereft of music and wine and free-wheeling maidens uninhibited by corsets or economics degrees. And the High Emperor Druid in his rock castle and forest keep will, in his tumult and despair, clear the dust of centuries from his lungs, rub the spiderwebs from his eyes, and reach for the sword of vengeance and truth that is his honor and his solace.” Banjo stares into my eyes, then giggles: “Jesus Christ, did I just say that?” Over Banjo’s shoulder on the screen Michigan runs the ball up the middle and are denied. Ohio State fans storm the field. He grins. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a pack of smokes I could borrow, do you?” No. “Quaaludes?” No. “Potatoes? I’m a russet man, myself.”

* * *

Alex and Fred Descend — Dave Yearsley and I are playing basketball inside the main gate when an exquisite piece of 50s American muscle arrives in a cloud of magic dust. Alex’s vintage ride is a frayed but still regal Cadillac convertible, top down and red paint flaming like Prometheus escaping Olympus. As with any true blue-blooded Caddy, the twin fins slash up from the rear fenders in salute to the endless American Dream: Saturday night, the myth of Saturday night, lightning storms and Chrysler Imperials.

Emerging from the magnificent steel steed is the indomitable duo of Alex Cockburn and Fred Gardner, old lefty fighters whose arsenal also happens to possess that most rare of proletariat weapons: grace and humor. Squire of the socialist salons that he is, Alex sports tuxedo pants, and a rakishly half-unbuttoned shirt that manages somehow to evoke both Goethe and Faust; on his feet are tobacco brown square-toed boots handmade by “his man in the Pyrenees.” 

As Alex and Bruce march off to inspect Fort Despair’s dungeon and moat, Fred hands out copies of his latest album, ‘Love Shortage,’ a modern troubadour’s lament for all things lamentable. Then Fred breaks out his guitar and sings a ballad about Thomas Paine, another about Patty Hearst and Bill Walton, and finishes with “Take Who Takes You” (in pick-up basketball, as in life).

Later, inside at the kitchen table, Alex produces a vintage Royal typewriter and begins to hammer out a few Cicero-like sentences about junk bond villains clearcutting virgin redwoods with more pace and vigor than Attila’s hordes ravishing a state fair beauty pageant, goats and chickens included. Seeing a dog-eared copy of The People’s Almanac on the shelf, Fred mentions modestly that he wrote the entry on Pericles, philosopher, politician and general commonly associated with the concept of democracy and the Golden Age of Athens. It was Pericles who wrote: “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” Easy to say for the guy who rebuilt the Parthenon.