Valley People 8/15/2024

LARRY CARR, a long-time resident of Yorkville, has died. We don’t yet have any particulars, but Mr. Carr had been ill recently. His wife Ann Carr, long-time popular local Postal Clerk, died last April (2023) after 61 years of marriage. We hope to have an obituary in the next few days.

THE DEADLINE FOR ON-LINE ENTRIES in this year’s Mendocino County Fair is Thursday, August 29 at midnight. To submit an entry for judging on-line go to www.mendocountyfair.com and look for “Entry Forms.”

Categories include: livestock, photography, floriculture, wool crafts, baked goods, art/painting, clothing/textiles, etc. This year’s fair is September 13-15.

(Terry Sites)

JEFF BURROUGHS

I was asked to be on the board of the Navarro River Restoration Project back in the 1990s as the representative for sport fishing and watershed history. After just one meeting it was clear that the whole thing was a sham. I constantly challenged the blatant misuse of the entire water system. The amount of water that the vineyards took from the creeks and river was staggering. I tried to put a stop to it but I was brushed aside saying the restoration group was not here to be the police but rather to make suggestions in a final report that should be helpful to future endeavors pertaining to river restoration. Water level monitoring showed that during a land owners pumping cycle in summer months actually drained the creek completely dry! When I was told that those creeks werent rearing habitat for juvenile salmon and Steelhead, I damn near fell out of my chair in disbelief. Even when I brought up the fact that some vineyards, when preparing new land for planting grape vines were sterilizing the soil with poison that killed everything down to 6 feet , no one seemed too concerned. Oh that's right, we don't want to upset the big money vineyards by putting out a comprehensive, finger pointing report . Well then what the hell was the point of the restoration group if we let all the water get sucked out if the creeks and river which subsequently kills all the fish ? We had a chance to nip this problem in the bud before it got out of hand and it developed into a lost water table and alge blooms choking off every living thing the river… but we didn't do it. I tried, I really did try.

ANDERSON VALLEY’S GROUND FLOOR WINERIES

Featuring interviews with Brad Wiley, Norman & Theresia Kobler, Ted Bennett and Deborah Cahn (Navarro Vineyards), Zac Robinson (Husch), Allan Green (Greenwood Ridge), and Lulu Handley (daughter of Milla Handley of Handley Cellars).

On line video at: www.youtube.colm/watch?v=Fa2a25aA-4W1

ONE OF THE LEAD stories in this morning's Chron: “Why this SF Cocktail Whiz Just Opened a Roadside Burger Stand in the Middle of Nowhere. … Scott Baird has opened Jumbo's Win Win in Anderson Valley.”

HARUMPH. DOUBLE HARUMPH! First off, we're dead center in somewhere special, as the whole world recognizes as certified by innumerable laudatory media accounts going back many years. Mr. Baird, maestro of the cocktail and proprietor of Jumbo's, didn't write the headline or the story beneath it, and we wish him well. But there are several restaurants in the Anderson Valley priced reasonably enough for locals to enjoy an occasional meal out, two of them in the Buckhorn, another truly wonderful breakfast and lunch place down the street at Mosswood, and of course Rickson's, also in Philo. And then there's my fave, the Redwood Drive-In right next door to AVA headquarters, Gringo-Mex fare from early every morning until 9pm every night.

HELP CREMATE RANDY BLOYD

We need help to cremate Randy Bloyd due to his motorcycle accident and the condition he was found in. We are on a time schedule. I know Randy Bloyd has touched all our lives in some way, and we all loved him so much. Anything will help and is appreciated. The cremation is $2500 at Empire Mortuary and we want to get a nice urn.

We will be planning a service and celebration of life for everyone to pay their respects. This is a terrible tragedy. All your prayers are needed for Ricky and Ronny right now. Thank you all.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-cremate-randy-bloyd-after-tragic-accident

YORKVILLE ICE CREAM SOCIAL TIME: CALLING ALL BAKERS & SALAD CHEFS

It's Ice Cream Social Time! It’s Ice Cream Social time in Yorkville! Calling all Bakers and Salad Chefs Can you make a large salad or a dessert (cookies, pies, cakes, brownies) or a Very Special Cake that we can use for a prize for the Cake Walk?

All contributions should arrive by 10 AM. Please let the folks in the dessert area inside the community room know what you brought and also make sure your plate/container has your name on it. However, remember that cakes for the Cake Walk should be sent in on disposable plates as the winners will take their prize cake home.

Please let Val know if you have something to contribute at valhanelt@me.com

Thank you so very much, our home-made goodies make the day very special. Contact Val at the above email or via: news@theycba.org.

ALL YEARS PANTHER HIGH SCHOOL REUNION

Deadline for RSVP is Monday 8/12/24. We only have 11 confirmed attendees. Please message me or confirm your attendance by commenting on this post.

Anderson Valley Casual Grad Gathering

Date: Saturday 9/14/24

Time: 11am

Location: Mosswood Cafe, 14111 CA-128, Boonville

Cost: $20.00 per person-cash at the door.

Menu: Breakfast Panini, Pastry, Fruit, Coffee

RSVP: 8/12/24

Please confirm your attendance and the number in your party by sending me a message on Facebook messenger.

If you don’t make the deadline you can always stop by to say hi we will be in the back. The cafe is open until 3:00pm.

If you have questions please reach out. Panthers Rule

SARAH KENNEDY OWEN

As I remember, that expensive wine was “taken” (stolen) when the New Boonville owners hightailed it out of Boonville, so you are right, they could have paid staff with the money they could have gotten for the wine. My husband and I and our toddler daughter and another couple, also with a toddler, dined at the New Boonville back in the early 80s. The service was so slow I quipped that they must have been waiting for the purported chicken in the back to lay an egg. Luckily our toddlers had each other to stay amused, and were well-trained in dining etiquette. But it wasn’t easy keeping them busy for the seeming hours we waited for a simple meal. They did have a garden behind the restaurant where you could wander while you waited. I thought that was pretty cool, but in retrospect it seems obvious they could not have fed their patrons with just the produce from the garden. Reminds me of the scandal over a restaurant on one of the San Juan Islands, run by a chef who got his training at Noma. There were also allegations of worker harassment, sexual harassment, and wage fraud. The restaurant business is not what it seems to diners. Behind the scenes is quite different from the extravagant “dining experience.” He was all the rage for his “foraged” “locavore” food. (I believe the prix fixe price for one person was $250 before the wine.) Turns out it wasn’t locally foraged but was from non-local grocery stores/suppliers. Big brouhaha over that. One of the courses of the meal was one potato chip. People flew in from all over the world to dine there, and it was quite a cash cow for residents’s B&B enterprises. Oh how the diners raved over the food, except the few honest ones who complained they still felt hungry and had to find other fare (a burger?) after the ultimate dining experience.

JEFF MCMULLIN

We had heard of the “New Boonville Hotel” foodie scene back then, probably from the Chron. Sounded intriguing, but nobody’s driving from Crescent City for dinner.

Talent, Oregon is doable, and a small group of us ate at New Sammy’s 2-3 times a year. The venue was a small house with small kitchen from which Charlene sent out great French inspired meals. Vernon handled the wines and they had one other young guy serving. makes it easier to hide the income/wages. Very cult-like vibe. Squeezed into this little house were 5 or 6 small tables which were always full. Nice cash cow.

Bear in mind we didn’t know anything of their sordid Boonville history until I became an AVA subscriber back then.

My friends didn’t want to believe that the nice elderly couple trying to eke out a living in a back country bistro were such assholes.

Anyways, Vernon eventually tried to ramp it up with a new much larger restaurant, which sucked and people quit going. You probably know that it all went up in smoke in September of 2000 in the epic fire that destroyed much of Talent and Phoenix.

I remember thinking well, he got his, finally. Doesn’t do anything for the stiffed Boonville staff though.

Also up the hill from the bistro was a trailer with a huge wine cellar packed to the gills with high $ wines–no plonk. He spent 20 minutes showing it off to me.

Up in flames. He could have easily paid back wages with a small percentage of the contents.

IT'S BEEN A WHILE since Mendo school districts kicked nuked foods out of its cafeterias, announcing that irradiated foods wouldn’t ever again be consumed by its students. The argument against food cleansed of harmful bacteria by radiation is that the process also removes essential nutrients in a way that changes the chemical composition of the chicken, or pig, or steer, or vegetable in dangerously unpredictable ways. Opponents of irradiation also argue that if food wasn’t raised in unhealthy conditions irradiation wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE really need protection from is all the other hazardous foodstuffs they shove into their mostly sedentary guts every day. Maybe the schools should consider offering a class called “How to eat good for cheap,” followed by a class called “Getting Up Off It and Moving Around,” and, perhaps, reality-based instruction pegged to the real world waiting for most of them after four years of pep rallies and junior proms called, “How To Be Poor But Still Have A Good Time.”

SPEAKING of our nation's future, that school bureaucrat who opened a meeting by blather-lathering his staff and “the community” announced that not only were the district's students “well above average, this community is extremely talented and well-educated.”

WHY STOP with “extremely talented” and “well-educated”? Why not add, The unique “village” of Mendocino is home to people who are as handsome, as charming, as inspirational as that famous first couple in Eden’s very garden, and the commitment of our teachers to your brilliant children is as selfless as the Nazarene carpenter Himself!

A READER WRITES: I was visiting a friend’s house in Philo the other day for an anniversary party. As we were having lunch with some guests, we looked outside through their bay window and saw a middle-aged woman open the hatchback of a car parked across the street and start tossing miscellaneous items out onto the roadside. The woman seemed angry. We assumed she was unloading her own car. Turns out the car belonged to one of the guests who was just sitting down to her lunch. “Hey, that’s my car,” the guest yelled as she realized what the tossing woman was doing. The car owner and the host and a few guests went out to see what was wrong. The woman was yelling the f-word over and over as she continued tossing things out of the guest’s car. The car owner and the host asked the tosser what was wrong. The tosser muttered something about the car being on her property — this apparently made the tosser very angry for some reason. But the car was just on the side of the road. Attempts to calm the tosser down were futile, but the host and some guests managed to get the tosser to stop tossing as the rest of us gathered up the tossed items and returned them to the back of the car. The tosser reluctantly moved down the street in the direction of her house, but she continued to yell and scream the f-word at anyone in earshot. Some guests considered calling 911, but that was dismissed. The host told her lunch guests that there was no point in arguing with the tosser because she was probably drunk and was not going to listen to reason. As I drove off a few minutes later, the tosser, although a little farther down the road, was still yelling random f-bombs in the direction of anyone she could see.

AV HISTORICAL SOCIETY EVENT: Valley Chat with Bill Seekins, a dedicated local researcher and historian, as he unveils his fascinating findings on the Anderson Valley railroads.

RILEY LEMONS

Excited to head back home and play a show at AV Brewing, especially since it’s right in the middle of hunting season! Join me at the Anderson Valley Brewing Company on Saturday, the 24th, from 4-6 pm for some good brews and tunes. Looking forward to seeing some familiar faces there!

WENDLING-NAVARRO 1906-1908

ANDERSON VALLEY'S much missed former resident Deputy Squires was something of a Fair historian. The deputy had seen some very unquiet Fairs in his years in Anderson Valley, including one that featured running battles between a large group of bikers and an equally large group of young men from, of all places, Elk. “That time I got a big old nightstick and got in between them at the Boonville Lodge, and Walt Matson, young Walt, helped calm things down. I thought it was over. Everyone left town. But the Elk guys waylaid the bikers down by the Greenwood Bridge. The bikers were going over to the Coast on the Greenwood Road, but the Elk guys bombarded them with rocks and tree limbs and all kinds of stuff as they rode across the bridge. We hauled a whole lot of people over the hill to the hospital that night. At the old Fairs we ran from fight to fight all three nights."

THE FAIR of 2003 and every Fair since? "I didn’t even see an argument," the deputy reported.

IT'S A COLLECTOR'S ITEM, but if you can find one, “OCTOPUS MOUNTAIN, Poems from life in Anderson Valley” by Roger Schoenahl is a unique artifact every local will want to have. The poems are collected in an attractive little book produced by the late Loretta Houck and twice illustrated by the poet, with one affecting drawing of his well known grandfather, Archie Schoenahl, and a fine rendition of the distinctive landmark that inspired the volume’s title.