Valley People 11/30/2024

JULIE BEARDSLEY

You know I’ve lived here for a long time and I remember in the 1970s it rained for a several weeks at a time and we didn’t freak out and call it a weather bomb. It was just rain. I’m having a hard time understanding why normal weather is freaking everyone out…..ummm, maybe I’m just old, but remember that where we live is called a temperate rain forest. The important word in that description is rain. Hot in the summer and rainy in the winter…

JOHN TOOHEY (AV Panthers Athletic Director)

There is still time to sponsor this event! $200 to help us make this event special will get you a banner in the gym during the tournament and throughout the season! You or your business will also get mentioned during halftimes of games taking place in the Anderson Valley gymnasium! (This is separate from and not affiliated with the Booster Club banners) Let’s go PANTHERS!

AV UNIFIED GETS AT TEACHERS ASSOCIATION AWARD

AV GRANGE HOLIDAY DINNER

Anderson Valley Grange and Anderson Valley Foodshed are hosting the Annual Valley Community Celebration of the Holidays and End of Year with a Potluck Dinner

Sunday, December 8th, 2024

We are all feeling grateful for living in this community and would love for us to all celebrate it together.

Food serving starts at about 5:30, but it takes a lot of help to make this happen. Meat Carvers, servers, potato cookers and mashers. Someone brave enough to take on the Gravy making.

Local turkey and local potatoes provided, but all other dishes are needed (more green salads this year please).

More Details on Facebook: https://fb.me/e/923Qn42Fb

Sign-Up to Help: Call Captain Rainbow @ 707-472-9189 for questions.

THE BOONVILLE HOTEL

Let the gatherings and celebrations begin…

Come join us for a quiet get-away weekend before the festivities begin or join in them all …

Tree lighting parties, family gatherings, gingerbread extravaganzas, roasts + toasts, New Year's Eve dinner + dance party at Offspring

Offspring across the street offering an à la carte menu of handmade pastas, beautiful sides, main plates to share & of course wood fire pizzas. Lunches Saturday & Sundays now

Dinner Tuesday-Saturday 5:00-8:00pm

Lunch Saturday 12-3pm

Sunday 11:30-2:30pm

Join us for an Offspring dinner on Tuesday & Wednesday evenings and get 25% off room @ the hotel enter code "Offspring."

Good Tidings…We are making gift giving a bit sweeter…Purchase a gift certificate Thanksgiving Day thru New Year's Day and we'll sweeten the deal by adding 10% more value to it.

Come Stay

Share our season of contentment, take a soak in the tub with the rain, sit by the fire wrapped in a blanket, take a walk in the redwoods, enjoy a leisurely beautiful meal by candlelight with your honey.

We have some beautiful seasonal drinks from our bar on nights the restaurant is open. Along with Friday through Monday evenings 4-6, we are offering a simple bar menu perfect for a light meal.

We're serving our prix fixe menu, sourced from local farms friday thru mondays during the cooler months. Perry posts the menu online Wednesday afternoons for the upcoming weekend.

www.boonvillehotel.com

FILLIGREEN FARM, BOONVILLE

Take advantage of the break in the rain Friday afternoon and Saturday and stop by Velma's Farmstand at Filigreen Farm to shop for Thanksgiving produce, dried florals, and olive oil from Filigreen Farm as well as holiday ingredients and gifts like chiles, beans, and other delicious things from Boonville Barn! Velma's will also be open on Sunday but Boonville Barn will not be there.

RON PARKER: Welcome to downtown Boonville Mendocino County. 10-23-1909 McGimpsy and Whipple Meat Market and J T Farrier and Son Gen Merc Left - Antrim Dry Goods and Groceries to right.

CANDLE MAKING at the Little Red Schoolhouse (Historical Society Museum), Sunday, December 15, 1-4 PM. Bring your family, make candles, enjoy hot cider and cookies. A great way to start the holiday season.

NO NEWS on that missing Anaheim man whose car was found abandoned in Navarro a few weeks ago. The Anaheim police are still working it, albeit slowly, trying to figure out where the man’s cellphone has been and, if possible, where the car has been, using whatever internal vehicular location data may be available. The vehicle is still in Mendo law enforcement custody as evidence though, so progress is slow.

THE CASE against the man whose boat trailer apparently set off up to eight separate fires collectively known as the Grange Fire east of Philo last summer is also still in limbo as the law enforcement agencies deal with the DA staff to figure out just how much liability the driver has and how much proof is needed. Needless to say, progress is slow.

(Mark Scaramella)

SHERIFF KENDALL:

“Why Alonzo sold out and moved to the coast is a question best left to Matthew Kendall’s family to answer…”

Alonzo Burnham Kendall was my father’s Great Grandfather. He left Kendall City (Boonville area) when he was diagnosed with a breathing disorder (likely asthma) and moved to a ranch in Manchester which was on both sides of the Garcia River. His son Courtney lived on the South side where the Point Arena High school is now. My father, Alonzo Burl Kendall and my grandfather, Alonzo Francis Kendall were both named after him. Old AB’s twin sister Melissa Kendall married JD Ball and remained in Anderson Valley where they planted and farmed the apples. Alonzo Burnham passed on to his rewards about the same time my father was born (1930s).

A FELLOW named Stuart Alden Hubler, landscape architect out of Los Angeles, stopped in one day. He said he was looking for information, “anything you know,” about the late Donna Ronne of the Holmes Ranch. I said I'd known Donna and had liked her, as had many people in the Anderson Valley, and like everyone else I'd known that Donna had been a Playboy centerfold and had also acted in some mainstream films and on television.

STUART ALDEN HUBLER appeared to be in his late 40s. As we chatted, it was evident he hadn't recovered from the Centerfold Experience of his youth. He certainly knew more about Donna than I did. He said Donna was not only “one of the all-time centerfolds,” she'd appeared in “lots of television shows,” and had even acted in a Fellini film, ‘City of Women.’ He wondered why Donna had “dropped out to the Anderson Valley.”

I DIDN'T WANT to insult the guy by reminding him that the Anderson Valley is hardly the Gobi Desert. And it’s pretty hard to hide out here, what with our small population and the place being re-discovered every month by wine and food writers, not to mention all kinds of semi-famous people living in the hills.

MAYBE DONNA got tired of panting landscapers leering and lusting after her images, tired of being known for her association with the world's silliest man, Hugh Hefner, tired of living in L.A. where every third female person has appeared in public without her clothes on. Donna had been 17 when she'd first appeared as one of Hefner's featured pneumatic photographs, inspiring priapic ripples among America's love starved millions and an undying obsession in Stuart Alden Hubler.

“DID she have a boyfriend?” Stuart Alden Hubler demanded. I took a closer look at the guy. I wondered if he did his landscaping late at night in obscure cemeteries. Should I remind him of what God had done to Onan? But he was too old for cautionaries, and besides I'd just met him.

“DONNA lived quietly with her horses and her dogs,” I said. “She was a good person. We all liked her.” I didn't want to tell him any more than that. I didn't want to tell him that Donna had worked for a while at the Boonville Dump where she was always good for a raucous joke, didn't want to tell him that she never talked about her previous life in the city of quartz, that she was only 58 when she died of a heart attack at her home near Navarro, and everyone who knew her was sorry to see her go.

DONNA RONNE, HER BACK STORY

Donna Ronne arrived in Anderson Valley in the early 1970s as the paramour of Sherman Whitmore, who was the developer of the Holmes Ranch subdivision. She was set up in the Guntly Ranch house, now owned by Handley Cellars. She lived here full time while Sherman traveled back and forth from wherever, probably LA. My understanding at the time was that Donna had been the first Playmate of the Year, but have never fact-checked that.

Having been left mostly on her own here, unsurprisingly Donna became part of the community, met local people, and eventually became close to Wayne Ahrens. After a number of years, Sherman and Donna officially parted ways and part of the settlement was giving her full ownership of one of the Holmes Ranch parcels that had not readily sold in the first wave of parcel sales. This was a while after actor Lee Marvin's “palimony” trial, which established a financial interest on the part of unmarried couples breaking up. I don't remember if building the house was part of the settlement, but it seems likely. Donna lived there for the rest of her life. She was a kind, decent person with a good sense of humor.

At the time, I worked as a real estate sales person for T.J. Nelson, who was the broker for the Holmes Ranch subdivision. It was largely through T.J.'s efforts that the mostly 20-acre parcels on the historic Guntly Ranch, which had been briefly owned by Katherine Holmes (thus the name), were divided along topographic features rather than just the straight-line-on-a-map approach used in many other subdivisions. One would be hard-pressed to find a more well-designed subdivision anywhere in rural California. But yes, the roads will always be challenging.

A tip of the hat to Captain Caterpillar, Glenn Schaeffer, who bulldozed those roads into existence with his D-8, and hauled and spread tons of rock from a quarry at the bottom of the ranch. Oh yeah, and one should really mention Bob Glover, who was raised on the ranch and knew every inch of it. He developed most of the water systems still in use there today.

Kathy Bailey

Boonville

ME AND RALPH. I was delivering papers one morning when I saw a tan colored, chihuahua-like male dog, no collar, trotting suicideally back and forth across busy Highway 128 from the Redwood Drive-In to Boont Berry Farm. Southbound traffic twice stopped to allow him safe passage. If he’d kept it up, he’d soon be one with the pavement.

I LOOKED AROUND for possible owners. Nobody claimed him. I beckoned. “Come here, Ralph.” The little dog trotted right up to me, wagging his tiny tail. Somebody had to own this dog. He was too well fed, too trusting for his own good, what with his casual traverses of 128 and his unhesitating embrace of a dubious stranger.

WHAT ELSE could I do but tuck Ralph into my car and drive back to the Boonville General Store where I bought him a small, gourmet salami. Ralph went to work on the sausage while I delivered papers all the way to the Navarro Store and back to Boonville. He sat beside me like he’d always been there.

IT WAS STILL EARLY. I was going to call Cheryl Schrader, Anderson Valley’s one-woman animal rescue center and turn Ralph over to her when the civilized hour of 9am arrived. In the meantime I took Ralph to my house to give him a drink of water.

THE CATS I reluctantly babysat viewed Ralph with extreme suspicion. Most of them were bigger than him. A female calico I call Bob because she’s so aggressive and has no tail, ran up in Ralph’s face and gave him a swipe. Ralph, with Biblical disdain, turned the other cheek. He’d obviously been raised with cats. No dog is that mellow around cats unless he’s used to them.

I WAS CONSIDERING permanently annexing Ralph. He was growing on me, although I’m partial to big dogs. I associate little dogs with incessant yapping, but in the hour I knew him Ralph never said a word. I wondered why such an affectionate, well-cared for little animal didn’t carry an ID collar.

MULLING over what to do with the little guy, I fed the cats while Ralph did an exploratory round of the property. When I looked up and called out, “Ralph. Come here, buddy,” he was gone. I scoured the acre for him. No Ralph. The cats looked pleased. I drove to my office half a mile away. “That’s that,” I thought, already missing my briefly adopted pal.

THE PHONE rang as I walked through the door. A distraught-sounding man said he was calling all the newspapers in Mendocino County because he’d lost his dog at Lake Mendocino. The distraught man’s description of Ralph fit the little dog of my fleeting acquaintance right down to his amiable disposition.

THE CALLER said Ralph’s real name was “Rascal.” He speculated that Rascal had been scooped up at Lake Mendocino by someone like me, someone concerned for his welfare. The distraught man, who said his name was Stan, was convinced that Rascal, who falls in love easily, had gone off with a stranger and, upon reaching Boonville, had again simply jogged off for new adventures. The caller left his number. Ask for Stan or Amanda. “We miss Rascal real bad.”

I’VE ALWAYS hoped Stan and Amanda were reunited with their fetching pooch. He was a charmer.

SEPARATING the wheat from the chaff in Boonville one optimistic day not all that long ago in Boonville were John Voelker, Doug Mosel, both of Boonville, Luke Frey of the pioneering organic Frey Vineyards in Redwood Valley, and Andy Ballastracci of Boonville.

THE ESSENTIAL, invaluable Mosel, since retired, had obtained a 70s vintage John Deere Combine Harvester from Washington State, refurbished it, and it was back working. Frey brought over about four acres worth of a classic California wheat variety called “Sonora” in three big grape gondolas. (It’s easier to move small amounts of wheat to the combine than it is to move the huge combine from small site to small site.)

FREY'S wheat was harvested and hand-tossed into the gondolas in Redwood Valley, transported to Boonville where it was again hand-tossed into the combine’s augur header and thrashed until it was threshed. The resultant wheat grain was collected in a large bin in the combine and the chaff was spewed out like dusty straw.

BECAUSE the combine was being used in a stationary position, one of the crew members had to stand at the rear of the machine and clear the chaff as it was thrown out. Frey got about 1500 pounds of wheat grains ready for grinding or milling.

VOELKER soon reported that he had already made some tasty pancakes from some of the product. Sonora wheat is a “soft white wheat” especially suited to pastry and pasta, whereas “red wheat” is typically used for breadmaking. As word about the “new” combine got around the Valley, some local farmers were said to be considering small-scale wheat crops.

MOSEL’S COMBINE was a welcome sign of the back-to-the-future type. Anderson Valley’s settlers always put in some wheat, enough to get them through the rainy season, and it’s one of the great ironies of modern life that Boonville people in the 1900s were far more self-sufficient than Boonville people are today.

YOU'RE GETTING TO BE AN OLD-TIMER if you remember when the Anderson Valley Health Center was located in what has since become Glen Ricard's abandoned row of shop houses in downtown Boonville. Bare foot doctors served a newly arrived population of longhairs while the old old-timers, shuddering at the thought of sharing a stethoscope with a hippie, continued making the long trip over the hill to Hillside Hospital now, among other things, a needle exchange site for drug addicts. We now have a multi-faceted Health Center, complete with ambulance barn, and almost as big as a Cuban neighborhood hospital, serving a population about as distant from its first clientele as its possible to get in 50 years.

AS IT HAPPENS, I'm presently involved in a lengthy medical processes, requiring seemingly endless questions aimed at making sure my ancient bone bag is strong enough to endure them. So far, so good.

WHICH makes me wonder why, when I tried to sell my blood to write about the experience, they told me I was too old to bleed for cash, way past the age 55 cutoff. (I could have used the $50 too.) I looked around a waiting room teeming with tweekers, purple-faced winos, hacking coughers, tubercular-looking dudes who could barely shuffle to the admission’s desk, concluding that I was easily the healthiest person in the room, perhaps the only healthy person in the room. I'm still insulted at the rejection, and puzzled that if Anderson Blue has no value to the vampires of the commercial blood business, who are the lucky recipients getting all this blood from sick people?

I’VE BEEN WARY of the medical profession since the day in Marine Corps boot camp, 1957, I walked through a door thinking I was going to get one shot and bam! I got hit in both arms by grinning medics who delivered about 15 deep jabs simultaneously and willy nilly, not caring, nay hoping, they'd hit bone. So when this social worker at UCSF asked me, “Do you have a primary care physician?” Of course not, I said. A quizzical eyebrow cocked, its eyeball looked askance. “Why not?” Because I know him, I said, ”and I don't want to die.” She laughed, but I know if I'd said that anywhere in Mendocino County, certainly in Boonville, the medical professional would have been insulted. So, I eat right, walk as fast as l can up and down hills every day, do my push-ups, and only down a beer once in a great while. The Adventists will never get me, I tell you, never! I'm my own primary care physician!