NAVARRO RIVER AT THE GREENWOOD BRIDGE TUESDAY MORNING
AV FIRST RESPONDER ANNUAL AWARD WINNERS FOR 2024
- Rookie of the Year - Silvano Osornio
- Engineer - Josh Mathias
- Outstanding Leadership - Gideon Burdick
- Ambulance operator - Antoinette Von Grone
- Firefighter - Jareth Guzman
- EMT - Thom Elkjer
TRAFFIC FATALITY ON HIGHWAY 128
On December 18, 2024, at 9:42pm, Ukiah Area CHP units responded to a solo vehicle traffic crash on State Route 128 at mile post marker 7.80. The driver of a 2017 Honda Fit was traveling westbound on SR-128 and lost control of his vehicle at approximately mile post marker 7.80, causing the vehicle to veer off the roadway and crash into a tree. The driver of the Honda, a 20-year-old male from San Fransisco, was pronounced deceased at the scene and transported to Eversole Mortuary. Impairment of Party #1 is not known at this time, but is not suspected. The California Highway Patrol is still investigating this crash. The name of the fatal victim is being withheld until family notifications are made. (CHP)
On-Line comments:
I am very saddened to see the recent fatal accident on highway 128. Forgive me if this isn’t ok to post and ask about, but I am curious if this is sadly a common occurrence for night drivers on the 128 or if it is a tragic but uncommon occurrence?
I drive the 128 often but always during the day. I have a friend who has never driven it before that is thinking of driving it at night to get somewhere soon. I am hoping to share this information with them so they can be aware of the risk level of driving it at night.
I had a job in Calistoga every Sunday for a couple years and drove back late every time. It’s windy and narrow most of the time, but I never had problems or saw any issues.
WHERE’S FRANK’S COROLLA?
Just a heads up to the valley. At 4:30 AM, a couple of young men broke the lock to our yard and stole my Toyota Corolla, 2009 greenish blue. Off Greenwood Road. Just in case anyone saw anything. I hope it doesn’t happen to you.
— Frank Vaine, Philo
FRANK VAINE
Update on our stolen 2009 Toyota Corolla;
At 3:00PM they were at the Navarro General Store buying gas and groceries. We had made it to Nash Mill Rd. when they left the store going East. We never passed them so they turned off somewhere between Holmes Ranch and Navarro. Two Hispanic males -gang like appearance and petite hispanic female. We don't know if they might have realized they might be apprehended or if they are staying somewhere close by. They were not known by store employees. Three CHP cars searched the area without success. They feel they are a danger to our community and they want to get them. So please keep vigilant for your own well being. Thank you.
A READER WRITES (30 YEARS AGO) “An adult lady friend of ours drove through Boonville this afternoon. She'd never been there. She said the whole town looked very sad, lots of empty stores, broken glass, just junky looking. And she said the complete picture was so frightening looking to her that she would not stop anywhere in Boonville. This shocked me. This lady has good judgment. Has the place gone to hell that much? She also said that the wooded areas just seemed too quiet. No wildlife, birds, nothing. It gave her the creeps. She's an outdoors person, too. BTW, we took an impromptu drive up to look at what's left of Lake Mendocino a few weeks back. It was a weekday. Wow, what a mud puddle! When we left, I made a wrong turn after coming down Lake Mendo Drive and turning right to go south… and didn't get on the freeway, but cheerfully thought, ‘Well, let's see what Ukiah looks like these days.’ Remember, I had not been in Ukiah proper since 1974 when I left Redwood Valley. I drove the entire length of the main drag, and I was totally dismayed at what an absolute pit that place is. I mean, it wasn't that great in 74, but now… it looks like lots of old stuff was torn down, new stuff thrown up haphazardly (ugly too) and lots of empty lots. Plus, the people! White trash, Indian trash, Mexican trash… all around me as I drove the entire length of the main drag till I hit the freeway exit far south. I don't think I saw one halfway respectable looking individual. Man, if I lived around there, I'd be packing a concealed firearm full time. I mean it. What a dump! Don't take this wrong. I still love you, the AVA, and your entire staff. But what the hell has gone haywire up there? It is far worse than I would have ever thought, even after subscribing to the AVA for many years. I'm glad I'm old. America looks like it's on one big downhill slide. PS. And yes, Santa Rosa is a pit, too. Our motto down here should be ‘We're not as bad as Ukiah!’ Ugh!”
CIVIC BOONVILLE is well aware of its deficiencies, so aware that the Community Services District Board once embarked on an improvement plan aimed at enhancing our community aesthetic. Whether or not we can drag ourselves out of our visual torpor remains to be seen, but Boonville is at last on the mysterious list that will eventually get our power lines buried, which is one large step forward. As for Ukiah and public buildings, it’s as if Americans went blind after World War Two. Prior o the War, Ukiah was a beautiful small town, with ancient Elms lining State Street, a graceful hotel and courthouse anchoring the town center. Then came sprawl, the gradual decline in standards of public behavior and dress —then the deluge of mass slob-ism — and the abdication of the County's leading moneybags who, prior to the War, not only cared about the appearance of their communities, invested in them. Odd, isn't it? Americans spend billions making their homes attractive but don't seem to care at all about what their public spaces look like.
LORNA ROSS (facebook)
Hi AV family! IHSS (In Home Supportive Services) has awarded our good friend Kevin Owens in house services. But you must be fingerprinted in Ukiah. It’s inside housework. $18 an hour. Also he can pay someone to cut firewood, $20 going rate. Pm me (facebook) if interested. No rip offs need apply!
I’m also looking for a place to live. So happy to be back! So happy! Thanks everyone.
THE LATE CHARMIAN BLATTNER remembered meeting the granddaughter of Henry Wightman, the man who built Reilly Heights and what used to be known as the Banks House on the south side of the Elementary School. “Not only was this house, and the Reilly Heights home built by Henry Wightman,” Charmian wrote, “but he built the Con Creek School and assisted in the building of the New Boonville Hotel and Boonville's Methodist Church. Wightman's wife Julia died in 1900, leaving her husband with their daughter Pearl, 3, to raise. According to his granddaughter Virginia, her grandfather stayed in this community until about 1903 when he moved to Chico and later Briceland where he continued as a contractor specializing in distinctive buildings.” Wightman's descendants included William and Marianne Pinches of Willits. The Pinches' are related to former supervisor John Pinches who also maintains a home in Willits and the family's pioneer ranch east of Laytonville overlooking the Eel River.
THE CON CREEK SCHOOL Charmian refers to is now The Valley's historical museum housed in what is known locally as “the Little Red School House.” When Wightman built it he was assisted by Daniel Jeans, a former slave, who arrived in Anderson Valley in 1870 where he homesteaded the area off Ornbaun Road called Ham Canyon and later built a home on Anderson Valley Way.
A CALLER that day long ago wanted to know, “Did you know that they were putting condoms on cucumbers at the high school today?” I hadn't known and wondered if the event was, uh, educationally sanctioned.
When I called the school for explanations and clarifications, Jan Pallazola filled me in. She said cucumbers and condoms were no laughing matter as might at first be assumed by a skeptical or startled public. Ms. Pallazola explained that two years ago there had been ten unintended pregnancies among The Valley's high school girls, and not too long ago a 7th grader had reported pregnant for fall classes. Boonville had not only become a hot spot on Mendocino County's teen preggers map, Anderson Valley threatened to become a full conflagration of teenage moms, hence a prophylactic course, so to speak, on prevention.
Ms. Pallazola explained that in fact teenage boys did tend to be a little hazy on how condoms are unrolled over the reproductive tumescence, hence the condom and cuke demo. I wondered to myself if a banana might offer slightly more verisimilitude, and I also wondered if the cuke had finally come to rest in the cafeteria salad bar, but I was reluctant to get into the relative merits of classroom props, and I certainly didn't want my informant to hang up on me.
When I'd asked Ms. Pallazola, “Was this a coed class?” she'd replied with a detectable snap, “Isn’t sex generally a coed activity? Should you be having sex with somebody you can’t talk to?” As a former teenage boy I can’t recall caring one way or the other, but of course I was a teenager when sports and cold showers were the prevalent sexual antidotes.
Mrs. Pallazola said there was always “some giggling” when the condom and cucumber were produced, but letters had been sent out to parents advising them that the demonstration was on and they were welcome to review the sex ed curriculum. Mrs. Pallazola pointed out that condom dispensers have long been an integral part of the high school’s restroom facilities. (25 cents per). She also said that professional filmmaker Heidi Knott of Philo and Mitch Mendoza, a teacher at the Anderson Valley Elementary School, had produced an effective film on teen pregnancies called, “Mommy, Daddy. Wait For Me” in which 13 young parents were interviewed as cautionary tales of the familial-social devastation wrought by children having children.
CUCUMBERS & CONDOMS, in my ever dimmer memory of my formative years, had not yet been thought of in tandem. Condoms were an under-the-counter item whose purchase would immediately be reported to one's parents or one's priest. You had to pay the neighborhood degenerate to buy them on the off chance you had occasion. Cool guys always carried a condom in their wallets, where the unwrapped device lingered unwrapped throughout their adolescence.
Our high school sex ed instruction, circa 1955, consisted entirely of an hour's lecture confined to abstractions all about zygotes and long-shot fallopian journeys at the end of which a tiny Mr. Peanut-like figure called the fetus might appear. There was never any mention of the sweaty grapples and pounding lunges which initiated the reproductive process as it occurs in real life.
There were certainly never classroom demonstrations pegged to cucumbers and condoms although I, for one, would have welcomed the pandemonium they certainly would have inspired. Only months out of high school in the Marines I remember a cautionary hour consisting of photos of grotesquely diseased penises and a similarly discouraging short film on the perils of promiscuity.
The film showed two babes in a convertible pulling up to a pair of rubes in Marine green. “Hop in boys,” one of the women beckons. The boys hop in and, apparently, on, and the next shot is of a Third World National hauling his gigantically swollen testicles in a wheelbarrow, the message being that sexual intercourse was a form of syphilitic roulette we were sure to lose.
We got another training film of a Castro-like figure lounging in palatial circumstances as bikini-clad tootsies flitted around in the background. The Castro figure periodically roused himself to shoot cringing peasants for no discernible reason as the girls laughed and did delighted dance steps. Our mission, as it seemed to us strict constructionists, was to shoot bearded palace dwellers but talk the bikini girls into associating with nicer people.
The Marines didn't have a very high opinion of our intelligence, and every weekend the lean, mean killing machines, as we laughingly referred to ourselves, headed straight for the forbidden fleshpots of Tijuana.
ONE MORNING of a particularly fraught Saturday, coming down off the Boonville Road near Ukiah, and coming down off Boonville come to think of it, and heading south for Frisco, I hadn't fastened my seatbelt. I, already ancient, preceded seatbelts, and never quite got used to buckling up.
OFFICER Hawkeye Babcock of the CHP, a man whose false testimony in a court case we'd recently noted, did a u-turn to round me up. Then, at Santa Rosa, in the teeth of the rush hour, as drunks and speeders weaved and hurtled past me, I was stopped again, this time because I didn't have a current tag on my rear license plate. I hadn't gotten around to pasting it on. The city cop who fixed the fixing ticket for me asked, “This humbug thing is all they got to do up there?”
THEN IT WAS OFF TO THE BANK on Clement with my daughter, a married woman. Walking up the sidewalk we couldn't help but see a portly young man with a blood red mohawk pasted onto his helmet do a wheelie on his motorcycle on the sidewalk at the bank door. Inside, this maniac asks my daughter, with me standing not ten feet away, “Waiting for me, baby?”
AT 6TH and Clement, I'm standing amidst a cluster of Chinese women, maybe ten of them, most of them older women, immigrants I supposed from their dress and the Cantonese they were speaking. We're waiting for the light to go green. Directly across from us a young black guy in a city worker jumpsuit is bleeding a hydrant when suddenly a stream of water, more mist than moisture, shoots out at us. “Haiiyahh!” the Chinese women shout as if they'd been hosed clear down the street, victims of a municipal terrorist attack. As we pass by the hydrant, the young guy apologizes. “I'm sorry, excuse me,” he says, clearly meaning it. The Chinese women, unpersuaded, grumble and glare at him as they walk by. He says to me, “You could see it was an accident, right?”
AT THE ALEMANY Farmer's Market I visit the Filipino guy I buy dried figs from. “The pucking Health Department says I can't pucking sell figs any pucking more,” he tells me, simultaneously reaching under the table to hand me five packages of them. “Puck the Health Department,” he adds.
LATER IN THE DAY, on the 1 California heading west, a kid's got his feet up on the seat opposite him. He's maybe 13. He's deep into some techno toy. His father, or the chronological adult of some kind who's with the kid, occasionally leans over to chuckle at whatever idiocy is on the kid”s tiny screen. The bus is standing room only. A middle-aged woman says to the kid, “Please move your feet so I can sit down.” Father and son look back at her as if they don't understand the request. The kid doesn't move his feet. A crazy-looking old guy, backpack stuffed with what seems to be shredded newspaper, yells, “Move your fucking feet, punk, before I break your fucking leg off at the knee.” The kid’s in immediate compliance, the woman seats herself, the kid’s father and the rest of us all look away as if nothing at all had happened.
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