REMEMBERING CHARMIAN
Charmian, like Cher and Madonna, achieved single-name renown on the Northcoast partly, perhaps, because her long-running column in this publication seemed an anomaly, a little old lady writing little old lady prose about little old lady matters in a weekly newspaper, ahem, heavily reflective of its boisterous times. Charmian expressed no hesitation whatsoever at her dubious journalistic company, plunging right into what might seem to the unaccustomed eye a maniacal weekly mosh pit. She and the late Joan Bloyd served as dual oases of anachronistic calm in a 12-page sea of turbulent opinion. I seriously doubt, however, that Charmian ever read anything beyond the safety zone of her own column. My dear old mum once commented, “It's nice you have one normal person in the mix.” And Charmian herself asked me early on, “So, Bruce, are these people hippies or what?” I said my contributors would fall more into the Or What category than hippie. Charmian told lots of funny stories in person that she felt were just a little too louche for her column. One was about her husband Smokey, quite a local legend in his own right. One night when Smokey had had a few, and anticipating Charmian's wrath, Himself, as Charmian called him in her column, pretended to be drunker than he was. He thought if he could successfully pretend to be under the influence he and Charmian would share the joke and he would escape a scolding. So, coming through the door Smokey faked a pratfall, sprawling over the doorstep, but quickly regained his feet and, with a cavalier laugh, announcing to his skeptical mate, “Hah! Fooled you, didn't I?” Charmian said she laughed right back and said, “No. But nice try, Smokey.” In August of '08, The Major and I visited Charmian at the Brookside Convalescent Compound in Ukiah. She didn't recognize us, but when she stood next to the piano with The Major at the keyboard she had no trouble remembering many song lyrics, belting out Danny Boy and other personal favorites. Given her circumstances, and not that Brookside is particularly bleak given the givens of these places, Charmian seemed happy with her life, and we left happy that she was happy.
WAY BACK we had a letter from a young urban couple who recalled the night they were lost in a late summer fog and, not quite knowing where they were with the night late and impenetrable, put in at the Old Boonville Hotel where, as late as 1974, a couple of old gaffers still lived upstairs among the rooms for rent. “There were big guys butting heads in the bar when we got there,” they wrote, “but the man running the place didn't seem to be bothered by it. He took us on upstairs, and all night we heard thumps and groans and people laughing like maniacs outside our room. We thought we'd be lucky to survive. It was the scariest night we ever spent anywhere.”
OLD TIMERS remember that bar. Its walls were festooned with artifacts and photographs from the Hotel's late 19th and early 20th century heyday. It struck me as a kind of museum, a fascinating little place just to the left of the front door. I can remember the unflappable Eddie Carsey behind the bar. Eddie also then owned the place, and it must have been him who showed the brightlighters up the stairs for what they later assessed as their most harrowing night ever. Head-butting was late night recreation in those days, and sad to say the head-buttin' big guys have passed on, as have the head-buttin' little guys, and fightin' guys generally, as the Anderson Valley of 2025 is mos' def' not the Anderson Valley of 1970.
FROM THE UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL of Monday, July 18th, 1960: “Three escape injury in light plane crash. Earl Voorhees, Gualala businessman, and his two children walked away from a crash landing in the John Farrer apple orchard Friday with nothing more serious than a broken tooth for one of the children. Voorhees, who was piloting the plane, crashed in the orchard as he was attempting a landing at the Boonville airstrip. The light plane crashed nose up after hitting an air pocket and going out of control. His seven year old daughter, Kathy Lynn, lost a tooth, and Gary Earl, age 5, and Voorhees escaped injury.”
THE JOHN FARRER apple orchard? Would that be the late Buster and Velma Farrer’s place on Anderson Valley Way, now home to dwarf olive trees? Or did the Farrers’ own property closer to the then-dirt airstrip which has since become Boonville International?
SURVEYOR SOUGHT
Need a surveyor recommendation. Has anyone dealt with a local surveyor the would recommend? Work is in Comptche.
Katy Tahja, ktahja@mcn.org
BIG BOOK SALE at the Mendocino Community Library on Saturday, February 15th, from 10:00 am until 3:00 pm. New and old, fiction and nonfiction, mystery and crime, romances, children's books, puzzles, and collector’s items. Bag of books for $5 after 2:00 pm. Corner of William and Little Lake Streets in Mendocino. Just south of the Art Center. Something for everyone!
Alan Peters, apeters@mcn.org
OF COURSE I watched the Super Bowl you, you…you… communist! I'm an American! Not much of a game, boring in fact. Philadelphia, home of the world's most obnoxious sports fans, won the game in the first quarter. I enjoyed the jazzy rendition of America the Beautiful by a singer I'd never heard of, not that I'm surprised since the entire culture passed me by years ago. I didn't like the fey version of the National Anthem twirped effeminately out by a man accompanying himself on a piano. Most people, especially sports fans, prefer the Anthem straight. From a real singer. The ads were predictably moronic except the one sponsored by a Christian hotline. This pitch for Jesus was set to an affecting song and made His point without tipping all the way over into the characteristic mawk we usually get from the self-certified advocates for the Prince of Peace and a blank check for the Pentagon. A real dumb and overly long ad for a good cause turned out to be a plug for girl's flag football to become a varsity high school sport. The half-time show, historically, is a semi-nude woman screeching out, "Baby, baby, baby" as she and a chorus of similarly unclad tootsies mime sexual rhythms. This year we got a rapper dude. Of all the great music to come out of host city New Orleans the sinister white boys who run the NFL choose this guy? Who, nonsensical as his alleged songs were, rapper dude's energetic doggerel-istic chant to the massed dancing accompanying him was kinda entertaining. But then so are the anthromorphs walking their raincoat-clad dogs you see around town on rainy days. Given the choice, the dog walkers are much more fun. We only got one shot of Taylor Swift, and only one of the Orange Beast, whose appearance on the jumbo screen was met by a literal roar of approval. (This country is sooooooo doomed.) There were lots of major enemies of the people at the game besides Trump, including Rupert Murdoch and, natch, the evil bastards who own the teams.
MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: My biggest groaner-moment was when the camera focused on the cadaverous Rubert Murdoch as the announcer said, “He’s the reason we’re all here.”
I miss Charmian and was surprised it has been 14 years since she left us. The story about the piano at Brookside makes perfect sense; her mother, Goldie Ward, taught piano when she was growing up at Highland Ranch near Philo.
Re Super Bowl of Dogshit, the Starz-Bangled Banner is pathetic, whether sung, played on a musical saw or farted out by some wiseguy. The words and tune–their misalignment should be against the law. We have a great new country, now, building itself out of the waste of the last eighty years, out of the more-durable elements of greed, brutality, nationalism, hatred of the unfortunate, glorification of military strength and, especially, extravagant wealth. Surely the triumph of capitalism, our superior way of distributing goods–just emerging from a dangerous period of criticism–surely this can be expressed in more resounding words and music, something with “über alles” prominent in its title or lyrics.