I'VE always been a sap for an argument, never having learned how pointless it is to argue with true believers. But I like to keep my hand in while I wait for someone to call with the news that Postmistress Collette has put me up on the door of the Boonville Post Office.
AN ARCHETYPAL true believer was the late Frank Lewis of Deer Meadows, the hills east of Boonville. We got to know Frank fairly well. He used to hang out at the AVA until he got mad at us over an argument about, of all things, fascism, and disappeared into his ridgetop fastness.
A RETIRED merchant seaman, Frank was a dogmatic dude, an autodidact with a surface affability but the kind of guy you mostly tuned out as he preached his skewed gospel on a range of issues. He claimed to be a Marxist but most of his information came from the New York Times, which most Marxists would say is simply the propaganda arm of the Democrats and conservative liberalism of the type dominant in Mendocino County.
ONE DAY, FRANK, who we called White Man Frank because of his dramatically non-Marxist race views, announced that America was a police state in full fascist bloom. Nope, not even close, we said. Probably headed in that direction but we're still a ways out, and even when we get there it'll be techno controls and media manipulation, not boots to the teeth.
WITH TRUMP, we've finally got there. Somewhere, Frank is happy. Maestro? A little Barry Manilow, please. "Looks like we made it."
BUT TO HEAR White Man the brownshirts were already marching over the hill from Ukiah. He seemed thrilled, and definitely preferred the jackboot brand. We told him he was wrong and ill informed, but soon showed up with a stack of books on fascism. "You morons think I don't know fascism when I see it?" he shouted, dropping the books on the counter in the face of a nonplussed visitor, and off he stomped.
NEVER saw him again. He was pretty tedious all-in-all, as only dogmatists can be. An isolated guy who, like all isolated people, go slowly crazy in their alone-ness. You indulge them until they become intolerable, and that's the end of them. Last I heard, White Man's stepdaughter owns his little handmade cabin with the million dollar view up on Deer Meadow.
ELIZABETH KNIGHT (Reporting from the Deep End)
Old traditions are coming back to the Floodgate Store! We were so excited to see the logging truck parked there! We knew this is something that Butch Paula has been wanting to see also! Picture by Paullen Severn-Walsh.
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