From the Archive (1/2/1985): Editor’s Desk

THE SHOT AT MENDOCINO COLLEGE brought some heated phone calls several of which sputtered off into squawks, squeaks and bat screams as telephone service between Boonville and the outside world continues to deteriorate. Often, when trying to speak with someone in Ukiah, your message sounds as if it is being carried through 20 miles of garden hose. Maybe the phone company should issue everyone walkie-talkies.

THE OTHER DAY I PICKED UP my non-party line phone to make a call only to be startled by this loud clear exchange:

FIRST MAN: I was sitting around with my mom having a few beers the other night when she told me I should be more like my little brother.

SECOND MAN: Oh yeah?

FIRST MAN: Yeah, so I decked her.

BACK TO MENDOCINO COLLEGE, using the word “college” in its loosest sense. The angry callers pointed out that a few persons try to get things going over there but they aren't supported by either the community or the faculty. That complaint confirmed the gist of my original beef that the faculty seems composed largely of drones whose only allegiance is to their paychecks. And one caller stretched it pretty far when she invoked Dr. Joyce Brothers as an example of a college cultural event. Dr. Joyce has probably destroyed more lives with her insane advice than all the rest of the psychology empire combined. I really got a lift a few years ago when Dr. Joyce, with her typical acuity, mistook a mugger for a bellboy and paid for her misperception with a rap on the noggin.

THE COLLEGE MAY IMPROVE when it has a permanent campus. Then again it may not. Like public high schools, junior college administrators feel most comfortable with people like themselves – mediocrities. A good college would be hated and feared by the kind of people who control Mendocino County. I suppose the present functioning of Mendo CC as training ground for J.C. Penny’s clerks keeps the Old Boys Network and the Chamber of Commerce content.

DISCUSSING DOPE A COUPLE OF WEEKS ago on KMFB, I argued for the legalization of marijuana while Bob Cavender, a very pleasant guy from Ukiah, argued for more money for Sheriff Shea to form a second string team of raiders for next season's pot festivities. To many people, certainly to many who called the radio station, legalization will result in innocent citizens being wrestled to the ground and forced to take dope. The people who want more money to carry on the eradication struggle, seem to forget that Shea can't keep dope out of his jail and has a difficult time keeping crooks in. Turning over another big hunk of change to Shea seems silly since the magnitude of the “problem” is beyond Shea's ability to combat. At this point it's a cliché, but legalization will get the big money out. The big money and all the creeps it attracts is the problem.

THE GROWERS THEMSELVES, a bigger bunch of crybabies and hypocrites there aren't in the County, want no busts, no punks ripping off the crops and the highest possible returns. Why the so-called “conservatives” want to spend more money on what from their perspective would seem to be an ideal state of affairs, i.e., crooks shooting thieves while local businesses prosper from pot sales, is truly mystifying.

MY O MY, HOW SUCH a tiny paper can create so much hostility is truly remarkable. The young republican yuppies at the Grapevine snipe at the AVA without letup. And the hippy-dips on the marijuana left occasionally crank a round off in our direction on those rare occasions the drug fog lifts long enough for them to sight in. We must be doing something right.

AS FOR THE GRAPEVINE, I must say I get a big charge out of the senile frothings of Marge and Frank Alzheimer, Grapevine columnists. The Alzheimer twins are known primarily for their comic abilities as when Marge Alzheimer stated a while ago, “Barry Goldwater was right in 1964.” This ridiculous assertion was put forward without one supporting piece of evidence telling us what the old jackal was right about.