BOB DEMPEL, HOPLAND OLD TIMER, WRITES:
I, like you, was saddened to hear of the passing of John Hulbert. I also had been thinking about calling him but for the past 50 years. John and I were friends in the 1950's through the 4-H program. There were lots of Hulberts in 4-H in the 50s. There were the kids of Austin and Silvia Hulbert, Clarence and Ruby Hulbert, and Perry and Dot Hulbert. If you attended 4-H camp or a fair there were lots of Hulbert kids around. John and I were the same age so we hung around together at the events. I was particular attracted to John's family because he had two attractive sisters, Ann and Donnal. I had what I like to call 4-H romances with both of them (not at the same time). These were where you held hands maybe for a day. Ann married what I remember as a local man, had two children and passed away at an early age. I was happy to see that Donnal is still with us. She also married and had children. We wound up after the romance both going to UC Davis together and I would give her a ride part way home back in 1955 and 1956. I have had contact with her over the years but unfortunately not recently.
BIG TURNOUT for the Simple Living Fair over the weekend. The Fair has slowly evolved from a disorganized gathering of Mendo’s hippie tribes, heavy on crackpot woo woo to an orderly presentation of practical instructions on how to live smarter and generally better.
THE SHERIFF’S PRESSER on last week’s pot raids mostly discussed eradication of North County gardens, especially those garden illegally diverting water and generally slobbing up their areas with chemicals and garbage. The task force blitz also hit an unspecified region of Mountain View Road and Signal Ridge, neighborhoods where more people than not grow the love drug.
“A SIGNAL RIDGE bust Monday, which is between Boonville and Point Arena, yielded 16,000 plants. Allman said there was an excessive amount of pesticides and fertilizers found, along with seven water diversions. No suspects were located. “On Mountain View Road, between Boonville and Point Arena, 53,000 plants were eradicated from one grow. No suspects were located.”
WE HAD REPORTS that a CAMP team had headed up Peachland where there are numerous grows and diversions of Indian Creek. Apparently CAMP is saving them for another day.
THE ANDERSON VALLEY HEALTH CENTER will receive a share of $500,000 in federal funding from the United States Health and Human Services Department to support health information technology, the agency announced last week.
The Redwood Community Health Coalition, a health center controlled network, was awarded the funding for 13 of its participating health centers, including its location in Anderson Valley, out of more than $36 million available to health center controlled networks nationally.
LATE last Friday night somebody broke through the glass front door of Lemons Market to steal several items of junk food. But the 17-year-old thief was caught on the store’s security camera and soon further identified when his mother brought him to the store to confess in person. (And if all parents were as responsible…) Lemons is still looking at costly door repairs but will now be able to get their money back from the kid who did the damage.
A WEEK of hundred degree days has inspired that most unlikely of dog day blooms, the pink lady, presently making their improbable annual appearance seemingly everywhere in the Anderson Valley. The ladies’ appearance coincides with that slight Fall chill in the early morning, heralding the season’s change.
PATRICK KALFSBEEK, a beekeeper from Woodland (Colusa County) stopped by Saturday with a load of fresh-off-his-farm watermelons and vegetables. Mr. K, a fan of Boonville’s beloved community newspaper, said he was on his way to drop off his edenic cargo at the home of a lucky recipient near Mendocino. Kalfsbeek left us a few of the melons and some vine-ripened beefsteak tomatoes, reminding us captives of the Safeway vegetable bins, how God’s bounty should taste.
A SCATTERSHOT e-mail from the Savings Bank of Mendocino said something about the bank throwing “safe banking” tea parties for seniors, one of which will convene at the Anderson Valley Senior Center on August 23rd at 1pm.
I’M A SENIOR who has long wondered why there isn't a branch bank in Boonville, especially since the Anderson Valley is probably the wealthiest area of the county, certainly much wealthier than dusty, grubby, cash short Redwood Valley where there’s been a Savings Bank branch for years. The lady who wrote the e-mail said she’d pass my message on to my old friend Chuck Mannon, bank prexy.
WE ONCE had a bank in Boonville, but that was forty years ago and way before the Golden Horde arrived. That little bank made money, but not enough to satisfy the chain usurers of WestAmerica who bought it up then closed it. We also used to have a pharmacy, and slo-pitch softball, and men’s league basketball, and pot lucks, and, youth, and hope… and… and….
AS MENTIONED earlier in the week, Boonville is poised to hire a couple of school administrators from outside the flabby, Billery political consensus prevalent in County edu-circles. The new Elementary School principal, Katherine Reddick, gained herself some international notoriety when the obituary she wrote in 2013 for her mother appeared in the Reno Gazette Journal. The British newspaper, The Daily Mail, characterized mom's send-off as "probably the most vicious obituary you will ever read."
IT DIDN’T SEEM all that bad and certainly seemed to ring the truth bell, especially given that all the departed’s children agreed on it. There are undoubtedly millions of children who envy Ms. Reddick’s candor in describing her mother as she and her siblings experienced her. But you, dear reader, be the judge:
“MARIANNE THERESA Johnson-Reddick born Jan 4, 1935 and died alone on Sept. 30, 2013. She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible. While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child, was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit.
“On behalf of her children, whom she so abrasively exposed to her evil and violent life, we celebrate her passing from this earth and hope she lives in the afterlife reliving each gesture of violence, cruelty, and shame that she delivered on her children. Her surviving children will now live the rest of their lives with the peace of knowing their nightmare finally has some form of closure. Most of us have found peace in helping those who have been exposed to child abuse and hope this message of her final passing can revive our message that abusing children is unforgivable, shameless, and should not be tolerated in a ‘humane society’. Our greatest wish now, is to stimulate a national movement that mandates a purposeful and dedicated war against child abuse in the United States of America.”
THE NEW BOONVILLE HIGH SCHOOL principal, Keri St. Joer, says on his Facebook confessional that the opinions of Anne Coulter resonate with him and that he's opposed to abortion. I'm sure there are other school people in the County also beguiled by Coulter, and who have religious objections to abortion, but they'd probably be driven out of their jobs if they spoke up. We say, Let a hundred flowers bloom!
JOURNAL NOTES, TUESDAY, JULY 26TH: Just getting light when I walked the few yards from my sleeping cell to my office in Boonville's beating heart. The OPEN neon was already blinking out its four letter welcome next door at the Redwood Drive-In, whose hours are precisely, every day, 6am to 9pm. Two cups of Petrolia-roasted Gold Rush Coffee had fueled my fifty-foot commute. Across the road, in the dust of Boont Berry Farm's parking area, a frenetic figure hurled itself to and fro in apparent argument with itself, arms gesturing wildly. In the faint grey of dawn the agitated form looked like an Indonesian puppet show. I walked closer. It was a young black woman. Her close-cropped hair was dyed blonde. "Can I help you, Miss?" She didn't even look my way as she said, "No." She was obviously deranged and, as she said, beyond any help I or probably anyone else might provide. She'd never stopped pacing, mumbling to herself, throwing her arms this way and that. Later, when the sun was up, I looked out to see her still pacing, still agitated. She'd arranged a picnic-like display in the dust of paper coffee cups and miscellaneous items that included sticks, a small rock, one shoe and one sock. I thought about calling her in to 911, but I assumed lots of people had beat me to it. With menace always in the news, people would find this forlorn figure menacing. Finally, about 1pm, Deputy Orell Massey arrived to round her up. Formidably tall, fit, and the very picture of the "lean, mean fighting machine" he'd been as a Marine, I wondered if Massey had been specially dispatched to assess Boonville's early morning mental because he, too, is black. And, I should say, the deputy is not at all mean but is certainly all business. Wasting no time, Massey assessed the young woman as 5150, meaning that in her altered state she was clearly a danger to herself and, perhaps, others. She gathered up her picnic and silently climbed into Massey's patrol wagon.
THE DAY GREW, and grew hot, about a hundred outside my office door. "I wonder if we can fry an egg on the pavement?" I asked my colleague, The Major. "Wrong kind of pavement; you need a cement sidewalk, not coarse asphalt," The Major said. More and more the garrulous old coot, I threw out a boring anecdote about how the newspapers of yesteryear always had a hot day picture of a kid frying an egg on the sidewalk.
THE AFTERNOON WINDS came up earlier than usual, and I feared what everyone fears on these hot, dry, drought days when the afternoon wind blows in off the Pacific and, sure enough, the scanner crackled with a fire call. A patch of grass directly across the road from CalFire's stalag south of Boonville was quickly extinguished. Serious fires quickly draw CalFire's spotter plane and the scanner voices are excited, but this scanner alert, occurring almost simultaneously with the tiny blaze at CalFire, was a rear-ender at Ray's Road and 128, Philo. An inattentive person at the wheel of a monster pick-up rear-ended a much smaller passenger car, hitting the little car so hard it was accordian-ed all the way to its front seat. No one was injured, but the driver of the little car is now without his transportation.
AS THE DAY waned and me with it, and deeply anxious to avoid the nauseating political spectacle on most television channels, I watched our Olympic basketball team wipe out the Chinese National quintet, switching back and forth to the Giant's game. Another day logged.
BOONVILLE AIRPORT DAY and Potluck Dinner this year is on Saturday, August 13 at the Corner of Estate Drive and Airport Road, at the Boonville Airport. Festivities begin at Noon. Potluck Dinner at 5pm. Please bring your favorite potluck dish. Drinks provided. No reservations. For additional information contact Cindy or Kirk Wilder at 895-2949. (We understand that again this year some individual pilots will be offering free rides over the Valley.)
FREE INVERSION TABLE: Heavy-duty, very useful to ameliorate backaches. In Philo. Call 895-3276. Ask for Bob.
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