THAT LOG TRUCK that plummeted off Highway 128 last Friday morning about 9:30 resulted in the death of its driver, tentatively identified only as a 55-year-old resident of Fort Bragg. The driver is believed to have jumped from the truck as it went over the side east of Yorkville only to be crushed by its trailer as it plunged on some 75 feet down. The Anderson Valley Fire Department and ambulance, as well as the CalStar 4 air ambulance and Cloverdale Fire were dispatched to the scene. The fatally injured driver was transported to an air ambulance landing zone established at Highway 128 and Mountain House Road when, just before the air ambulance lifted off with him, he was pronounced dead. The accident remains under investigation.
FAIR NEWS. Time is moving fast and the fair is just around the corner!
This is your big opportunity to dress up or not, and have some fun in the Parade! Get your kids, friends, grandkids, club or neighbors and make a float, get out your bikes, wagons or be a pooper scooper and come on down to the parade. You have until Thursday September 13 to sign up for the parade on Sunday 9/16, either online at http://mendocountyfair.com/entry-forms/ or bring/mail the form from the website to the fair office. The theme is A-Love-A-FAIR! Just think of all the great parade entries you can come up with about that!
Ted Williams, running for the 5th district supervisor, will be at the fair and would like to speak to constituents. Come find him around the Ag Building by the Apple Tasting booth.
And now ladies and gentlemen, the newest addition to the fair activities is the Freaky Fruit and The One That Got Away!
You can bring your extraordinary produce in (without having had to register back in August!) from Thursday 9/13 until Sunday 9/16 by noon to enter and possibly win a $100 prize for each category. The Judging will be done by the audience present so even if you don't enter, be sure to come to the rear of the Ag building at 1:30 on Sunday to clap and holler for your favorite fruits and veggies! Don't forget Fair Time is Fun Time, but only if you show up and make it so!
There will be a cutting exchange to start plants in the Floriculture Building on Saturday 9/15 at 4:00. Bring some cuttings and take some new ones home! (Donna Pierson-Pugh)
THE AV FFA/AVHS AG DEPARTMENT is designing a Special Feature Exhibit for the fair. This is one of the big exhibits in the center of the Ag building. We need to use a variety seeds, legumes, nuts (in and out of the shell), spices, fresh fruits and vegetables, and raw wool. Do you have things in your kitchen and or barn that are just hanging around? This could be something that that has gotten a bit old and lost its flavor. Could be an open bag of livestock feed that has not spoiled but you don’t need it anymore. Instead of letting the item go bad or throwing it away how about donating it to the AV FFA?
We could use everything, but the fresh fruits and vegetables, immediately. We are beginning to work on the booth now. If you have something to donate put them in a bag or a box, label with my name, Beth, and drop it off at the high school office. Office hours are, school days, from 7am to 3:30pm. Email me with questions at bswehla@avpanthers.org. Thanks so much!
THE ANNUAL BOONVILLE FAIR, as you’ve just read, is gearing up for this year's three-day event the weekend of September 14-16. The pennants are up over our busy downtown, the Fairgrounds crew has the zinnias in most of their traditional beds, although the feng shui for the traditional zinnia whole is seriously fenged and shui-ed by the weedy, dead bed at the south end of the Fairground’s uniquely accommodating parking lot — more handicapped slots, proportionally, per fair-going population — nineteen—than any rural fairgrounds in the United States! Myself, I'm busy plotting my floral arrangement entry and, frankly, I'm experiencing some low-level anxiety in coordinating my dahlia blooms and my most vividly red geraniums for optimum freshness at entry time, the whole of it titled, ‘Geranium Jubilee,’ the idea being the geraniums exploding into… Well, you'll be underwhelmed.
MEANWHILE, at the Navarro Store, where the hits keep on coming, the enterprising Evans Family is producing and marketing “R&T’s Homemade Lip Smackin’ Jerky,” and darned if the modest package of “special venison” that Dave Evans laid on me didn’t get lips promptly smackin’. This is great stuff, and Dave has a whole rack of it in the always happening Navarro Store.
COACH JOHN TOOHEY of the Anderson Valley Panthers writes:
“Last Friday (24 August), in front of a fantastic turnout, our young AV Panther football team was met with a challenging introduction to the game from the much-improved Cornerstone Cougars. Only 2 of the young players on this team have any high school football experience. Of the 13 suited up, we have 5 seniors, 4 of which have never played, and 2 of which are a couple of brave young women. The rest are a green group of 15 and 14 year olds. The Junior class at AV, despite having some key players from last season, have no representation on the team.
“With our scrimmage cancelled last week, our inexperience showed on Friday night as the Cougars went largely unchallenged all evening. There were however some bright spots. Irlen Perez, a first year QB, was borderline marvelous at times with the ball. Josue Angulo, who has never played high school football, was the team's leading rusher, Lucas Kiehl and Braulio Echevarria both played very well, and team captain Caleb Devine-Gomes scored our team's lone touchdown.
“The landscape of football is changing. Our small school league is barely recognizable from 10 years ago. Mendocino, Laytonville and Potter Valley have dropped their football programs. Point Arena is week to week. Round Valley has managed a team, and so have we. That’s what remains of the original NCL 3. The traditionally rural small town Mendocino County league switched to the 8 man format in 2011. For a time it was great. An epic clash soon ensued between our Panthers and the Point Arena Pirates, followed by a rise and fall of Mendocino, and a 2 year run of complete dominance from Anderson Valley.
“Those traditional NCL 3 rivalries are now just a memory. With programs folding, and bigger schools participation waning, our 8 man football league began adopting bigger schools in 2014. Tomales, Calistoga, Upper Lake and South Fork have all dropped into our 8 man league. Private schools Rincon Valley, Branson, Stuart Hall and Roseland prep are also 8 man squads.
“While this creates a competitive 8 man league, it also means that our young Boonville squad is going to have a tough road to travel as they work to improve, and as the private schools in our league are not required to follow rules regarding recruiting and influence, we are put at a distinct disadvantage now inside our division.
“We hope everyone continues to come out and support these young athletes' efforts. Our next home game will be on the 7th. Point Arena is scheduled, and we will wait to hear if they will be fielding a team that week.”
WE'RE NOT IN BOONVILLE anymore, Toto. Hovering above Anderson Creek at the Boonville end of the Boonville-Ukiah Road, five large, water-holding tanks, a large industrial-looking installation under construction, coupla dudes camped down by the creek. I'm guessing the new agriculture but, brazen as it is, gotta be legal.
REMEMBER PABLO ON THE GRILL at the Navarro Store? Well, Pablo himself is presently being grilled. The personable grill chef and Pablo Jr. are looking at charges for beating up Junior's Ukiah roommate. https://www.theava.com/archives/86650
JAMES ROSSICH played basketball for the Panthers in Boonville during the 1987-88 school year. He's trying to find the newspaper clips of his court triumphs to show his kids that their old man could play some. If you can help him out with the corroboration he seeks, please contact Mr. R via his email: myseventytwochevyforme@gmail.com
AMONG ROSSICH'S TEAMMATES on the '87-88 team were Mike Jones: Willie Housley; Tony Sanchez; Kevin Lee; Tobias Peckner; Antonio Soto; Chato Mendoza; James Thomasson, and I know I'm leaving some people out. Charlie Hiatt was the coach. The Panthers were undefeated until they encountered just about the last competitive basketball team to come out of Covelo, and despite 35 points from Sanchez, only a freshman, and some fierce boards by Mr. Rossich, the Panthers fell for the first time that season.
OUR ON-LINE archive, the stuff we can fairly easily retrieve, begins in 2008. The paper-paper, our version of which kicked off in January of 1984, is stashed at several universities, the closest being UC Davis. So 1987-88 requires some hand-dug archeology, but we don't have the necessary labor, Mr. Rossich. We're hoping to get all the papers scanned for us, but at the moment we don't have the dough for this expensive techno-feat. We think it's beyond obvious that even in the county where history starts all over again every day, without the ava there will be a huge hole in the true history of this odd jurisdiction.
ALRIGHT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...the non-profit alternative school, Boont Tribe Community School, for elementary and middle school aged children here in Anderson Valley is almost off and running...after a very long construction delay. I need some help with advertising/fundraising/grant writing.
This will be a paid position, $20 an hour. 4 hours a week for now. 2.5 hours a week after October 1st. With very flexible hours.
Anyone applying needs to have experience writing grants, developing fundraisers and have their own computer and internet.
I don't think I am a difficult person to work with? But...I don't have a lot of experience with this sort of stuff and I need help jumping in with both feet. Thank you!
Email Boonttribe@gmail.com or call 895-3590
HEALDSBURG HIGH SCHOOL has canceled the rest of its varsity football season, although the school's jv team will soldier on. The on-line comments were heavily of this variety: "Healdsburg has fostered a culture of snowflake wieners." And, "Sounds like it. My immediate thought was that the kids were just a bunch of quitters, but perhaps this is also some poor parenting. That said, I am also curious why the coach scheduled early non-league games against powerful teams when he knew his team was very thin on numbers."
READING between the lines, it seems that Healdsburg only had five or six kids who could play at a competitive level, meaning a team mostly of uninspired, not particularly athletic youngsters who saw that the season before them amounted to weekly pummelings by kids bigger, faster, stronger. While dad was probably all for his kid playing the game, mom was probably less enthusiastic, especially given the deluge of information about the risk of brain damage from contact sports, which isn't to mention the psychic brain damage the sedentary kid sustains on a daily basis via his array of electronic past times. Football itself is probably doomed at the high school level, but until it is how about all the physically exuberant kids, the kids who love testing themselves in a violent but controlled arena to see what their physical limits might be? Without the thrill of football, and it is definitely thrilling in ways no other sport is, we'll have a lot of high school boys out on weekend nights finding excitement where they will.
DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL at the AV Little Red Schoolhouse? Do you know someone who went there, or do you wish you went there? Well we have the perfect event for you… The Anderson Valley Historical Society and Museum will be hosting a reunion for all those who attended the Little Red Schoolhouse (or White Schoolhouse before 1963) on the afternoon of Saturday, 15th September during the County Fair. The event, which will run from 12-4pm in the Schoolhouse, the garden, and the Rose Room, offers a great opportunity for those who wish to meet old friends and enjoy a trip down memory lane. Snacks and non-alcoholic refreshments will be provided; otherwise BYOB. A $10 donation is requested… The Society will also have a booth at The Fair at which various books on Anderson Valley may be purchased.
Meanwhile, here is a brief history of the Schoolhouse taken from the book ’Then and Now - an Anderson Valley Journey' by Wes Smoot and Stephen Sparks:
In 1891, the Con Creek School was opened and the children had a new schoolhouse. The first teacher in this new schoolhouse was a Mrs. Annie McGimsey. At that time the schoolhouse faced the west and was on the east side of the highway - which we now know as Anderson Valley Way. Over the years changes were made to the building that included a long front porch being added after the 1906 earthquake. Then in 1940 a back room was added to serve as a library.
When the rights of way were purchased in order to build an expressway through the Valley, it was necessary to move the building a short distance to the north. It also resulted in the building being turned ¼ turn in a clockwise direction to face the northwest.
From 1941 to 1958 the school was used for the 7th and 8th grades only. Following the construction of the elementary school across the road on Anderson Valley Way in the early 1950s and the opening of the new high school in town in 1958, the Con Creek School was used as a kindergarten school. In November 1963, the old white school was painted red and was dedicated as the “Little Red Schoolhouse” which it remained until 1979 when it was closed permanently as a school. Therefore, officially, it was actually only a ‘Little Red Schoolhouse’ for sixteen years.
At that time, the Anderson Valley Community Services District purchased the school and property and leased it to the Anderson Valley Historical Society for a museum. In October 1979 it was placed on the National Register of Historical Landmarks. After standing on this location for over 125 years it now remains as the Anderson Valley Museum and houses many fascinating items from Anderson Valley’s storied history - a place we strongly urge you to visit and support. After all, it’s not known as ‘The Best Little Museum in the West’ without reason!
(Steve Sparks)
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