The end of La Nina drought has been like no wet winter I remember in my half century living in The Valley. From the day after Christmas until Wednesday ten days ago over three weeks…
Posts published by “Brad Wiley”
Ward Ranch homestead, milepost 43.67 Last week’s travelogue ended up at Wes Smoot’s childhood family home on the Morrow Ranch, Highway 128 milepost 44.75. From there Wes and I motored another mile down the road…
Wes Smoot, locally born and raised, at age 90 is one of the most informed Valley historians and journalistic story-tellers I know of. His article in the Advertiser last month recounting the business history of…
Last week’s Billy Owens story began with our first meeting on Friday nights at the Floodgate Store bar down near Navarro. Time for the rest of that story. My wife Anna’s providing the instrument for…
I met Bill right after my wife and I first moved to The Valley fifty years ago. Our meeting place was the Floodgate Store bar along Highway 128 toward the Deep End of Navarro. Moving…
For this episode of Bill Holcomb’s life, I visited him at his and Eva’s home, a lovely owner-designed indoor/outdoor dwelling, part domicile, part workshop, part old vehicles and construction equipment museum. Bill bought the 14…
Bill Holcomb regularly joins the Valley elite’s morning meeting at Mosswood downtown Boonville for coffee and discussion of local and world affairs. Friday a week ago I met Bill there around 9 AM, too chilly…
I first met Willis Tucker in the early spring of 1972. I had moved to Anderson Valley the year before, bought part of the old Ingram Ranch in Navarro with the intent to plant wine…
Willis “Willie” Tucker was born on the family farm in Meyer Creek, Arkansas, in 1926. The farm, his daughter Marti Titus believes, was around a hundred acres of gently rolling bottomland along the creek where…