Forty years ago Eileen Pronsolino co-wrote a brief history of the earliest wine grape growers in Anderson Valley. At the time she was working at Al Green’s Greenwood Ridge Vineyard tasting room on Highway 128,…
Posts published by “Brad Wiley”
Mushroom foraging was something the nineteenth century European immigrants, Italians, Germans, Swiss and French brought to the United States and to Anderson Valley. When I first moved here, I heard stories about the old-timer Italians…
Last week’s story about Bob Glover’s participation in local politics incited me to go up to my attic archives and begin reading through the set of Anderson Valley Advocate newspapers stored up there. The Advocate…
Where did Bob Glover’s nickname come from? “Chipmunk” had been his identifier all over The Valley long before my wife and I moved here and had nothing to do with his small stature. Bob was…
Bob Glover’s ancestors were true pioneers in the Euro-American settlement of Anderson Valley. And the fact motivated his personal ambitions and worldview since his youth. After the 1849 Gold Rush seven Swiss-German families left their…
Last week I reported on the recent history of Anderson Valley’s dump sites and the personalities of the County employees who presided over these social gathering spots important in the Valley’s day-to-day life. And as…
Rural America’s local dumpsites have always been a magnet for me, partly because of their fairly convenient accessability compared to city and suburbia’s formal garbage pickup services, partly because they also are serendipitous social centers,…
Last week’s portion of this book review noted two “remarkable” features of Maurice Tindall’s Mendocino County life. The first I described as the aggressively successful generation-long migration of his whole family from job to job…
Are there many of us left in The Valley who remember Maurice Tindall, never mind even know who he was? The other evening I was idly perusing my book shelves looking for some good after-dinner…