Will the person who shot my dog down by Outlet Creek read this? Was she threatening you with her friendly tail wagging? Was it a mercy killing? Target practice? I hate not knowing why she…
Posts published by “Jim Gibbons”
One of the more interesting women I met anchored out was Diane Allen from Memphis, Tennessee. I was enchanted by her southern accent, and I couldn’t resist her dimpled smile. She taught classes on how…
I was working at the Tides Bookstore in Sausalito in the spring of 1970 when my book came out. I had been a Milwaukee Poet, and with my friend Chuck put out a little poetry…
My first few weeks living at Waldo Point made me realize that I wasn’t going anywhere else anytime soon. I liked hanging out on the Sausalito waterfront, meeting Becker’s friends and neighbors, mostly boat people,…
My Greyhound Bus ride from Milwaukee to Madison cost one dollar and ninety cents. The date, according to my old journal, was March 24, 1969. Madison was the first leg of my journey to California.…
My first semester was over and now I needed a summer job. I had worked on the Mendocino County road crew out of the Laytonville Yard the past two seasons as part of the C.E.T.A…
Going back to college to get my degree and a teaching credential after dropping out nine years earlier was tough in a lot of ways. The first was that the closest college to Willits was…
In November of 1969 three boats took members of twenty tribes from all over the country to occupy Alcatraz, reclaiming it as “Indian land and demanding fairness and respect for Indian Peoples.” The spokesman for the Indians was a Mohawk from New York named Richard Oakes, who offered the U.S. Government “$24 in glass beads and red cloth.” Oakes said, “We hold The Rock,” and that became the movement’s motto. Unfortunately, a few months later his 12-year-old daughter fell from a three-story structure in the prison and died. He left the Island shortly after, as did many others during the 18-month occupation.
I first came to Willits in late summer of 1971 because a fellow worker at the Tides Bookstore in Sausalito invited me up to see the property his girlfriend’s family bought north of Willits. Daniel,…