Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published by “McEwen Bruce”

Sharecroppers

My grandfather was a sharecropper — otherwise I would have been as ignorant of it as the pot pharmas are who practice it today. It's a holdover from feudalism, established originally in the Southeast US…

Runaway Red

Most of us shoot ourselves in the foot from time to time, metaphorically anyway, but Kenneth McCarty shot himself in the foot then ran over his other foot. Not on the same day, but close.…

Asians & Abalone

Abalone poaching is a multi-ethnic enterprise, but the perception in Mendocino County is that Asians do most of it. Do they, or is it racism talking? Dung Tri Bui's all-white jury wasn't polled on their…

Bush Hippies Brawl

It all started at a trimming session during harvest season in Laytonville. It was hot, the pot sticky, the vibe hostile bordering on angry. It was time for a break, a cold beer, some fresh…

Boss Kelly

The preliminary hearing for Kelly Boss of Philo ended in a holding order last week, which means the state showed up with enough evidence to make a reasonable person, Ukiah Judge John Behnke in this…

The Acetone Defense

The first time Peter Richardson went to the venerable Water Trough bar on South State Street in Ukiah was back in the late 1950s or early 1960s (he doesn’t remember the exact year) when he was just a boy. His father had brought him out to California to see the redwood forests, and they stopped at the Water Trough for the bar's famous barbecue. In those days there was a drive-up window, so young Peter didn’t actually go into the now-defunct drinking establishment, but the barbecue was so memorable that he eventually returned as a young adult in the 1970s and has lived here in Mendocino County ever since.

We Are Not Alone (?)

Maitreya is coming to save us. Maitreya? In a word, God; the new god, the god running the UFOs and drawing crop circles and doing a lot of other stuff that modern science has not…

Ivan The Terrible — Or Ivan The Not So Terrible

“If there’s any reasonable doubt, you must find my client not guilty,” Ivan Sanchez’s Santa Rosa lawyer told the jury at the end of Sanchez's trial last week. Mr. Gabriel Quinnan said, “And the alleged…

-