Where exactly did this disrespect for authority, this all-around cheekiness, come from? Well, between prime 50s TV guys like Groucho Marx and Allen Funt, what would you expect? “You Bet Your Life” and “Candid Camera”…
Posts published in “Essays”
Ah, spring. The season when the hills turn green, the flowers pop and, the deciduous trees gain vibrant foliage. It also is the season where many of our noses and sinuses go absolutely crazy, in…
As soon as antibiotics were discovered in the 1940s, they were shown to be about the most effective medications known so far and thus were rapidly mass-manufactured and used by doctors, curing countless illnesses and…
(AVA, August 28, 1985) A reminiscing Valley resident was once overheard to say, “When I first came here in 1960, it seemed to me there were only two places I was assured of a warm…
Not only the living were listening in Westminster Abbey last Saturday. The dead heard the music too. Among the legion of once famous, wealthy, and powerful entombed there, none was bigger of girth and of…
In December of 1964, California was hit by floods that were even wilder than the great floods of 1955. In three days, from December 21 to 24, Blue Canyon on the American River recorded 20…
Gleaming hogs, chopped Harleys all, were parked in a precise row, south of the Cliff House. Sonny Barger, still Head Guy of the Hell’s Angels despite a stretch in the joint and his near inability…
Zoyd had been staying with planters he knew up by Holytail, beyond the coastal ranges and the yearlong fogs, in a valley where marijuana growing conditions were ideal — about the last refuge for pot…
Dear O’io: You eluded us last year. Our esteemed guide, Captain Jeremy Inman of Oahu Flyfishing, caught the Covid, had to cancel. I wrote the story anyway because the occasion was my 80th birthday and…