1. home and garden

A quarterly publication of, by and for the Redwood Coast Senior Center community
RC
SC
EDWOOD
OAST
E N I O R
ENTER
April/June 2015
GAZETTE
A M A g A z i n e o f S t o r i e S,
P o e M S , A n d P e r S o n A l n A r r At i v e S
Homes
of refreshing
tranquility
The Woods offers beautifully
constructed manufactured homes
for 55+ adults on 37 acres in the
North Coast. Just a few minutes’
scenic drive reaches a pristine
golf course, tennis courts, one
of six state park beaches, or
Mendocino’s famed art galleries,
shops, and restaurants. Come
see for yourself how active and
vibrant, yet comfortable and
secure life can be. To tour this
exceptional community, contact
The Woods at (707) 937-0294.
43300 Little River Airport Road
Little River, CA 95456
(707) 937-0294 | ncphs.org
The Woods is a community
of Northern California Presbyterian
Homes and Services.
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
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1
Letter to the Editor
Food, Fuel and Forever Thanks!
Does anyone appreciate and give thanks
to our Redwood Coast Senior fundraisers
and luncheons? Our daily trips on the
shuttles with very helpful bus drivers? Our
very talented chef and all the volunteers in
the lunch room and thrift shops? The bus
dispatcher and front desk and volunteers
there plus the staff behind the scenes of
this fantastic senior center?
Usually I don’t attend evening fundraisers and mostly because too much food at
night keeps me awake. We all have different time zones.
Anyway, the Valentine’s Day brunch was
elegant, gourmet, relaxing and charming!
The food was upscale San Francisco, i.e.,
the Cliff House there, with eggs Benedict
and wonderful pancakes topped with
whipped cream and fresh blueberries.
And also, I want to thank the shuttle drivers who deliver the elderly to and from
the lunches. These two men go far beyond
driving: they pack and deliver groceries to
the door, even musical instruments and at
one point, a huge doll house. Our bus drivers and alternative driver help the elderly
on and off the buses, even walking them to
their doors.
The Director of this senior center also
goes far beyond pushing papers. He’s
hands on in the dining room at lunch time
and functions as a waiter at fundraisers.
I’ve personally never seen anything like this
great place; we should give thanks every
day to every one working here.
Rose Mary Hughes
2
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
Sal’s Bistro — A Community Dining Room for Seniors
by Charles Bush, Executive Director
Just what is a community dining room
for seniors?
Well, it’s a special sort of restaurant
with 4 unique features. First, it primarily
serves food to folks over 60, although
younger people are welcome. Second, it
has a limited menu with a single hot
entrée – the special of the day – and a
very extensive salad buffet. Third, like all
good restaurants, it provides all the
charm and service of a highly social setting for “going out to lunch.” Fourth,
every senior guest – member really –
decides how much they will pay for
lunch.
Why focus on seniors, and how can a
restaurant let the customers set the
prices?
The answer to both questions comes
from some values and decisions which
the larger community has adopted. Consider that for most of our long history as
a species, we stayed in one place and
lived with our extended families, gathered together in small villages or towns.
Everyone shared meals, and everyone had
a responsible role to play. That’s all
changed now, so we have invented new
ways to operate.
Senior Community Dining Rooms now
provide the new way for “village elders”
to continue the ritual of the “shared
meal.” As we age our capacity to “hunt
and gather” declines, so the whole community pitches in to make a special place
for the elders to gather, out of respect for
their long years of
family and community service. They
are expected to
“contribute
what
they can” but are
always “welcome at
the table” regardless
of how much personal wealth they’ve accumulated, and
can afford to pay.
What a great idea! But since there is no
such thing as a “free lunch” how can we
actually afford this arrangement?
It is such a great idea that 12,000 of
these “senior community dining rooms”
across the country serve 10 million people every day. We actually serve 200
lunches every weekday right here! The
government, a large “Council of villages”
collects some tax money from everyone
and shares a little bit with each dining
room – about $3 for each lunch. Since it
costs $8 to make and serve the lunch, the
dining room has to come up with $5
more to feed each person. Not every elder
can actually afford $5 – locally the average contribution is about $3 – so the rest
of the coast community shares the
responsibility of providing another $2
toward lunch.
Redwood Coast Seniors has been doing
this for 40 years now. How’s it working
these days?
Financially it seems like we barely
squeak by every year, but somehow
always make it work. Right now it’s a lit-
April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
3
Ride In The Hills
tle tight. Because of the “Great Recession”
there is a bit less tax money, and low
income seniors are having to stretch their
limited funds further – their contribution
is down about 50 cents a meal. The local
community has valiantly stepped up, and
is covering the difference, and at the
same time we are serving a wider range of
menus, a great salad bar, and offering
more choices and service than ever.
If people like this idea and want to
help, what can they do?
Well, mainly just treat yourself to a
great lunch! If you’re 60+, then come regularly and bring some new friends. Chip
in as much as you can afford for your
meal. Younger folks are invited to lunch
too – the price is only $8, the food is
great, and the company is grand. So just
“Do Lunch At Sal’s Bistro.” Of course,
making regular charitable contributions
to the Senior Center is essential!
A clock ticks and
My mind clicks to
Vibrations between my legs
And the sun in my eyes, roaring.
A tree passes
And my mind flashes to
The meaning of
The cracks in the road
And the bay down below
And me so low I
Hear the blues in the wind.
And the big amplified
Guitar in my black mind
Tells me its name,
And the wind digs out
The tears in my eyes
And flings them, a
Pattern (the cracks in the road)
Behind me.
Rick Banker
Thank You
BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2015
Bob Bushansky, President
Syd Balows, Vice President
Claudia Boudreau, Treasurer
Rick Banker, Secretary
Annie Liner
Zo Abell
Mark Slafkes
John Wilson
Charles Bush, Executive Director
Harvest Market makes weekly vegetable, fruit, and
bread donations and supplies much of the fresh produce for
the 800 lunches we serve to elders every week, in the dining
room or delivered by Meals On Wheels to shut-in seniors at
home.
Harvest Market also collects close to $900 a month for
the senior Center through their bag purchase program.
Without this generosity we literally could not operate the
lunch-for-seniors service, because our federal subsidy does
not cover the cost of the program.
Harvest Market is truly an anchor for redwood Coast
seniors food services. Many, Many thanks.
4
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
Kitchen Garden Footprint
It is spring at the Redwood Coast
Seniors’ Kitchen Garden. Our garden
shed with its translucent roof is doubling
as a propagation greenhouse.
Lettuce, beet, chard, kale and Chinese
cabbage plants are sprouting in there. In
the garden we continue to pick from the
chard, celery, kale and parsley planted in
2014. The apple and plum tree are in bud
and the new blueberry plants are flower-
ing. Watch for the flowering cherry to
burst forth in glory soon.
Though the late rains and drizzles have
made the garden “green up,” we are being
careful with water use. The garden is well
mulched with egg cartons, coffee chaff,
burlap bags and straw; thanks to Thanksgiving Coffee Company, which gives chaff
and burlap to local gardens.
This year I want to feed, feed, feed the
garden soil as well as all us seniors. Each
work day we sift beautiful dark compost,
mix it with chaff and dig that into the
garden rows and containers. All this
enriched soil should produce more
greens, vegetables and lettuce for our
salad bar, mixed vegetables and soups.
On Mondays from 1 to 3:00 we harvest
crops, deliver them fresh to the kitchen,
and tend the garden.
Come be a gardener!
CANCLINI
TELEVISION & APPLIANCES
MATTRESSES
Marilyn (Pixie) Canclini
636 S. Franklin, Fort Bragg, Ca 95437
707 • 964-5611 • FAX 707 • 964-8227
cancliniappliance@comcast.net
Stop in and say hello to Pixie, Lynn, James, Miles
Shawn Hackley, PT
Rachael Franco, PTA
s.EW,OCATIONs
501 Cypress Street, Fort Bragg
707-961-6191
April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
5
Ideogram: Fly
Four
poems
by
Joe Smith
The Journey Doesn’t Actually End
The journey doesn’t actually end
when we’re turned into ashes or dust.
Ashes and dust are simply marks
in the score, like whole notes
or quarter rests, to show where the music
melts back into its true self.
Now we can spook those who knew
us in the flesh, ring the doorbells
of their dreams, suitcases full of symbols
dangling from our ghostly arms.
And those millions we never met—
now a cinder of us lodges in a corner
of an eye, now a child’s tasting
atoms of us in the grass we’ve become,
the slender blade clenched just so
between two thumbs. Lips pursed,
cheeks puffed out, the child blows
hard enough to make a whistle
that could wake the dead.
The journey doesn’t actually end.
Forever After
When we return from his funeral,
the departed staring back at us
from a gilded frame on the mantel
suddenly seems like someone else.
Where I was that November day in Dallas
JFK died? In the open limo. I heard crowds
cheering the motorcade. I heard a shot. I
heard Jackie, and a Secret Service man
telling her to get down.
I have the President’s brains in my hand,
she said, flung across the trunk, her ring
scratching the paint. Jack, oh Jack, what
have they done? Oxygen fell from the air,
like wood shavings from a plane.
His soul riffled the hairs on her neck as it
abandoned its house of bones. I thought I
heard it make a whistle — no, more of a
hiss, like a teapot sputtering to the boil
makes, or a torch dunked in water.
I heard Jack, I love you. A desperate Valentine, barely audible in the pandemonium.
Just out of my pupahood I was, and I
wondered how my gleaming new wings
would ever work in that breathless air.
Ideogram: Song
I’m the last one, the song that hurts the
most. You hear me when summer’s fallen
pears lie rotting in autumn rains, when
stars come down to weep at the beauty of
islands nibbled to rock by goats.
You heard my melody ages ago. In the
fading twilight, old couples in outfits loose
as pajamas shuffled hand-in-hand along
the cobbled streets, and dark swifts rushed
home down the highways of the air.
But you were unable to sing me then. You
didn’t guess how much you’d miss pears
and stars, twilights and pajamas. You
couldn’t guess how such words are born.
And now you can, now you can.
6
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
MaryAnn — Orah Young
Two years ago, my partner Steve and I
took the ferry to San Juan Island in Washington’s Puget Sound. MaryAnn made her
home there for the last thirty years. She
was waiting for us on the pier as the ferry
docked. As usual she was irascible, loud
and argumentative. Everything about her
seemed uncontrolled: her eating, the way
she handled her diabetes, the mountains of
“stuff” that cluttered her tiny house. Even
her paintings had taken on a slap-dash
quality. Had she always been like this? I
had not been with her for many years. I
tried to remember.
So why did I love her? Maybe because in
her presence I came alive, maybe because
she dared to be herself, maybe because she
was not bound by obligations, maybe
because she made me question my own
assumptions about life.
We were at our closest when neither of
us worked, when our children — my twin
boys and her son — were toddlers. Those
were golden years when the Haight Ashbury, the neighborhood where we lived,
was our playground.
I met MaryAnn one evening during a
Women Strike For Peace project in 1962.
We were folding one thousand origami
cranes at my friend Mary’s home around
the corner from my house. Our hope was
that President Kennedy would receive
them when he met with Khrushchev in
Moscow to negotiate the Test Ban Treaty.
Getting two hyperactive twelve-montholds down to sleep is never easy, so I
arrived a few minutes late that evening. I
found our ladies for peace seated around
various tables folding brightly-colored
paper into tiny cranes. The atmosphere
was electric, markedly different from other
meetings. This all-white group of politically radical to liberal women had a new
worker bee in its midst and MaryAnn was
black. For the first time ever there was new
hope that we might integrate our chapter.
MaryAnn sat with a group of three other
women. I took the empty chair next to her.
I don’t know how many paper cranes I
folded that evening, but I do remember
that of all the women there MaryAnn was
the most alive and in the moment, more
interested in the creative possibilities of
origami folding than in peace. She found
my attachment to social activism naive and
was quick to voice her opinion of “dogooders.” I was taken aback and unsure
how to respond, but I was also fascinated.
Eventually our conversation turned to a
safer subject — the perils of raising children. We shared our problems — our long
lonely days when the lack of any adult
conversation nearly drove us wild, the selfabsorption of our husbands and best of all,
our phone numbers and addresses. I
returned home feeling better than I had in
months.
The next morning the phone rang.
“This is MaryAnn, are you up and
dressed? You better be because I’m on my
way over with John Henry. Don’t eat breakfast, I’ll buy you some on Haight Street.”
And so began our friendship. MaryAnn
lived three blocks from us with her son
and husband Bill. Every morning, weather
permitting, we pushed our children’s
April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
7
The Village Idiot
strollers to the Golden Gate Park, stopping
once or twice a week at the library and
more often at the Russian Bakery on
Haight Street. We returned home mid-afternoon to dirty dishes in the sink, unmade
beds and a pile of unwashed laundry in the
basement. While the boys took their afternoon naps, we set up the Scrabble set.
What followed were marathon Scrabble
sessions lasting through hastily made dinners until the early hours of the following
morning when MaryAnn carried sleeping
John Henry home to bed.
My dereliction of housewifely duties led
to many rows with my husband. However,
if he had offered me a choice between my
friendship with MaryAnn and him, I would
have chosen MaryAnn.
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Do not mock him
the village idiot
who runs naked
through the church of our beliefs,
our prejudices, arrogant convictions,
unyielding demands and placid
acceptances.
Do not mock him
the village idiot
who breaks the glass
we toast each other with
and drinks the wine
as it flows from the barrel,
the blood of Christ,
martyred Jew
who believed in love,
the God of us all.
Do not mock him
the village idiot
who dances over our freshly covered grave
to release the laughter
from our buried body
so it can rejoin the ethereal soul
and laugh for eternity
at life . . . the biggest joke of all.
Do not mock him
the village idiot
who sings the praises of the unworthy,
the virtues of the sinner,
and the magnitude
of the smallest of us.
He knows truth
and his reflection can be seen,
village idiot, in your mirror.
Jay Frankston
8
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
When I Was You — Doug Fortier
You stood on the vast concrete flight
line in the full sun of Easter. Your parents
arrived in western Oklahoma at the B-52
bomber base the night before. The posting rotation gave you three days with
your parents starting with the end of your
shift. Your eighteenth birthday the previous November was an eight-hour shift in
the cold Oklahoma winter wind on the
bomber alert pad, guarding your assigned
aircraft.
Some of the guys walked their post
hour after hour without stopping. That
day Pep played imaginary basketball as
he always did. He never got closer than
five yards nor farther than twenty yards
away from his plane and never got caught
napping. Staying awake wasn’t your problem; instead, you spent most of your time
stuck in a reality where nothing happened.
On that Easter morning you stood
guard in the KC-135 tanker alert area
where the flight crews could be scrambled and in the air within a few minutes.
Your plane was the third from the guard
shack between six others down the row
of planes on your left.
Nothing at all was in your head. You
were bored and knew the 38 pistol had a
pin between the hammer and the cartridge that came out with a pull of the
trigger. The hammer probably came back
just a little to feel how much pressure it
took. Pull it back then ease it down
again. Pull it back then ease it down
again.
The hammer moved a few more times
when an explosion stunned you to your
core. It took a few seconds to understand
your finger must have been on the trigger. You knew you weren’t paying attention because you couldn’t remember what
had happened.
Fear scrambled your brain to maximum alert. You looked around and saw
the other guards in their places. No one
appeared to have heard the discharge.
Then you looked at the hole in your
green fatigue pants, at the top of your
right calf. You had a problem. You
bunched the material and held it as a
compress on the entry wound. You couldn’t pretend you hadn’t shot yourself.
You started to blow your GI whistle for
the attention of the guy at the guard
shack, and the strike team truck drove
you to the infirmary. Surgery found the
bullet next to your undamaged Achilles
tendon.
For your new job you didn’t get a
weapon, you got a desk in personnel. It
was a good thing you could type. It was
too bad you couldn’t pay attention
around live weapons.
Michael E. Brown, M.D.
Psychiatry & Psychotherapy
347 Cypress Street, Suite B
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
(707) 964-1820
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
Ode to My Feet
They crossed
The Mississippi
The Missouri
The Gulf of Mexico
Lake Pontchartrain
The Atlantic
The Pacific
The Irish Sea
The English Channel
And back again
Over Reykjavik
To Berkeley, California,
San Francisco
And now THE LOST COAST
9
love that the full moon
becomes available
just enough times
once each month
and the sun rises
once every day
sets once every night
a simple state of affairs
if we don't try
to figure out
the how and why and when
it is a simple state of affairs
if we notice
that we have noticed
Mickey Chalfin
Rose Mary Hughes
Word Picture #11
A bright blueswept day
Edged with pink blossoms
Softened by an afternoon rain
Fades into a misty dusk
Two old women carrying laundry;
Wicker baskets on their shoulders
Pause, smiling, to have
Their pictures taken
Shawls across their breasts
Kerchiefs hiding their hair
Graceful in their smiles
Young in their smiles
Smiles in their eyes.
Rick Banker
P hoebe G raubard
a t t o r n e y at L aw
7 07 • 9 64 • 3 5 25
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wiLLs • trust
Probate • eLder Law
594 S outh F ranklin S treet
F ort B ragg, C aliFornia 95437
10
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
Lennie — Mare Cunningham
I am Mrs. Joseph Marshall, but I am a
widow now, so I guess just call me
Lennie. My husband was the Justice Of
Peace in our small town. He was an
insurance agent too for a very large and
prestigious insurance company. The people in our town looked up to him and
trusted him with their insurance needs. I
swear the whole town showed up the day
we put him down.
I don’t live in that town anymore; I’ve
been in this nursing home for ten years. I
know it’s been that long because Edie, my
daughter, keeps a calendar on the wall by
the TV. The Parkinson’s disease got so
bad she couldn’t take care of me. She’s
married and has a large family to care for.
(Married a Catholic — Melvin’s a fine
man though)
I can’t speak. Haven’t for years. I shake
so bad they have to give me medicine to
keep me from shaking myself to death, or
from shaking my brains out, which might
not be so bad — then I wouldn’t know
what a Goddamn hell this is.
Edie is so thoughtful. She comes every
day and she is the only one who talks to
me in her natural voice. Everyone else
yells. Funny, I suppose they think just
because I can’t talk, I can’t hear either.
The nurses are nice; they make sure I get
to watch my programs on TV, and they
put makeup on me everyday, but I think
Edie pays them extra to do that. I weigh
eighty-seven pounds. You know, sometimes I wonder how long it will go on.
And why?
I watched a documentary on television
about the Los Angeles Zoo. The animals
were in their cages and people would yell
out to them. “Hey, Bear. Hello, Bear.” But
they never waited to see if the bear
responded in any way. Sometimes it
seems like that to me in this nursing
home when the relatives and friends
come to visit — and stare.
Today I am remembering something
from a long time ago, probably 1948. It
was when Joseph was still alive. Edie and
I went to town to see the movie King’s
Row with our neighbor, Harriet Mason.
Edie was invited and she asked if I could
go too. She has always been thoughtful
even as a sixteen-year-old. It was fun driving along in Harriet’s old Terraplane. It
felt good to get out of the house. The
Parkinson’s kept me in a lot even way
back then.
The movie was pretty serious business,
the doctor operated on people when they
didn’t really need it. He amputated the
young man — Drake’s leg, and then they
found out it wasn’t necessary. I felt sad
because Joseph had both of his legs
amputated. He had Polio when he was a
young man — when Edie was ten years
old. Kind of made me wonder if his was
necessary.
That night, on the way home from the
movie, Edie was very quiet which is not
her way. She is usually gabby and kind of
bubbly. That’s why everyone likes her so
much. When Harriet stopped in front of
our house to let us off, Edie just sat there
April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
in the front seat. She didn’t budge. I
was in the back seat, so I couldn’t get
out until she did.
Then she started crying — crying
for her daddy’s lost legs. First it kind
of squeaked out — I’d heard her cry
like that before, but then the sound
came from way down inside her, and
got bigger and bigger. It was like the
tornadoes we used to have in
Nebraska — first you hear and know
it’s coming, but that’s nothing compared to when it gets there.
When the tornado was over we all
just sat — talked some, but not
about why she’d cried. We went in to
our house. Joseph’s light was on in
his office so we knew he was still up.
Edie went in to tell him goodnight.
Dear Edie. She keeps me going and
she is my strength. This may sound
funny, but I would like to see her
stop smiling some day. I’d like to see
her stop — and look at me. Really
look at me. (shaking … mouth hanging open … drooling) And I would
like to see her body begin to shake. I
want to see another tornado come
upon her, and this time she would be
seized with grief for me the same
way she was for her daddy’s Goddamned legs.
It sounds crazy I know. But I
would like to see that.
11
Four Poems
and a
Short Story
by Mickey Chalfin
my ex-wife and i
we share a dog
we've been divorced for 30 years
but, we now we share a dog
the dog is five and weighs 14 pounds
odd sharing a dog
two homes one hour's drive apart
i’m in the north
my ex lives in the south
where we lived together
for fourteen years
now, two separate lives
for me and my ex-wife
and for the dog
two different sets of friends
different beaches, trails, forests
each tuesday we exchange the pooch
at the half-way point of our coastal drive
we re-exchange a couple of days later
actually she rides the bus back south
in a padded dog carrier
the bus driver is
my ex-wife
one hour apart
one shared dog
our bond is closer than ever
(Continued on next page)
12
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
Telling a poet
seniors competing (more or less)
how to improve their poem
is like telling someone
how to improve their face
make it more pleasing
more accessible
more interesting
tell that to carl sandberg
to charles bukowski
to allen ginsberg
they face the music with every word
and they don't change a thing
the reader will have to deal with it
a pie in their face might be
poetic justice
men playing doubles ping pong
two on a side
all over 60 years old
each player tries his best to play well
wants to get the point
even tries to win the game
there is no tournament
no scoreboard, no trophy
nothing but a weekly meeting
yes, some players are better than others
some keep making the same mis-hits
some are improving
some still have it in their blood since
childhood
but now, many years later,
only a hand-full of players are willing to
move with the flow
of a 40 millimeter ball that weighs not
much more than a feather
always seems easy to hit ...
but, then, suddenly flutters away
over the edge or into the net
and after every point scored
there is another ball somewhere on the
floor
and the competition intensifies
to see who will not
have to pick up the ball
two birds
on the early morning highway
he lies dead still
and, standing near
she, grieving
both unmoving
a mated pair now halved
like my heart
as i drive by
at 60 miles an hour
i cannot go back
neither rows of mustard
spring lambs
sensuous hills
sunday sunrise
can help her
nor me
April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
My brother-in law’s wedding was to be
held outdoors at The Albion River Inn.
His sister, my wife, Margaret, the Rabbi,
would officiate. Many years earlier, Steve,
Margaret’s brother, told her that if and
when he might get married, he would
surly wear red hi-top Converse tennis
shoes with his suit or tuxedo.
Now Teidi, Steve’s bride-to-be, said a
definite “NO” to that idea when he mentioned it.
Also, Steve had no red tennis shoes and
seemingly was resigned to not fulfilling
his wish.
The day before the wedding, Steve
asked me if I had a pair of red tennis
shoes, size 9.... No, I didn’t; but I’d ask
around and try to find some.
I knocked on a few doors in our town
of Elk ... homes where teenagers lived
and might have a pair of red tennis shoes.
One kid said he could donate a pair of
white hi-tops, size 9, and maybe I could
find some red paint. So, that afternoon, I
took the shoes and started knocking on
doors to find some red paint.
I tried the home of a neighbor, an artist
named Eduardo. I knocked on his door
… there was music playing inside the
house, but no one answered my knocks
or shouts.
However, just outside his front porch
were two cans of red spray paint. I
decided that I could “borrow” some and
began to spray the shoes. Suddenly,
Eduardo appeared at the doorway, sleepyeyed and frowning.
He said, “... what the hell are you
13
doing?” And, I explained. He then said
that he needed that paint for an art work
that was just next to where I had found
the paint cans. He was pissed.
I said that I’d buy some paint for him
on Monday after the Sunday wedding.
Then he slowly and disgustedly says,
“... I have red hi-top Converse tennis
shoes, size 9”
He goes back into the house, brings out
the shoes, hands them to me; I thank him
profusely, and I leave.
The wedding was a success and if you
look closely at the photos, you will happily see the groom in a black tuxedo
wearing red hi-top Converse tennis shoes,
size 9.
Thank you Eduardo!
Mickey Chalfin
14
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
An Unusual Wake — Dominic E. Noel
Here again in the late evening staring at
my brandy glass I recall looking at a map of
California one day in the Central Valley. I
pointed to a spot called Punta Gorda and
said to myself “that sounds good.” So I
loaded up the car and headed toward the
coast from Fresno. When I got to Fort Bragg
I meet a fisherman, who while coming
around Point Arena had lost the cabin windows and the electronic gear on his boat due
to a rogue wave, and was making repairs. We
spent several days, off and on, talking about
fishing on the west coast. Then before he left
he said that if I wanted to try my hand at
albacoring that he would need a puller soon
and that he would be in Eureka. That day I
went down to the river and got a job on a
salmon boat. However the man would not
fish and I needed some money to eat, every
day or so, to keep up my strength so I could
drink some beer in the evening. I talked him
into going to Eureka and when we arrived I
jumped ship. Nearby was the most quiet,
warm and comfortable fifty foot wooden
boat that I have ever seen, the Anna Louise,
and the man I had met previously.
The boat was ready to go and we left in
the late afternoon and by morning we were
one hundred miles to the west. The albacore
where there, and we did catch some, but the
wind was so strong that it was unsafe to stay.
On our way back the skipper wanted to
catch some sleep so he put me at the wheel.
The boat was under auto pilot so all I
needed to do was watch for overpowering
waves and slow down or speedup to get out
of the way. It was at night and without a
moon when an unseen wave hit the boat and
knocked me out of the chair and across the
cabin into the door which sprang wide open.
I grabbed the door frame and while hanging
there with my face peering into the darkness
of the water just a few feet away it seemed
that the boat would never roll the other way.
When it did I bolted the door and got into
the chair and never said a word about it.
When we returned and sold the fish I bought
a commercial fishing license, some foul
weather gear and a very good camera. After a
few days we tried again to gain the same
spot and we did but the weather was very
much the same. In fact it was so bad that we
could not fish or return to Eureka. A report
from a hundred miles off San Francisco said
the fishing was good. We turned to the south
but by the time we found the spot there were
no fish. Another radio report said there were
fish two hundred miles off Baja so away we
went. Here again there were no fish by the
time we got there. The skipper turned the
boat around and we headed back to the previous spot off San Francisco were after six
days of constant running, both day and
night, we caught our first fish of the trip.
Now I knew what albacore fishing was all
about. For the next several days, from dawn
to dusk, we pulled the fish from the water
and quick froze them in the Hold. The boat
was getting loaded so we headed to Eureka
and when we got to Cape Mendocino the sea
water was almost up to the deck. When we
unloaded we learned that there were eighteen tons of fish which meant, for me, a nice
fat wade of bills and all in ten days.
We were running alone when it is best, in
the case of a problem, to have another boat
nearby. So we joined up with the Melody
from Brookings, Oregon and the Galveston
April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
owned by a friend of
the skipper out of
Moss Landing. We ran
together for some
time off the Oregon
and
Washington
coast until the Oregon boat whose
owner was eightythree said he had
had enough for this
season and headed
home to unload.
Then the two of us
headed once again
to the area off San Francisco
which was closer to Moss Landing their
home port.
One morning as I was ready to throw the
lures in the water and we were drifting a
mile away from the boat we were running
with the puller of that boat called to say that
the skipper had fallen overboard. That the
boats transmission cable had broken and it
was inoperative and the boat was dead in the
water and drifting away from the skipper.
There was very little wind but a very large
swell and we could only see the Galveston
when both boats were out of the trough. We
got there as soon as we could and located
him in a dead man’s float but missed him on
the first try. On the second try we were able
to recover him but it was quite obvious that
he was not alive.
In a very short time almost every albacore
boat that heard our radio talk and that was
fishing in the area came and drifted next to
our boat. It was like a Wake in a very turbu-
15
lent
sea a hundred miles from
shore with boats bobbing up and down in
great numbers all realizing that it could have
been any one of them. We returned to Moss
Landing by the next morning to deliver the
body to his wife and the awaiting Coast
Guard who needed to make a report.
We did fish after that but the skipper’s
heart was not into it so we tied up the boat
for the season. I caught a bus to Bakersfield
to see a lady friend and we both went north
to Virginia City and then to Reno to see
some shows. There I meet a man from Fort
Bragg so I returned with him to pick up my
car. After all these years I am still here on the
Mendocino Coast mainly because I never
had enough money to get away again.
Thank goodness as I see it in retrospect.
I think I will have another glass of brandy
before I retire on this wet and windy night if
that is OK with you.
16
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
April/June 2015
Reminiscence — Rose Mary Hughes
Memories are all that’s left sometimes.
They say to live your life so that when
you grow old you have something to look
back on. Pleasant scenes. My life reads
like a soap opera. Shots on city streets.
Just missed revolutions. Like a dream or a
nightmare, life played its scenes upon the
stage and will soon be forgotten.
When I go to my grave, I take with it
all the knowledge, the films watched, the
books read, the poetry memorized. My
possessions will be scattered like my
ashes – to the wind or as the Catholics
want, to the earth. I try not to think
about death. My birth was violent
enough. I was born fighting, struggling,
almost killing my mother and languishing myself in birthing.
So what made the crazy woman I
became? Looking back, I wish I could
find that gutsy young woman who read
in an eight room house in a town of 200,
a speck in the universe. Who somehow
was able to go to college and escape the
rural poverty of a Midwestern life. Sometimes I go home again and look for her. I
see her everywhere and nowhere. She’s
on a train traveling from St. Louis to
Kansas City; she’s on a college campus
freezing in the cold carrying her books
(no backpacks then); she’s walking across
a small town in even colder weather
going to her job weighing coal in a fertilizer business (her first job!); she’s doing
sit ups in 103 degree with the sweat and
bugs crawling over her.
What was it all about? When I look
back I wish I hadn’t spent so much time
arguing with the wrong men, moving
from place to place, struggling to pay
bills.
Now it’s the middle of the night. I live
on the North Coast where in the winters
we have violent storms and power failures, too much depressing rain, too many
gray days. There are days when one feels
like hanging oneself. It’s still better than
that white stuff: snow. I become sick even
looking at pictures of snow and yet, what
did snow ever do to me? There were fun
winters in St. Louis going to offices, the
pretty city lights wet with soft pellets of
snow. Mostly, in college, going out the
door after putting on gloves, boots, coats
and hats then falling straight on my bottom. Getting mad, going home and back
to bed missing classes.
There is no perfect place to live, no perfect man or relationship. But now I have
peace. I have quiet, solitude. I can read
when I want to, watch a film when I want
to. Perfect is a place in one’s head and
one’s heart. It is the self.
A collectively operated
NATURAL FOOD STORE
Open Daily 8 - 8
P.O. Box 367
45015 Ukiah St.
Mendocino, CA 95460
www.cornersofthemouth.com
707 • 937 • 5345
FAX 707 • 937 • 2149
April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
Assembled Details — Rick Banker
Rest Stop
Travels
Stray over fire sands with
Grey mountains crushed underfoot and
Brown tumbleweeds brush streamers
Of dust across an asphalt highway.
Mirrors
Go,
And, Far away,
Find what you are looking for;
And finding,
Return and say:
See?
I was there!
That’s me on the left, looking at you
From
So
Long
Ago.
Hello little girl and
Where am I in your eyes
Brain hair ears nose eyes?
Prayer Wheel
Am I there at all in your pain
Eyes blue heart red white hands?
Have I gone from your crotch to
Your heart yet, or is it the other
Way flaming around?
Can you will you won’t you please
You love you
Tell Me?!
Asleep away somewhere
Warm in the night
Quiet in the night
Bright streams of electricity
Hurry, whispering synapse
To synapse
“Open 24 hours a day”
“We never close”
A Yucca tree, calloused
Hard with struggle for green
Bows to a desert wind,
Protecting flint
And a scurrying ant.
Senses
If sound distorts
Is anything real?
If light wavers
Does anything exist?
I hear a candle
I smell a guitar
Ten thousand colors
Explode from my mouth
And I know incense
With my fingertips
Stopping is Death
Slowing down is dying
Daedalus cried
Because he was too smart
To care about death
We are like Dracula
Passionate and awake
Only at night
When the sun doesn’t hide us.
17
18
Redwood Coast Senior Center
April/June 2015
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Lawn and Garden, Fishing, Hunting, Camping & Pet Supplies
Paint, and Computer Color Matching
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Store Hours: Mon-Sat 9 AM - 5:30 PM • Sunday 9 AM - 5 PM
964-2318
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350 Cypress St • Fort Bragg, CA 95437
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April/June 2015
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
19
Waiting for Dillinger — Charles Furey
The kitchen stove provides the only
heat in this gaunt house. Its hot coals
bake our bread and biscuits and apple
pies, cook our beans and stews and
mashed potatoes. Mother banks its fire
and the room stays warm all night. We
would be glad to sleep beside it on the
cracked linoleum floor, if Mother would
let us. In the morning a judicious shake
of the grate and a dollop of coke resurrect
last night’s flames. Within minutes the
coffee is percolating, the oatmeal bubbling, and the radio turned on.
“If it wasn’t for this radio, I’d have gone
crazy long ago,” Mother says. Music
pours out of it, and news programs, and
stories. We get WCAU in Philadelphia
and WJZ from New York, both of them
loud and clear most of the time. In the
evening, fooling around with the dials,
we can pick up stations as far away as
Chicago and St. Louis.
The radio stations out west are excited
about a man named John Dillinger, a
bank robber who shoots a Tommy gun,
steals automobiles and escapes with thousands of dollars in cash. No one has come
close to catching him. Night after night,
snug in our kitchen, we listen as the
western
stations broadcast more stories about
John Dillinger, stories about his latest
escape and the huge rewards posted for
his capture. The Federal Bureau of Investigation calls John Dillinger, “Public
Enemy Number One.”
But lots of people respect John Dillinger
for his bold actions. “I’m glad somebody’s
got the guts to rob the goddamned
banks,” I heard a man at the post office
say yesterday. And another man waiting
with him for the mail to be put up said,
“Those bastards already stole my money,
and now they want to steal my house.”
On our way to school, Joe and I talk
about what we’d do if John Dillinger ever
came roaring in off the highway and
careened past us in his getaway car.
We’ve figured a couple of ways to trap
him, if he does. We could sure use that
reward money. Coming home from
school one cold afternoon we are no
sooner in the door when Mother sends us
racing out again. “Go find Bernie and
Eddie,” she screams. “They were playing
in the back yard, and now they’re gone.”
She had already checked the market next
door and stopped pedestrians on the sidewalk, but found no sign of them.
Joe and I search the field behind our
house, peer over neighbors’ fences and
holler their names as loud as we can, all
the while working closer and closer
toward the Lincoln
Highway where traffic speeds back and
forth all day long between Philadelphia
and New York.
We find them just as it is getting dark,
huddled on the curb across from the gas
station where we buy the bags of coke for
our kitchen stove. I grab Eddie and Joe
grabs Bernie, holding them tight so they
can’t wriggle free. “We’re waiting for Mister Dillinger,” Eddie tells us. “Policemen
Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette
20
will be shooting machine guns.” He is
angry because we interrupted their vigil.
“He could come any time now,” he says.
Bernie mumbles something about, “Our
reward.”
They don’t even whimper when Mother
hollers, “Never, ever, go near that highway again.” They don’t complain when
she tells them, “I should send you both to
bed without any suppers.”
Before we’ve finished eating, the latest
news from the Midwest drifts over the
airwaves into our kitchen. The announcer
is excited tonight about another bank
robbery out there. Eddie and Bernie are
not even listening. Their eyes are glazed
over. They have to be coaxed into finishing their cocoa. When their heads tip
lower Mother tells Joe and me, “Help me
get these poor babies upstairs and into
bed. Our little bounty hunters are all
tuckered out.”
Carol Ann Walton
Realtor ®
[
Gale Beauchamp Realty
Office 707 964-5532 Mobile 707 291-2258
dRe #00483386
[
gbrealty.com
cwalton@mcn.org
345 Cypress Street Fort Bragg, California 95437
April/June 2015
Like An Eagle
Forever flew like an eagle
in the liquid primordial sky
wings stretched wide across the expanse
the flutter and sway
of an eternal dance.
It had no beginning,
no middle, no end,
and its white light was pure crystal
in a boundless sea of mirth
Then time dropped out of the sky
and spread over the earth
scattering clocks and watches
and bells on church steeples
to mark the days, the hours wasted
counting the sheep, the calories,
the ways in which our life goes by
while we sit on the sideline and watch.
Jay Frankston
Auto Repair in Fort Bragg
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Gordon’s offers transmission
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I’m Fernando Gordon, resident of Fort
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Address: 524 N Main St • Fort Bragg, CA 95437
Shop Hours: Monday - Friday: 8:00AM to 5:00PM
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I worked with movie stars
all my life, but when I
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his 47 TV movie and
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MCDH.ORG