Tiburon’s trestle
Hobos sat on railroad flat cars and waved as we stood on the picnic table in our backyard and waved back. Trains rolled through both tunnels, two miles south to Tiburon. Tiburon Boulevard’s forty-foot trestle was close to the south tunnel, and parents had forbidden us to to cross it. Continue reading “thinking about the old days” »
we are the same
For ten years, Lindy has resided in her current longterm care facility without receiving a card or a visitor. It took a few hours to drive up from the Bay Area, enough time to remember our girlhood friendship and consider she’s been locked up forty-nine years. I came up with nothing new. Continue reading “it is what it is” »
I wrote my first manuscript for Lindy, my best friend from junior high school. Lindy was placed in a mental institution in 1968, and still lives in one. California made her a ward of the state, and she moves wherever the state wants her, not always notifying family. Authorities considered her release to some type of halfway house fifteen years ago, but it didn’t happen. Continue reading “my old friend” »
beautiful moon
The first time I really gazed at the moon was when I lived a hippie life in an Southern Oregon cabin on Coleman Creek. My friends and I rented a little red house with woodstove and outhouse in the middle of the woods. Continue reading “moon gazing” »
haunting history
My brother played the bagpipes with The Prince Charles Pipe Band. He walked Ring Mountain playing his pipes at sunset, as if he belonged in Scotland. Neighbors remind me of his haunting silhouette during those years. Since he didn’t live to be an adult, bagpipes remain for me as a symbol of love and strength and loss. Continue reading “bagpipes, love and loss” »
I don’t know answers
I have a high class problem, living in two places. Poor me. Our kids grew up and moved out, we have property in Calaveras County and in Bel Aire, our Marin County subdivision. Each month, I drive three hours down the Sierra foothills and stay for a week to pick up our mail and handle appointments. My husband stays on Bald Mountain Road and runs our ranch. He doesn’t seem to miss the Bay Area like I do. I love both places. Continue reading “poor me” »
I dreamed instead of learning math
Mrs. Fagg was my junior high home economics teacher and got me serious about sewing. I loved making gingham aprons for my mom and my grandma, and embroidered little designs on the pockets.
Our school chorus took a trip to Sacramento in a yellow bus and sang at a state level singing competition. I sang a solo opening of “Do Re Mi.” and we won a gold lapel pin with a design of the state. Continue reading “defining early priorities” »
Stinson Beach is the most beautiful beach in the world
When my parents weren’t tanked, we had plenty of fun times growing up in Marin County back in the day. We drove up to the Russian River and canoed around, carried kites and hiked straight up from the house up into our hills, pulling apart rusty barbwire fences and squeezing in between, cutting through pastures on the way. My father loved hiking, and we made up funny songs as we walked, poems and skits for each other, gut busting laughs. It almost seemed to make up for unpredictable drunk ugly. Continue reading “fun times” »
McKenzie River
I woke up around dawn to the sound of a brilliant yellow bird with a red head banging into our windows. It might be the bird thinks its reflection is really a mate or an enemy.
I wanted to stop the bird from smashing into his own reflection, so I closed the curtains, maybe that would help. He continues out there chirping and focused on his own destruction. Continue reading “stubborn” »
Hastings cutoff was a tragedy
Every Californian knows the Donner Party’s unsuccessful struggle to get over the winter Sierra mountains of 1846 and 1847. The party believed that taking the Hastings Cutoff would save them three hundred travel miles, but that was not the case. Hastings deceived pioneers. Hastings had never traveled the route, but he made bogus maps that many pioneers tried to follow, and he made money writing his map. It was not a short cut. Cannibalism and horror are the Donner party’s story because they believed Hastings. Continue reading “The ultimate deception” »