…history, as they say, repeats…
As kids, my folks would pile Beebo and me into the Ford and venture from a simmering Chico over to a naturally air conditioned coastal Fort Bragg for some summertime cool to visit a friend’s vacation beach house. Located on the north bank of Pudding Creek, the abode was a cozy affair, cinderblock downstairs for dorm-style sleeping and a redwood upstairs with a well-stocked kitchen, a futuristic funnel-shaped fireplace (very Jetson’s) for heat and expansive west facing windows that offered sunsets over surf more glorious than anything Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color” could ever produce. (Our family had a black and white Admiral TV, so what’d I know?)
Each day, a bunch of us would climb down the bluff to play in the sand, make structures out of driftwood, swing kelp round and round over our heads and play tag with the surf. On one of those trips, we were beyond amazed to see two US fighter jets screaming across the ocean, almost skipping on the wave tops, plumes of black exhaust billowing from their twin-engines. They roared by three, maybe four, times. Maybe more. Awe-struck and petrified, steeped in the ‘Red Scare’ of the ‘50s and ‘60s we couldn’t help but wonder: Was this going to be it?
The little get-a-way house is long gone, replaced by a pair of motels. But everything else seems the same. The rugged Mendocino County Coast, lashed by waves and currents has yet to erode away. Gulls still circle and light on white poop-frosted sea stacks a few yards offshore. The occasional doe stands knee-deep in the prairie grasses. Morning fog eventually melts while a crashing surf offers soundtrack for a week or two of upcoming dreams. Always cooler than summertime inland, the drive to the coast always pays dividends. Quaint shops. Cozy B&Bs. Pretty good dining. And those wind-blown bluff trails with all their recollections.
A recent predicted 100 degree day in Cloverdale prompted us to escape to a 72 degree Mendocino Coast. Candi and I enjoyed the drive that coursed from vineyards to redwoods, ultimately out to that coastal prairie and the sea. This day, after a bluff walk on the Mendocino Headlands, we wound through the bergs that dot the distance up to Fort Bragg. Tiny streets and homes that seems to have withstood a century of weather’s greatest abuse stand behind crippled fences that once held paint now twined in thistle and blackberry vines.
Returning home, we rented “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” The flick was Norman Jewison’s 1966 send up about the Red Scare and what might happen on Nantucket should a Russian submarine, getting a bit too close, run aground. Except Jewison didn’t film in Massachusetts; he filmed on the Sonoma Coast. Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint and Alan Arkin (best actor nominee for the role) lead a cast of character actors we’d seen countless times; each playing with comic seriousness the roles of people who’d allowed a mishap and misinformation to become a credible flashpoint for world destruction.
Though the circumstance seems eerily similar to today, we laughed at the absurdity of it all. I enjoyed the peek back at my early days visiting Fort Bragg and the old cars that were not old cars then -- one was a near mirror of our ’54 Ford Ranchwagon. The inlet at Noyo hasn’t changed. Nor has Caspar village. Nor some of the old Fort Bragg downtown. Nor the seascape we’d hiked along only hours before.
In a tension-wrought, tongue-in-cheek conclusion, two very real US F-4s scream over the ocean seemingly intent on doing what fighter pilots are ordered do. In that moment I am back on the beach with my buddies, swinging kelp, constructing something with driftwood, paying tag with the surf and wondering if this is the end. Of course it wasn’t. It was just Norman Jewison pulling our leg.
Perhaps related? After 60 years, the movie holds up.
© 2026
Church of the Open Road Press
