MOM'S ACCORD

 “You just never know what might happen.”

 

Mom’s last car was a two-door Honda Accord LX. A ‘78. Manual transmission. She wouldn’t own an automatic because “you’re not really driving.” She’d given up her ’69 Toyota Corona two-door hardtop because brother Beebo needed a car for his frequent commute up to Central Oregon and, although it was far from worn out, she’d pass it on and get a replacement. Mom didn’t like in four-door cars. It seems that decades before, some little kid was riding in the back seat of a big old Buick or Packard when the back door swung open rounding a bend somewhere near Pasadena and the kid fell out knocking his head on the pavement. The kid probably died. I don’t know. But that’s why she’d never let Dad buy a car with more than two doors.

     The Honda was a pretty good car. Honda’s always have been. With gold paint and the upgraded LX appointments, this purchase may may have been the only time Mom, having grown up during the depression, splurged on much of anything. As a teenager, I recall her Hoover being older than I. And the ancient Sunbeam Mix-Master was still working when Dad purchased a shiny new Kitchen-Aid for her one Christmas – a gift for which he was roundly excoriated.

 

     Mom loved the car. Long retired, she rarely drove anywhere other than to Safeway once a week and to Partridge Elementary School to pick up a grandkid when needed. Every month-and-a-half she’d take a six-mile round trip through town to the Chevron station between Broadway and Main Street on Eighth. There were countless gas stations between her north-of-town home and that Chevron, but this one was most convenient because she could turn left out of the little subdivision street onto the main drag that would lead a one-way that headed south though town; left into the station; then left out of the station onto the one-way leading north. She believed in filling up before it got to half-a-tank because, “you just never know what might happen.”

      Once, I exercised some courageous temerity and asked Mom why she engaged in an eight-mile round trip for gas when there were so many other options so much nearer. She corrected me: “It is only six miles!” and suggested, “When you get older, you’ll understand.”

 

Indeed, I was a bit older when I came to understand. One day, shortly after that little Q&A, Mom gave up driving. “Macular degeneration,” she explained. “I can’t see well enough to drive anymore.” 

     “Macular degeneration. Yikes. That doesn’t sound good.” 

     “It certainly isn’t good.”

     “How long has this been goin on?” I asked.

     “Oh, for some time now.”

     The question I didn’t ask was whether she thought she could see well enough when she was driving around that grandchild, but she volunteered: “I drove down to Eighth and Main for gas because I could see out of the driver’s side of the car better than the other side. Left turns always seemed safer.” My eyes still grow wide and my heart still skips a beat or two when I think about that statement. “At my last exam, Dr. Lott, my ophthalmologist, asked how I got to the appointment. When I told him I drove myself, he asked for my keys, which I gave him and then he called your brother Beebo, to pick me up.” She paused. “I didn’t like that he called me ‘crazy.’”

     The Honda would sit on slowly flattening tires for years until she finally let it go. I think to Beebo. (I certainly didn’t need it. It only had two doors.)

 

 

Career necessitated my move out of town – two, maybe three hours away. That conversation took place during one of my once or twice-a-month visits. I would take Mom on errands and then to lunch at the Olive Garden. “Livin’ kinda high on the hog, aren’t we?” she’d comment as she stashed once-warm breadsticks in her ancient purse.

     Mom learned to take advantage of a ride service called the Clipper. At her age, the pass was free or nearly so. With a mere phone call, she could arrange trips to doctor appointments or to Safeway. “It’s so convenient and so simple and the drivers are so nice. They help me in and out and load my groceries.” She smiled over her tepid cup of minestrone and looked at me through her dim brown eyes and smudged – because it no longer mattered if they were smudged – glasses. “Everyone should use the Clipper.”

     “Everyone?”

     “Well, everyone who gets to be a certain age,” she said. “You know, Barbara’s still driving and so is Grace. Tooling around town in those big old cars. Probably blind as bats. Ellie is too and she’s at least eight years older than I am.”

     “So is their vision beginning to fail?” I immediately wished I’d not chosen that word.

     “I don’t know, but they’re all far older than seventy-five and that’s just too old to be driving around. They’re just accidents waiting to happen.”

     “Have they already been in accidents?”

     “They’re all at least seventy-five! You know your Dad had to stop driving when he was seventy-one.”

     “But Dad had a stroke and was suffering with dementia. Couldn’t find his way around.”

     “And he couldn’t even find his damned glasses!”

     I had to nod.

     “I was seventy-five when Dr. Lott made me stop driving and I think that’s about old enough for anyone!” Adding, “You know, you just never know what might happen.”

 

 

Mom lived independently for at least another decade fumbling blindly around the house, and then in assisted living for about another ten years. 

     Like all mother's sons, I rarely reached accord with mom's announcements or encyclicals. I sip the occasional whiskey and smoke the occasional cigar. I like my steaks medium rare rather than well done. I listen to some rock n roll music along with some classical and some show tunes. I’ve long been registered a Democrat. Our Subaru has four doors as have most of our cars. Hell, my ‘91 Jeep didn’t have any doors at all and neither of our kids nor any of their friends ever fell out of any back seat of it or any car we ever owned. 

     So what I think I’m most haunted by is Mom’s ‘still driving at seventy-five’ decree. 

     You see, in May of this year, I turn seventy-four.

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

ANOTHER RETURN TO SIMPSON CAMP

 …a Memorial Day Tradition…

 

On or about Memorial Day in good years, I’ll make the trek up to Simpson Camp (western edge Glenn County near Mendocino Pass) with a loved one or a few to reminisce about 1960s-era visits to that old sheep camp with the sheepherder who worked the area forty years before. [Details are recounted in “Eden Indeed: Tales Truths and Fabrications of a Small Town Boy” pages 186-203] Our family reveled and relaxed in the beauty and solitude of the cool evergreen forests, velvet soft glades and clear starry nights. 

     In 2020, we fulfilled one of Mom’s final wishes and held a memorial for her at Simpson Camp, leaving her beloved shillelagh tucked beneath a fallen timber. Within months, the devastating August Complex fire roared through searing the trees, wiping out any sign of the camp, and leaving only a trace of white ash where Mom’s stick had lain.  

 

Back in the sixties, a small cluster of oak trees grew at the top of the ridge, visible from camp. Dad said it looked like a Greek Chorus, whatever that was. On a clear day, standing near to those oaks, looking west, one could see the fogbank of the Pacific shore; looking east, Lassen Peak: the whole of my northern California growings-up. As we lunched after Mom’s memorial, I called a granddaughter and a nephew to visit that stand where they watched as I drove a wooden stake in the ground, observing the knowing nods of those from the next generation.

 

This recent visit found the old camp regenerating. Amid the blackened spires of standing deadwood, thickets of gooseberry and chemise were taking hold. The meadow was back and foresters were awork downing some of the standing deadwood and yarding it into piles for later care; all under the ever watchful gazes of a couple of circling red tails.

     Curiously, that copse of tiny oaks had somehow survived the great fire. My stake in the ground was still my stake in the ground, confirming that, at some time-point in the future, I’ll witness ~ and be one with ~ the rebirth of Simpson Camp.

 

Photo Album 2025

 

Stepping out of the car at the top of the ridge.

 

Life returns to the meadow.

 

Someone has replaced the Zibe’s sign lost in the fire. (I had hoped to do this.)

 

 Nail of particular importance (see page 201-02)

 

Jethro waits for Dad (me) who needed an 'alone-time' moment back at camp.

 

Final view of the road winding down the hill.

 

My stake in the ground.

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

HEATING WITH WOOD

 …or ‘a house afire’…

 

It was the kind of day they make picture postcards out of. Coursing through vineyards in the late November chill on my Italian motorbike, the byways between Cloverdale and Calistoga were the perfect venue for an early winter sojourn. I found myself consumed by the light of the low sun and what it offered the autumn colors of the oaks and vines. The whisps of high cirrus clouds foretold of a change in the weather. Better get the ridin’ in today.

Up a rise and around a bend I motor from valley-floor vineyards into a creek-carved canyon of black oak, with their amber leaves and, in just the right locales, stands of coastal redwoods. Channeling through one of those groves, a rough two-rut drive leads to someplace I’ll not trespass, but as I pass by, down that lane I see a curly-cue of smoke rising from a rustic chimney in a vintage rooftop.  

Actually, I smelled it first. In the early morning cool, the chimney smoke had settled along the creek and roadway reminding me of the days when wood heat was the only decent heat in our house.

 

Beebo and I were considered old enough to be left home alone while Mom and Dad attended the evening PTA meeting at Rosedale School. I’m sure the instructions we’d been given we forgot – or ignored – as soon as the back door closed so forgive me if I can’t remember the specifics of those instruction now. That said, one of them was probably, “Leave the Franklin Stove alone."

We’d moved into the old house on five acres in the late 50s. Mom said it had once been the barn for the house next door and we never questioned that even though, thinking back on it, we’d never heard of a barn with two bedrooms, a bath and a half, a living room and a nicely appointed kitchen. What the barn didn’t have was effective heat. A natural gas line ran from the street to the house serving a water tank and a heater carved into a plaster wall. But when the first bill of winter arrived, both parents gasped in unison – which was odd because they rarely agreed on stuff – and soon we were told to wrap ourselves up in winter.  Gas was too damned expensive. Fortunately, Mom was quite adept at knitting, so never was there a dearth of sweaters into which her two boys could wrap themselves.

Still, not heating with the wall mounted furnace in the front room seemed, well, stupid, so one day, Dad went down to Collier Hardware and came home with a cast iron Franklin fireplace. Franklin fireplaces were purported to have been an invention of Ben Franklin himself and known for their heating efficiency. The iron box was set on the linoleum floor of the living room and since Musty’s dad – from just down the road a piece – was handy, our dad called him to cut a hole in the ceiling and the roof and help install and flash the new chimney pipe.

“You’re going to need to put a damper in the pipe,” Musty’s dad said.

“A damper?” Dad asked. “You mean like a wet towel or something?”

“No. A damper is a plate placed in the stovepipe with a handle on it so you rotate the thing and control how much heat and air goes up the pipe.”  After installation he demonstrated. “Turn the thing this way with the handle parallel and the smoke goes up the chimney. Turn it perpendicular and the plate doesn’t let the smoke go out so good and eventually the fire will go out, choked on its own smoke.” 

Or something like that.

That afternoon, dad wadded up some sheets of the Enterprise Record newspaper – “at least that rag is good for something” – put some light kindling on top, tossed in a chunk of almond wood and set a match to it. He shut to stove doors but through the open vents in those doors we could see the flames ripping through the paper and setting the kindling to popping. After a few minutes, the flames died away and through those vents we could see the almond wood aglow. Soon the cast iron was radiating the kind of heat that meant we could return our sweaters to the cedar chest. 

Expertly, we thought, Dad rotated the damper a quarter turn and almost immediately smoke began to billow out the open door vents. He shut the vents and the fire relaxed.

“In a few minutes, the fire will suffocate,” he said, so he partially opened the damper and cracked open the vents. The living room would be cozy this evening.

 

Beebo and I should have been paying better attention.  Because it wasn’t more than a few months later when Mom and Dad, engaged in their parently duties chose to attend the evening PTA meeting over at Rosedale School.

I’m not sure what possessed us to see how hot we could make that Franklin Stove, but what possessed us doesn’t really matter now does it? Out back of the house stood about a twenty year supply of almond wood. Dad had pulled out the orchard of aging trees and replaced them with new ones. “The wood from the old orchard will keep us warm for years!” he said.

As soon as they left in the old Ford, we snuck out to the woodpile and carried back as much as our arms could hold. Beebo burnt his fingers trying to open the stove’s already hot doors, so I got a potholder from the kitchen.  We stuffed in as many logs as we could and stood back. With the vents open, the supply of oxygen was more than adequate to set the new fuel ablaze. Not certain how long it took, but the popping of the fresh wood soon became a roar. We stood back and enjoyed the warm fruits of our efforts until one of us noticed that right when the stovepipe disappeared into the ceiling, the pipe had begun to glow. Even as inexperienced pre-teens, we knew this was not good.  Beebo hustled up to the door and touched the vents. He jumped back uttering a word I’d never heard him utter before. (I’m not sure what it was, but I’m pretty sure I’ve uttered it more than a few times in my subsequent years for various reasons.)

I handed him the potholder and he used it to twist the damper a quarter turn.  “That should take care of it,” he said, standing back.  And it did.  Within minutes the glow at the top of the pipe began to fade, but smoke began to pump out through the open door vents.  Thick smoke.  Angry smoke.  Smoke smarter than two little boys.

We didn’t keep track of what we did so we didn’t know how to ‘un-did’ it.

“Let’s open up the door and pull out some of those logs,” I said.

“You do it, dummy.”

I didn’t.

The room was filling with choking smoke, but the chimney had cooled, we hoped. 

Beebo twisted the damper around and around. Stepping aside, the fire set to roaring again and the pipe took on that cherry glow.

“Call 911!” one of us said.

“There is no 911. This is the 1960s!”

“Then call Dad!”  

“How?”

“Call the school. Maybe Mrs. Bossard (the school secretary) is in the office! She’s alwaysthere!”

The Mrs. Bossard’s desk phone rang and rang and rang while one of us again fiddled with the damper twisting it this way and that.

“Sideways! Sideways!”

We must have gotten it right because that glow subsided, and then one of us remembered: “Close the little vents on the door. That’s what Dad would do!”

The hot pad proved handy and once all was shut down, we stepped away from the stove.  The smoke in the room burned our eyes and was thick enough to taste. And Mom and Dad would be home soon.

Thinking like the Cub Scout that Beebo was, he said, “You open the front door and the windows and I’ll get that big box fan outta the closet.”

Plugged in, the fan was just beginning to push air through the front door while Beebo and I were frantically waving dampened bath towels at the two open double-hung windows when Mom and Dad arrived.

 

I can’t recall the consequence, but as I drove past that little cabin in the redwoods on my motorcycle, I thought, “Holy cow! This is Thanksgiving holiday week. The kids are probably home. Alone? Hopefully not. They could burn the whole damned house down.”

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

THE OLD UPRIGHT

 …tickling the eighty-eights? The tradition continues…

 

In about 1944 at age 22, Mom ran away from home which had been Houston, Texas. She planted herself in Glendale or Pasadena. Her first purchase of any consequence was a brand new Knabe ‘upright grand’ piano. “They’re the best made!” Mom said, and although the Steinway folks might disagree with her on this particular proclamation, Mom was never wrong.  So, I believed her. 

         Mom’s Knabe was hauled from pillar to post in Southern California, and ultimately to Chico where Brother Beebo and I would practice scales and etudes on it. Well, Beebo did. As a little kid, there weren’t too many hills I was willing to die on, but not practicing the piano would be one of ‘em. Mrs. Scotchler, first and later Mrs. Chamberlain both ultimately threw up their hands and told Mom not to bother bringing me back for lessons.

         Mom’s old upright probably weighed a ton and a half. Its walnut finish was nearly black and the keys were capped with real ivory. Although I wouldn’t actually play the thing, I did like opening the front and watching the hammers hit the taut harp wires inside as I ran my fingers up and down the keyboard. This was especially fun when I’d prop open the front and then put Susie, our Siamese cat, on the ivories and watch her rocket across them, leap to the floor and tear out of the room to hide in a closet somewhere.

I never really learned to play the piano. My stubbornness and stupidity won out (as it often does to this day). But I could pick out a tune by ear using my right hand for the melody while pounding chords with the left. That only works if I stuck with the key of C. No black keys necessary.

As Time Went By (apologies here to Dooley Wilson), I grew up, left the house, got married, got divorced and never had a piano. Occasionally, I’d stop by Mom and Dad’s and sometimes I’d sit down at the keys and plink something out. I’d turn and find Mom leaning in the doorsill and when she knew I saw her she’d say, “Don’t you wished you’d have practiced for old Doris Scotchler?”

 

Shortly after that divorce, and still wincing from it, I found myself at a dinner hosted by a local California Teachers’ Association chapter. Tables lined the so-called ballroom at the Holiday Inn and I sat in a folding chair next to and opposite other teachers, none of whom I knew.  

Across the table was, as I recall, a rather attractive woman, about my age, who opened the conversation with: “If you’re not really careful, I bet we’ll be playing footsie before this event is over.”

I was aghast. For two reasons. One: having married way too young, I never engaged in whatever footsie was. Two: fresh off failure, I was certain one thing leading to another would only leave the woman thinking “What’s up with this guy?” This presupposes that I had any idea of what ‘one thing leading to another’ even meant.  

I drew my size 14s under my chair and hoped whatever they were going to serve us would limit the need for small talk. But small talk ensued and as we chatted, I discovered she was ‘between relationships’ and that she was housing an upright piano that her former mate or boyfriend had rescued from the First Baptist Church on Salem Street just before they tore the building down. “I don’t play the damned thing. It’s huge and all it’s doing is collecting dust,” she reported.  

The old First Baptist Church housed the very Sunday School from which Beebo and I played hooky in our youth, so I said: “Would you take hundred bucks for it?”

 

Brother Beebo was a freelancer. He owned a trencher for digging foundation footings, chopped wood like Honest Abe and, best of all, moved pianos. And now I had a job for him.

         The house I bought after the divorce was on East Eighth Street, the inbound lanes to Chico of State Route 32. Footsie Woman, it turns out, lived on a cross street a couple of blocks away. Beebo, judging the effort necessary to load the old upright into his pickup for a two hundred yard transport had a better, more practical idea. Carefully lifting the treble end of the behemoth, he slipped his piano dolly under the middle and gently set it on the floor. Using two planks, he nursed the thing from her porch, across the walk and onto Alder Street. Finding the crest, he turned the unit and headed north toward 8^th. When traffic was clear, he bulled the assemblage into the middle of the State Route, pivoted it, and pushed it the block-and-a-half down the highway to my address. Passing traffic slowed as many had likely never seen an old upright piano being manpowered in the middle lane of a major through-way before.

         Within about twenty minutes the old piano was resting in the new-to-me living room at 788 E 8^th. Beebo hustled back to pick up his pickup. Meanwhile, I plinked out a tune with my right hand a feebly created chords with my left.  Shortly, Beebo arrived, cracked open one of my PBRs and said, “Don’t you wish you’da practiced when you were a kid?”

In the forty-plus years I’ve owned the piano, it, too, has moved from pillar to post: Chico to Soulsbyville; Soulsbyville to Sonora; Sonora to Roseville, then Rocklin then here. Early on, in an effort to strip and refinish it, I disassembled the cabinet finding remnants of color crayons, raffle tickets, and a tattered picture of the baby Jesus with some lambs opposite the words to “Jesus Loves Me” which I learned myself to play.

         Now, the old Baptist upright resides in my studio about five feet from my elbow as I type this.

 

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and after decorating the Christmas Tree, grandson Hudson – about 13 – pulled up a chair and began more than plinking on my piano. Apparently, he’d captured some music from contemporary movies or TV programs – tunes and melodies and musical literature I hadn’t heard before. His right hand and his left hand played beautifully in concert with one another from what I could tell. 

But then he launched into “Carol of the Bells.” I swiveled in my chair and watched him command the instrument until my eyes clouded with tears. That damned old thing had never sounded so good and I thought to myself:

         Don’t you wish you’da practiced when you were a kid?

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

CHICAGO: MORE CULTURE THAN I’M USED TO…

 …Knowledgeable tour guide was a must!

Long time readers (both of you) will know that I prefer the Sutter Buttes to the TransAmerica Pyramid; the Carrizo Plain to Golden Gate Park. Fewer people. Less traffic. Yes, and a little cheaper. A trip to San Francisco, my nearest big metro area, is palatable because the bucolic Sac/San Juaquin Delta is nearby, as are the cathedral-like coast redwoods. I know I can escape to the Marin Headlands if I need to.

With that in my DNA, I approached a week’s visit to Chicago with some trepidation. As luck would have it, we hooked in with an outstanding tour guide ~ DePaul student and granddaughter Grace Powers ~ for an outstanding taste of this midwestern mega-city. Where do I start?

 

Open Space? Our digs at Villa d’Citta https://www.villadcitta.com on North Halsted in Lincoln Park (a lovely boutique mansion) were only blocks away from the Chicago City Zoo…

…the Lake Michigan waterfront….

…and this grand fountain in Grant Park.

Mid-October weather was perfect for strolling, site-seeing, and stopping for the occasional bite to eat…

…like this Chicago Dog at Harry Caray’s joint on the Navy Pier.  (Enjoyed, also, the major league memorabilia. Could have spent hours!)

 

Evening strolls in the Lincoln Park area near DePaul reminded me of my old digs on Eighth Street in Chico.  Vintage homes.  Shaded by mature broadleaf trees, such as feeling of warmth and neighborhood.

Architecture?  Growing up in Chico, when the University planned and built seven-story Butte Hall, it was considered a skyscraper. So much so that the Fire Department found themselves searching for a ladder truck with a longer ladder.  Turns out, ‘they ain’t seen nothin’.’

Our riverboat tour near the Lake Michigan shoreline highlighted the design eras and the extent of architectural evolution…

 …from the art deco opera house…

…to this mid-century modern example…

…to a post-modern curved glass structure that reflects all the styles along the waterfront.

I didn’t take notes, but the masterpiece below was the first major building designed by a female architect. Visionary! How I wish I'd written down her name. 

This project’s success opened the doors for other women to break into a male-dominated field and enhance the city’s skyline with a new kind of grace and strength.

 

Art?  Fifty-plus years ago, I took an art appreciation class at Chico State to fulfill a humanities requirement. Although my grandfather dabbled in oils ~ I have one of his hanging right beside me as I write ~ I wasn’t much interested in what the prof shared with students on slide after innumerable slide. Little did I know that at the Chicago Institute of Arts, I’d see a two dozen or more of those classic works up close, very real and very touching.  Here’s Rembrandt…

Grant Wood…

Frank Lloyd Wright. (Brother Tim has a desk he created from similar design that I’ve helped him move twice, Tim tells me.)

And this: Van Gogh’s self-portrait which I have renamed two old guys with beards.

We marveled at the collection at the Chicago Institute of Art, wondering how so many masterpieces could end up under the same roof with that roof not being atop the Louvre in Paris.

 

Theatre? An unexpected treat was the opportunity to attend the world premiere of “Leroy and Lucy” at the famed Steppenwolf Theatre on Halsted Ave.  Steppenwolf started decades ago by a group of then recent high school graduates intent on continuing their theatre work.  Over the interceding years, the list of Steppenwolf alums reads like a who’s who of Broadway, screen and television.

Curated for over three years, this show depicts the dreams and demons visited upon perhaps the father of all the Blues.

 Rather than to give anything away, know that as we rose to over a much deserved standing O to the players, I said to Gracie: “I’ve got to see that again!” I'm certain we'll see this work in venues across the nation. Recommend seeing it when it comes your way.

 

Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen intoned that Chicago is “my kind of town,” ~ recall Sinatra’s classic version ~ and we can see why.  The song writing duo certainly captured my kind of razzmatazz and it has all that jazz.  Not sure if Chicago will be calling me home quite soon enough, but we were more than delighted with the art, the culture, the people too, people who, smile at you.

Once of the smilin’-est ones?  Granddaughter Grace.  Thanks for introducing your Bumpa to some culture Gracie! As you might imagine, I can always use more culture.

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

 

CAMP LASSEN – BLAST FROM THE PAST III

 episode 3 in a weekend with extended family

 As coincidence would have it, on the evening of that very distressing day when the final decree for divorce from my first marriage was issued, I had been roped into being ‘entertainment’ for a Methodist Church family camp up the hill from Chico. There, I regaled the assembled with my impressions of Jimmy Stewart [everyone can do impressions of Jimmy Stewart] and my strumming of the ukulele [anyone can strum a uke; most are smart enough not to.] I don’t imagine that I was particularly entertaining. At some point, the minister asked the typical how’s it goin’ question, and man of God that he was, I gave an honest answer. Probably unexpected.

 Fast forward a few years and I am marrying the good reverend’s daughter at that very camp.

 

 

Thirty-eight years later, almost to the day, said bride, my dear Candace, and I are returning from a Lake Almanor family weekend. We’d chosen to travel the scenic Deer Creek Highway and were doing so when she suggested we take a detour into Butte Meadows and then up the gravel road to the Boy Scout Camp where it all began.  

 

The place had aged and the spirit seemed muted as the parcel was dotted with No Trespassing signs nailed to yellow pines, cedars and fence posts. A stroll through romance and memories would be out of the question this day. We turned around at the gate, but after a couple of hundred yards, the urge was too great. Parking by the side of the road, we hiked back to the gate and entered the property. Just this side of the three flagpoles on the edge of the Chico Meadows greenery, I hailed a young man. “Permission to come aboard,” I hollered. 

 The fellow may not have understood the reference, but he did kindly shepherd us to the grand old lodge fashioned of huge logs and timbers where we were graciously welcomed and – there being no young campers on site yet – invited to explore around a bit.

 Camp Lassen was established in 1933. (I’d always thought the main building was a product of the WPA.)  Sometime during the 1950s, a young camper named Billy Bernard attended, paddled an aluminum canoe in the pond, sipped water from pipe at the far end of the meadow – that spring being the source of Chico Creek – and located arrowheads crafted from flint and obsidian. 

In 1986, thirty years later and now the Superintendent of the Jamestown (Tuolumne County) School District where I would enjoy my first administrative placement, ‘William’ Bernard took the children of those attending out to find arrowheads and splash in the pond.

 

Out back of the lodge stands the staff cabin, suited for those who’d be living in Chico Meadows for a summer rather than simply a week.  

 

There, some miscreant attending our nuptials found it entertaining to stuff the wedding bedstead with pinecones and needles and a grotesque sculpted clay fish head. Something about which is still laughable.

 

 

Candi is the individual within our coupling that always wants to see what’s around the next bend. Time after time, she’s encouraged us to travel just a bit farther or explore just a bit more or edge across a line I might otherwise turn from. This was the case at Camp Lassen this year: 38 years later.  

 

I’m so glad she did because we were informed that the Lassen Area Scouting Council is putting the property up for sale. With Scouting in 21^st century decline, one wonders where the future Billy Bernards of the world will find their first arrowheads.

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press