Point Arena Time Capsule, 1950

 

    Facebook is often maligned, and I suppose rightfully so, but I'm grateful for Facebook more often than not. In the case of this photo, it's special to me in a way that it would be for few. It was taken by a family friend, Jimmy Morrison, from his light airplane flying over the south end of Point Arena sometime in late 1949 but more probably in 1950. So far I'm the one providing the estimate of when it was taken based on my knowledge as a seven-year old at that time with familiarity with certain Point Arena landmarks. 

    But let me devote some words to Jimmy Morrison. When we arrived in Point Arena September 10, 1949, Jimmy was an auto mechanic at the Union 76 station, owned and operated by Jack Pelascio and his son Jim. At the time the Pelascios owned quite a lot of Point Arena, besides the Union 76 station the Point Arena Theater on adjacent property, and the old high school building and its land. 

    The picture was posted on Facebook by Jimmy's stepson, David Weymouth, who added: 

I couldn’t have had a better stepfather. His parents were so poor in New York City that they had to give him to a farm family in upstate NY to work for them when he was in the fourth grade. That was the extent of his schooling. But he always read a lot and saw a bit of the the world in and after the war in the military and Coast Guard. He never went far financially but was a fine person and wonderful for my mother.

    At the photo upper left, just above the open fields, stands the former Point Arena High School building. When we arrived from Southern California, we parked our trailer on the left (east) side of the building on a concrete slab which may have been a combined tennis and outdoor basketball court. I feel certain that the silvery object by the building is our trailer, which in 1951 we moved to the front of the building after we had moved into one large room at the left front of it. 

    I wrote about our life in the Old High School here.

    

The Gualala Post Office Window Poster

Me in the middle, Bob Seymour on the right, Randi Olsen on the left,

Candy Deltorchio and Alice Seymour (1958?)

             I made the rounds of the Gualala Post Office mailboxes. From the Lions’ box, a bill for rent of the Community Center; from the Banana Belt Properties’ box, an advertising flyer; and our box was crammed full with mail-order catalogues for Alice. As I walked towards the exit, I noticed the small paper poster with a photo on the window next to the door. I hadn’t noticed it on my way in, but even though I was looking at the reverse of the poster, I recognized the picture and knew what it was even before I got outside to read it.

Bobby Lee Harper was dead. Born January 31, 1931, died July 31, 2007.

The photo was one that Bobby was very proud of; Bobby in his Air Force blues, with Sophie holding their first baby. Bobby had three stripes on his uniform, the rank that was then called Airman First Class, so the picture was probably taken around 1955.

Bobby had enlisted in the Air Force in the late Forties, and he met and married Sophie, a Greek girl, while he was stationed in Europe.

Bobby was very short, a stretch to reach five feet. Sophie was shorter.

In 1963 the Air Force assignment system brought Bobby to Point Arena Air Station, the home of the 776th Radar Squadron, located at the end of Eureka Hill Road about ten miles east of Point Arena.

When Bobby arrived at Point Arena in 1963, the radar station was only twelve years old. It had been built to narrow the radar detection gap and help prevent a surprise Soviet Union bomber attack.

Before the radar station opened, younger brother Ron and I went with Mom one night a week to a small observation post on the hillside next to and behind the Point Arena City Hall and Fire Station. There we would wait and watch, and watch and wait, until relieved by another Ground Observer Corps volunteer. Fortunately for the volunteers, we never saw anything, and unless the Soviets had flown in low and with all their lights on, the volunteers couldn’t have seen anything anyway. On our many foggy Point Arena nights, the Soviets could have mounted searchlights on their bombers and put them on full power, and they wouldn’t have been noticed.

Unless their engines were so noisy that we would hear them inside our cozy observation post.

Happily, before the Soviets figured all that out, the radar station was activated December 1951.

Bobby was an NCO when he arrived, so he didn’t have to work as a “scope dope,” the guys who read the radar screens and worked long hours until automation replaced human effort and led to the radar base closure about 1980. By then Bobby had completed his twenty years and had been retired over a decade in Point Arena. Sophie was cooking in the Point Arena Wharf restaurant, and her fried lingcod with French fries was my favorite restaurant meal for many years.

When I came home from college, or on leave from the Air Force, which was often the same thing, I’d ask Pop, “Is Sophie cooking tonight?” If the answer was yes, we knew we would be at the Wharf for dinner.

Bobby and the airmen and their families who came before him had a deep and lasting effect on our little community.

During World War II our sleepy and insular coast received an infusion of strangers, primarily young Army men, from all over the United States. At the war’s end they all suddenly left, and things were sleepy and quiet again.

All that changed again in 1950, when the Air Force chose Point Arena as the site for a radar base. The lives of our local girls became much more exciting. Their pool of potential romantic involvements increased greatly, and was steadily renewed as the Air Force moved personnel in and out.

Sometimes heartache accompanied news of reassignment. Sometimes happiness and sorrow were mixed as some of our young ladies married airmen and moved away. Sometimes the Air Force lost, as several of their young airmen embraced local girls and returned to civilian life by getting jobs in our sawmills.

I think that only one of the airmen who left the Air Force to live in the area is still here.

We young men attending school and living in the Point Arena, Gualala, and Manchester areas felt the competition for female attention acutely. The airmen were older, already high school graduates, spun thrilling tales of travel and work in exotic lands, and of special interest to the young ladies, had steady incomes and ready cash.

Their interest in the young ladies of our area went deeply into our school system, down to and including some of my seventh- and eighth-grade classmates.

Some of the airmen brought young wives with them, and Point Arena was a bee hive as every available living space, or facsimile thereof, reasonable or not, was rented by a young family living here because of the radar station or the booming lumber mills.

I delivered the newspaper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, to many of them.

I fell deeply in love with one of them the summer of 1954. Unfortunately, I was twelve, and Peggy was seventeen or eighteen, married, and was either totally unaware of or was amused by my infatuation. I first saw her when I was fishing with a hand-line from the Point Arena wharf, and had already caught half-a-dozen perch. She was wearing short white shorts, a white shirt tied at the bottom exposing her waist, and sandals, and had long light brown hair in a pony tail, and blue eyes.

She wore the same outfit, or a very similar one, every time I saw her.

She lived with her husband Jerry, who I never met, a "scope dope" who worked at the radar station. They lived in a rented trailer house in the trailer park that was recently built on the flat cow pasture next to Point Arena Creek, only a couple of hundred yards from the wharf. It was a nice little trailer park, except for infrequent times when storms caused Point Arena Creek to flood through it, or the one big storm that once pushed waves all the way up the road into it.

Even though I was only twelve years old, I was already a hefty 5’ 10”, about three inches taller, although her shorts, slim body, long legs, and thick sandals made her look almost as tall.

          My hormones had just started to stir, and seeing and talking to her considerably accelerated the stirring process.

She asked me questions about fish, and fishing, and I’m sure I gave her the most exhaustive answers she ever endured about fish, about fishing, about the wharf, the ocean, the rocks, Point Arena, my school, and in fact, about anything and everything I thought might catch and hold her interest.

One of the first stories I told her cast me in a sort of daring, heroic role. The previous summer I bummed along with Sandy Sedler on his salmon-trolling boat, Rip Tide, and we went to the fishing grounds just off the Point Arena Lighthouse near Wash Rock. Sandy brought in salmon steadily through the day, but fog came in rapidly as we turned to head back to the wharf. Sandy used his radio-direction finder to triangulate our position from the nearby Loran station and his friend Roy Fox’s radio signal from Roy’s boat tied up at the wharf. We slowly worked our way down the coast we couldn’t see, finally turning landward at a point on our map chart that we hoped was directly west of the wharf. After what seemed like hours of slowly motoring towards Roy’s radio signal, Sandy said: “We should be able to see the light on the wharf by now.” I stepped out of the cabin to get a better look, then went back and told Sandy: “I can’t see the light, but I can hear Roy talking, and he sounds really close.”

In a few more agonizing moments we finally saw Roy’s boat, and tied up alongside.

When I finished my story, I was sure I had impressed Peggy.

However, remembering that time, with the maturity I can now bring to reflection, I doubt there was much I said that was all that interesting to her, but at any rate she said she would like me to teach her to fish, and I did.

Since hand-line fishing was all I knew, because I couldn’t afford a fishing pole, we rigged her a hand-line too. Peggy’s hand-line was just like mine, about a hundred feet of braided cotton line wrapped around a short stick. For sinkers we used old spark plugs the mechanic at the Union 76 station in town saved for us in a box in the engine tune-up area. The hooks were the inexpensive, black leaderless ones, and for bait we caught sand fleas under the rocks near the wharf, or cut up small fish we caught for bait that schooled among the pilings under the wharf. She soon did very well catching perch, sea trout, and an occasional cabazone, our best tasting rockfish. Peggy was from Alabama, like Bobby Harper, and already knew how to clean fish.

I hope she and her husband liked fish, because she always caught enough for them to have fish every day.

What can a twelve-year old country boy talk about that would interest a young lady? Fortunately, remembering how Pop talked to people showed me a way. Pop asked people a lot of questions about themselves, and then found things in common to talk about. I asked Peggy about her home town, and she told me her family moved from a farm when she was little to a big city with 10,000 or more people– a lot bigger than Point Arena and its 555 population – and her parents told her about growing up on a farm. It sounded to me like it had been a poor farm, with a mule instead of tractor, no electricity, and eating chickens the day they were killed because of no refrigeration.

When I heard about the mule, I told her how my younger brother Ron and I used a horse Pop borrowed from a neighbor to dig a full-sized basement earlier in the summer for the house we were building. I told her how we harnessed Prince, hooked on a Fresno scraper, and lifted the scraper arms to let it bite into the earth as Prince strained in the harness. Then Prince would skid the scraper full of dirt up a ramp out of the basement to a dump area where we would lift the handles and spill out the dirt. Ron and I completed the basement project by the end of the first month of summer vacation, and later in the summer after the wooden forms were built, we would be working many hours each day “feeding” a cement mixer to pour the basement floor and walls.

I asked Peggy how she liked living in a trailer house, and she said it was nice; their rental trailer was new and comfortable. Talking about trailer house life inspired me to tell Peggy about my family’s trailer house. We had lived in a house in Bakersfield until 1947, then bought a trailer house and lived in several Southern California towns for the next two years.

Then in September 1949, we towed our trailer house to Point Arena and parked it by the old abandoned high school building, and after a few months more of living in the trailer we moved into one room of the old building. Peggy enjoyed my tales of living in one big room of the old abandoned high school building for our first three years in Point Arena. Ron and I had a bunk bed behind a partition at the back of the room. Mom and Pop had their bed in one corner, the kitchen and dining area was in another, and a couch and chairs was in the “living room” in the corner nearest the partition. The toilets were through a door at the back of the room and down the hallway. Mom cooked on a woodstove that also heated the room and provided enough hot water to halfway fill a galvanized washtub. All four of us quickly took turns taking our baths in the tub in the middle of the kitchen; Mom first, then Pop, then Ron and I took turns. It didn’t take long for the bath water to cool and get a bit dirty. Peggy laughed at the thought of four people taking turns bathing in a washtub on the floor. I laughed too, and dreamed of the day we would have our new house built, complete with bathtub and hot running water.

Pop had been the thirteenth of fourteen children, and was working as an oilfield “roughneck” near Bakersfield when Walter, one of his six older brothers who had a general store in Gualala, wrote us that “the sawmills are hiring.” Mom read Walter’s letter, looked at Pop, and said: “Honey, you just became a lumberjack.”

Point Arena was full of exciting news the week we arrived in 1949; the Pacific Enterprise had just struck Wash Rock near the lighthouse and was sinking. But the real big news then was how fast area sawmills were expanding to meet the post-war building boom. Soon Pop was working for Empire Lumber “setting chokers” in the Wheatfield Forks area on the south fork of the Gualala River. He liked the hard work, and learned quickly how machinery was rigged to bring logs out of the woods onto a landing, and then loaded on logging trucks to be hauled to the sawmills. In our living room he helped Ron and I rig a highline with our cherished, shared Erector Set so we could bring out logs too.

Peggy had been to the radar base on Eureka Hill and had seen the tall redwood trees alongside the road, and fully loaded logging trucks passing through town, so that gave me a chance to tell her anything and everything I knew about logging. Last summer Ron and I went to watch Pop work on the log pond at his new job at the Diamantine sawmill on Brush Creek, and Peggy was interested in how Pop worked the “sinker boat,” a small wooden raft with a hand-cranked winch that was used to bring the heavy, butt-end logs up from the bottom of the pond. Those were the redwood logs that immediately sank when they were unloaded from the logging trucks into the pond. Pop would locate the sinkers, hook them with tongs attached to the winch, and crank them up to the surface. Then he would use a long pole to put two “floaters” on either side of the sinker, screw a steel eye-bolt into the sinker, and use a piece of lumber and a rope to secure it between the floaters. Pop then pushed the three-log rafts to a chain conveyer that pulled the logs into the mill for sawing.

Peggy seemed really interested when I told her how Ron and I ate lunch with Pop and all the loggers in the cook shack. We sat on long wooden benches, and the equally long rough wooden tables were covered with lots of good food that never ran out. I would have been happy to make my whole meal of just the tasty biscuits with butter and jam, but Pop made sure we had some of everything.

Peggy told me that she didn’t remember much about life on the farm, although she helped feed the chickens and watched her father milk a cow. As she got older, her family told tales of how hard life on the farm had been, and how little money they had. That all changed when her family moved to the city and got jobs with steady incomes. I told her that even though we lived in town, we had a cow that Ron and I milked, and chickens, rabbits, and a calf we raised for beef.

I told Peggy that three years ago we bought our first “bummer” calf (a twin rejected by its mother) for $5 from Stogie Stornetta’s ranch. The calf was very cute, with big soft brown eyes, and Ron and I named him “Bosco.” Our chore was to feed Bosco after school, and he would run to the fence to greet us, and we rubbed his head as he ate. We fed Bosco powdered milk mixed with water in a bucket with a rubber teat, and we held the bucket firmly, braced against the fence, to keep Bosco from spilling it as he energetically sucked on the rubber teat. When Bosco got bigger, we stopped the milk and fed him hay and grain. I told how one time in a driving rainstorm part of the fence fell and Bosco escaped, and we chased him through the rain and wrestled him in the mud to get him back into his pen. Peggy laughed when she said she could just imagine how we looked, soaking wet covered in mud.

Bosco, like all calves, was very playful, and liked to bound across the field and do awkward, funny leaps. When I finished telling Peggy about Bosco, I think she noticed a sad look on my face, and asked: “Where’s Bosco now?”

“Bosco’s dead." One day after school we went to feed him, and he was gone. Pop said the butcher came and took him away.” We begged Pop to tell us when Bosco would come back, and then Pop told us: “He can’t come back. He’s dead.” I told Peggy how Ron and I couldn’t believe Bosco was dead and how we cried so hard we could hardly breathe. Then Pop told us gently but firmly to stop crying, and pointed around us. “These animals aren’t pets, they’re dinner. Don’t give them names.”

Peggy looked sad, too. Maybe she was remembering animals she named on their farm, and knew that most of them probably ended up like Bosco. I guess a part of childhood ends when you realize that death is a part of life, that something as lively as you can become suddenly cold and still, existing only in our memories.

I forced a weak laugh, and said I call all the calves “Hamburger” now, and Peggy smiled gently.

“He may sound tough, but Pop’s really nice,” I said. “When people tell him that Ron and I are good, big boys, he says ‘Yep, they’re strong as an ox and nearly as smart.’ That’s the way he tells us he’s proud of us.”

One day after we finished fishing, and Peggy went back to her trailer, a high school guy told me: “I bet you’d like to screw her. I sure would.” I turned away, angry and blushing, and he laughed at me. I guess he was right, but I wanted to keep it a secret. I realized that I hated the thought of her “doing it” with someone. Anyone. Even her husband. Even me.

But now, more than ever I looked forward to going fishing at the wharf and talking with Peggy. We had fished together almost daily for over a month, then one day I fished for hours watching for her, and she didn’t come.

I never saw her again, or heard anything more about her.

Another Air Force family soon moved into her trailer.

Thinking about Bobby and Sophie, and their lives and some of the times we shared here, spurs memories.

Bobby’s gone, and his poster on the Post Office window announcing his death has already been removed.

The Post Office has strict rules about what and where and when things can be displayed.

Peggy was only here a month over fifty years ago, and then she was gone.

I hope she hasn’t had her poster taped on a Post Office window somewhere.

Not Peggy, not the girl in shorts with the long legs and the sweet, sometimes sad, smile.

Peggy and Bobby, and many others, live on in my memories.

At least until the day my poster takes its place in a Post Office window.

My Very Interesting Radio Interview, 2005

Over eight years ago I was interviewed on one of our local radio, and this is the link to the interview.

Fifty Year Reunion, Point Arena Class of 1960 and Friends

There comes a time in every man's life when he does something he feels just has to be done.

In my case, it's putting together a 50th year reunion of my high school graduating class of 1960, Point Arena, California.

I started thinking small, just invite our class and their families - including, of course, my younger brother Ron, Class of 1961. There were only 27 in our graduating class, and sadly, at least four have passed away. Then there are about half-a-dozen that drifted through, children whose parents moved to wherever the next sawmill was hiring, or wherever the Air Force decreed their next job. California was a foot-loose state, people coming here for the California life, then searching all over California to find it.

Some did, many didn't, and many moved on.

That's why a reunion of just my class and close friends and family would be very small.

Immediately I was reproached (very nicely and politely) by classmates and other younger and older Point Arena graduates who wanted a grander reunion. To cut to the chase, I quickly caved in and invited everyone from the Class of 1964 back to the dawn of time to attend.

That brought me to look at Classmates.com to help me spread the word. The good news was that Classmates.com membership already included quite a few Point Arena High alumni, and that there is a "reunions" section to provide details and spread the word. The bad news is that the "reunions" section of Classmates.com is as hard headed and inflexible as many spouses are (wrongfully) accused of being.

When I set up the reunion announcement I screwed up and omitted classes 1962 and 1964. To correct the error I had to set up an almost identical reunion announcement because I couldn't just go back and correct the erroneous one.

Then I started using the Classmates.com system to send out reunion reminders. Unfortunately, their reminders go out to everyone, including those who have RSVP'd and need no further reminders. These unnecessary reminders, as would be expected, only serve to create confusion and anxiety amongst those who have already responded.

My attempts to get out information and explanations through the Classmates.com system proved to be frustrating and cumbersome. I couldn't send out a semi-mass mailing to selected addressees - I had to send the information out one address at a time. The Classmates.com mass messaging system doesn't allow including web sites or e-mail addresses in the messages, which makes it very difficult for me to publicize the web site I've set up to disseminate information and to post (auto) biographies: Point Arena High, Class of 1960. (Please click on the preceding blue and gold link to go to our reunion web site)

Or if that's too cutesy, just click here.

At any rate, be advised (as we would say in the Air Force) that I have unilaterally decided to extend the reunion hours by starting earlier - 4 PM instead of 6 PM at the Gualala Community Center, September 18, 2010, with a two-hour socializing period augmented by cheese and crackers, veggies and dip, and vino. Then we have dinner at 6 PM, followed by alumni introducing themselves and sharing what they've been up to for the past half-century or more.

Then music, dancing, socializing, moderate drinking, &etc. until we all realize we're up past our bed times.

Don't miss it!

e-mail me at mcombs@pacific.net

call me at 707-884-3741

Write me and send checks to Mike Combs, P O Box 1639, Gualala, CA 95445.

Don't procrastinate!

Do it!

Now!

Please.

Everything I Know I Learned While Fishing

It’s a good thing I did a lot of fishing when I was young, and learned everything then, because sad to say I haven’t done much fishing for many years now.

When I was a school boy in Point Arena, 1949-1960, I never thought about going fishing, I just went. Unlike modern-day anglers, or even many during my boyhood, fishing only required a minimum of equipment (meaning it only required a minimum of cash), and a lot of time. Time I had, money I didn’t, so fishing was a perfect choice.

As a pre-teen, fishing consisted of catching trout in Point Arena Creek (also known as Shit Creek, because the waste water from the sewer ponds went into it, or Sweetwater Creek, again because the waste water from the sewer ponds went into it), which flowed along the southern edge of town.

Sweetwater Creek was small. You could step across it in most places. Its banks were well protected with stinging nettles growing amongst the thick willows. About two-thirds of the way up Mill Street the creek went over a small falls, only about a three-foot drop, but that was enough to stop the trout from going further upstream.

We soon stopped fishing further upstream and just concentrated on a half-mile stretch from the falls to where Soldani’s cattle made a crossing about a hundred yards from the sewer ponds. At that point there was still over a half mile of creek between the sewer ponds and the ocean, but we never fished down there.

I guess the thought of catching fish swimming amongst sewer pond overflow put us off.

We never talked about it, we just never went there.

The trout fishing was pretty good without expanding our territory.

We outfitted ourselves with wrapping string for fish line that we begged from whoever was working the counter at Gilmore and Stornetta’s General Merchandise Store. In the 1950s, many of the things we bought at the store were wrapped in paper and tied with string. We would tie the string to a four to five-foot willow pole, tie a leader with hook to the string, and as soon as we dug a couple of dozen worms we were ready to fish.

A note for the historical record.

Usually it was Jackie Gilmore or his wife, Sue, or my buddy Bob Seymour’s mother, Floe, working the cash register. For several years, Taylor and Doris York, the parents of my fishing buddy, Chuck York, worked in the store before they took over running Titus’ Sweet Shop. Doris was one of Jackie’s older sisters. Her sister Merle, and Merle’s husband Wendy May, also worked in the store. Now and then we would be waited on by one of Jackie’s parents, Orin or Leona Gilmore, although they owned the store and spent most of their time in the raised office area a third of the way in on the right-hand side.

In those days, in the little town of Point Arena, this small general merchandise store provided the total financial support for four or five families. Then there was the McMillen General Store just down the street, and it supported another four families. As times passed, and their competition became the national retailers in Santa Rosa seventy-five miles away (almost a two-hour drive), profit margins were squeezed and eventually the two stores barely supported one family each as owner/operators. Finally the out-of-area big stores like Costco, then the added competition of the Internet, only left a market big enough for one store to survive, and Jackie and Sue closed Gilmore’s, then later sold it and the building was converted into the Coast Community Library.

Back to fishing.

Most of the good fishing spots on Sweetwater Creek were easy to reach, particularly when we were careful not to brush the stinging nettles. We approached each fishing hole quietly. Most of them weren’t much bigger than a large bathtub. We put a worm on the hook, and then tossed it into the water. Usually something happened immediately.

Often our worm would be swarmed by sticklebacks, minnow-sized fish with three needle-sharp spines on their backs that would nibble and worry the worm until it was torn from the hook. When it looked like stickleback were hitting the worm, we would pull it out of the water, usually with a stickleback or two hanging on, and let the sticklebacks fall off on the ground, and eventually die.

We would toss the worm back in, or rebait our hook if necessary, and hope that a trout would get to it first instead of the sticklebacks. As soon as a trout struck the bait, we would bring the tip of our willow pole fishing rod up to set the hook, because the trout would spit the worm out immediately otherwise.

If we were successful hooking the trout, a short battle would ensue. Our main concern was keeping the trout from wrapping the line around underwater roots, while also keeping it from catching in the branches above. If we could prevent entanglements, the trout was quickly ours.

As much as we learned stalking the wily trout, our real education began with ocean fishing, usually from the Point Arena Wharf or the rocks north of the wharf. We usually caught perch or greenling (sea trout) from the wharf, and perch, greenling, and cabazone or the occasional ling cod from the rocks.

Our fishing gear was very inexpensive because of the continuing chronic cash shortages. Our biggest investment was a 100-yard ball of braided cotton line (90¢), and a dozen leaderless 6/0 black hooks (25¢). Bait was abalone guts and trimmings preserved with rock salt we collected and stored in a large crock, and took fishing in a coffee can. For sinkers we went to the local gas service stations. The mechanic at Pelascio’s Union 76 station, the late Jimmy Morrison, would toss old spark plugs replaced during engine tune-ups into a box in the garage, and we took what we needed for sinkers. Our tackle boxes were gunny sacks, and the only additional gear we needed we found on the rocks, pieces of drift wood to wrap our lines.

Casting our lines was simple. We would unwind line from the stick, being careful not to tangle or catch in on the rocks or around our feet, then swing the line with hook, bait, and sinker over our heads, then release it hopefully to fly out and land where we intended. We tried to hit deeper holes between patches of seaweed, and if we were successful we would take in the slack and hold the line in our hand and wait.

As soon as we felt a couple of sharp tugs, we would yank the line back to set the hook, then pull it in hand over hand, dragging the fish over and through the seaweed. If all went well we would pull in a flopping fish. After we took it off the hook, which sometimes was quite a chore if the fish swallowed the bait and was hooked deeply, we put the fish in a small tide pool to keep it fresh while we continued fishing.

It was on these fishing trips on the rocks where we gained the wisdom that has guided our lives so well. Our first lesson was that whatever we needed for a successful fishing trip we had to plan and bring with us. We didn’t have a car in those days, and anything we forgot or didn’t think of was at least a round-trip hour’s walk away. The other side of the issue, of course, was that anything we brought with us we had to carry in our gunny sacks on our long walk to and from the rocks. If we had a good day fishing, the weight of the fish would be added to the weight in our sacks, so in packing to go fishing we had to make allowances for possible success and the weight of fish in our sacks.

We realized that for an overall satisfying fishing experience, we didn’t want to take everything with us, just the right things.

This then led us to the learning process we soon labeled, “If, maybe, and next time.” While we were fishing, killing time listening to the Giants on my transistor radio, or eating our lunches/snacks, while waiting for a bite, we would often remark about something: for instance, “If we carried some water with us, we sure wouldn’t be so thirsty right now.”

“Maybe we can find some bottles to fill with water.”

“Next time we’ll have water with us when we feel thirsty.”

One time we caught our late friend, Jimmy Hedden, eating our frozen bait shrimp raw.

“If we always brought a tin of kippered herring with us, maybe next time Jimmy will leave the bait shrimp alone.”

Our assumption was that we would remember to bring water in bottles, or kipper snacks, or whatever, the next time. The reality was that we would often forget what we planned, and when we were thirsty again, or run out of bait, then we would remember.

“If we would bring a piece of paper and a pencil every time, and write stuff down, then maybe we would remember it the next time.”

What this did, of course, was give us the opportunity to add a pencil and paper to the growing list of things to forget the next time.

However, as our youth passed slowly and unhurriedly, and we joked about “if, maybe, and next time,” I think we learned a lot about other people and ourselves out of the independence and challenges of our fishing experiences.

But I can hear protests from those who read this far: “My husband/significant other/boyfriend, Gavin, has started going fishing with his friends, and he isn’t acting any wiser. In fact, he seems dumber.”

I can see the problems already. Anyone named Gavin is from a generation or two after mine. Gavin and his friends were never allowed to just go fishing by themselves. They didn’t have an opportunity to scrape together a buck or two and rig a fishing outfit, then walk a mile or two to the ocean by themselves.

Gavin and his friends were organized, supervised, and authorized to go fishing. They didn’t have the exertion of walking a mile or two carrying their fishing gear, then the frustration of finding they had forgotten something, then the satisfaction of figuring how to work around whatever was forgot, the elation of doing it all themselves, and increased confidence from being at the ocean on their own.

I’ve seen fishermen who have started fishing later in life. They buy expensive, very powerful boats, outfitted with every convenience known to man, and space age fishing gear. Fishing just becomes another competition: bigger, faster, costlier – more fish are caught quicker, trophy fish are sought – and a day fishing is anything but cheap relaxation.

If the fish aren’t biting, the day’s fishing is a failure.

When we went fishing, if the fish weren’t biting we spent the time chatting and philosophizing, and still had a great time. We didn’t rush anywhere, because there was nowhere else we had to be, and we weren’t late for anything.

We would run over the rocks because it was fun, not because we had to hurry somewhere.

Our parents trusted us not to do anything dumb enough to get ourselves killed or badly injured, and knew we would be home by suppertime.

Maybe even with some fish to add to the family food supply.

When PG&E Came to Town

Not long after we moved into the old abandoned high school building, in early 1950 Pacific Gas & Electricity (PG&E, aka Pacific Graft & Extortion) came to Point Arena in a big way. Up to that point in time the generating plant on Windy Hollow Road on the north side of Point Arena stood by itself to provide power to Point Arena only.

That all changed with the building and opening of the Point Arena Radar Station. PG&E sent in large construction crews with heavy equipment. They used the large open space on the west side of the old high school building as a parking area for the equipment. The space had been graveled at one time, but neglected, and now with the heavy equipment parked and moving over it, it soon became primarily mud and mud puddles. After a period when it went from bad to worse, PG&E brought in gravel and spread it generously on the mud and in the mud puddles. It helped. Now when we walked we crunched over gravel, instead of splashing through mud.

Our main purpose for the large, open, flat area, when it wasn’t covered with PG&E equipment, had been as a playground. In dry weather it wasn’t too bad before they put the gravel down. After the gravel, it was a worthless playground the year around. However, that didn’t stop us from trying to make it work. It was so big, so open, so flat, it was hard to give up on it.

It was good for baseball until the batter hit the ball. If it was a grounder, it would never take a straight, predictable hop. If it was a fly ball, trying to keep your eyes on the ball while running over gravel was an accident in progress. Usually a few fast running steps was all it took to lose your balance and fall onto the jagged rocks. When you took your eyes off the ball to save yourself from falling, the ball usually found you. Either way, a thoughtful friend like Bob Seymour would shout, “Way to go, Grace!” as you picked yourself up and inspected the torn knee of your pants, and the blood seeping from the cuts.

I can still see a semi-circular scar on the heel of my right palm where a sharp rock peeled the skin back when I tried to break a fall with my hand.

It didn’t take long until we gave up playing baseball on the gravel, and used the baseball diamond on the Elementary School grounds. It was actually a fair baseball field, with an ancient wooden backstop, and fragmented pieces of chicken wire occasionally stopping foul balls, wild pitches, or errant throws before they landed in the cypress trees beyond.

The faults of the school baseball field really didn’t bother us except during the rainy season. The field had been in heavy use for so long that the pitcher’s mound was a hole, the batter’s box was a hole, and the first, second, and third bases, and the basepaths, were in holes. The holes weren’t very noticeable, and weren’t problems until it rained and water accumulated. The flooding field didn’t stop our games, but we did have to improvise. The pitcher and batter would move to adjacent areas of higher ground, and if the puddles weren’t too big, the bases would move to the closest almost dry ground.

Trying to field ground balls in the mud, and chasing down fly balls was still challenging, but when you inevitably slipped and fell, landing in soft mud was much nicer than on sharp gravel.

My brother Ronald and I still played in our graveled yard when it was just the two of us. Sometimes we would disagree about whether a pitch was a strike, or how many strikes we had, or if we had struck out. Not very often, but every now and then, a disagreement would lead to a fight. Since I was much bigger than Ronald then, I would win our fights even though he was tough and scrappy.

One day I pushed him down, and started to walk away towards our house. The next thing I remember was lying face down on the ground, and the back of my head hurting quite painfully. I put my hand where it hurt, and when I brought my hand back it was covered with blood.

Even at his young age, Brother Ronald had excellent hand/eye coordination, and a good throwing arm. He invariably precisely hit whatever he was throwing at. In this case he was throwing a rock he picked up out of the gravel, and his target was my head.

When I saw the blood on my hand I let out loud cries, which brought Pop running from our room in the old high school building and to my rescue, I thought. However, he ran right past me and started spanking my brother. As I moaned and cried louder, Pop spanked Ronald harder.

About then I heard Mom call from the doorway, “Stop spanking that one and get the other one to the Medical Center before he bleeds to death.”

Pop reluctantly stopped spanking Ronald and stood me up to look at the back of my head. Mom brought a wet towel, and cleaned the blood away to uncover a shallow two-inch gash.

“It’s going to need stitches,” was Mom’s verdict, which inspired me to resume crying even more loudly, more from the thought of getting stitches than from the pain, which was already subsiding.

Pop drove me downtown to the Medical Center. We still didn’t have a doctor, but the School Nurse, Helen Greco, was on duty. She cleaned and shaved around my wound, applied a generous amount of stinging disinfectant, closed it with three stitches, and bandaged it firmly.

Pop looked me over and said, “I think you’ll live.”

I thought it would be a good time to start crying again to see if Pop would resume spanking Ronald, but Pop and Mrs. Greco were chatting with each other, and with me, and I felt the time for crying had passed.

Even if it would get Pop to spank my brother some more.

Honey, You Just Became a Lumberjack

The summer of 1949 we were living in a trailer park in Newhall, north of Los Angeles near Santa Clarita. I had no idea where the town of Newhall was in relation to our trailer park. We were surrounded by a combination of scrubby brush in what was probably a desert, or a close imitation of one. Scattered around the trailer park were drilling rigs and oil well pumps.

We arrived with less than a month of school before the summer break, and although Mom took me to the school the day after we arrived, I guess it was too close to being the end of the school year, and I wasn’t admitted. I liked school, and meeting kids and playing, so I was actually sad about not going to school in Newhall.

About half a mile from the trailer park, maybe nearer, was a railroad track which crossed a trestle bridge over a shallow stream that later in the year would probably be dry. Ronald and I, and new friends in the trailer park, rode our bikes to the stream, and competed to see who could peddle all the way across without stopping. Whether we made it all the way, or stopped, or fell off into the water, either way we got completely soaked.

Our parents didn’t mind that we got our pants or shirts wet, but getting our shoes wet was a different matter. Children’s shoes were the most relatively expensive clothing items our families owned, so most of us had only one pair. Getting our shoes soaking wet didn’t help their longevity. We usually thought about taking them off before they got wet right after we got them thoroughly wet.

On most of our trips to the stream we would see several tramps, or hoboes, camped under the trestle, usually cooking something on a small fire. We never went close to their camp, and never talked to any of them. For their part, they just ignored us as we sat on our bikes and watched them. If any of them had ever moved our way, I’m sure we would have all been off in a flash pedaling furiously back to the trailer park.

In retrospect, they probably didn’t want anything to do with us, because we would have told our parents, and they would tell the police, and the police would have made them move on. Homeless people were not a protected group in those days.

Mom listened to the radio as she worked, usually to variety shows like Hoagy Carmichael. She wrote many songs, and was always trying to get one to the attention of a famous singer to record and make her rich and famous. I still remember several of them.

There’s a moon shining down on the chaparral,
Moonlight casts its spell,
On the old ranch well.
And the quaint pepper trees
By the big corral,
Lacey shadows weave
Like a wedding veil.

Although I’m alone
In this moonlit wonderland
I still feel your kiss
And the touch of your hand.

So I’ll hold you again
As the shadows fall
And the moonbeams dance
On the chaparral.

(59 years have passed, but the song memory in my head tells me I got every word right. Who knows, Mom? Maybe through the wonder of the Internet hundreds or thousands of years from now someone will see this and sing your song again. I wonder if people then will be capable of feeling wistful loneliness, or if everyone will be in instant communication with whomever they want whenever they want. I hope not. Loneliness is too precious an emotion to lose. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." )

Mom had a good singing voice, and more than once she went to Hollywood on the bus and appeared on the Hoagy Carmichael Show. I'm sure “Moon Shining Down on the Chaparral” was one of the songs she sang on his show, and I think she got $20 and an orchid. Mom kept the orchid in our refrigerator for a long time.

In August we got a letter from Uncle Walter, the second oldest of my thirteen Combs uncles and aunts. Pop was youngest of Grandma and Grandpa’s seven sons, and next to the youngest of fourteen siblings.

Uncle Walter had moved to Gualala, on the coast in northern California, a couple of years earlier. His letter was probably very chatty about his wife Ruth and their five daughters. Even though Pop’s family was huge – I was the 42nd grandchild, brother Ronald born eleven months and four days later was the 44th – the family had concentrated around Bakersfield, and everyone stayed in touch.

Pop was very interested in his relatives, and what they were doing, and had a remarkable memory for names, dates, and events. He wrote many letters, and more than any other family member, kept family members up to date on what the rest of the family was doing.

Taking all that in, out of that particular letter, one part was memorable and became part of our family legend. Near the end of the letter, Uncle Walter wrote: “You ought to come up here. The sawmills are hiring.”

When Mom read that, she turned to Pop and said: “Honey, you just became a lumberjack.”

Mom was weary from the moving every few months, chasing oil wells from one dusty southern California town to the next. She said, “I’m tired of planting flower gardens for someone else to enjoy.” I remember her planting flower seeds at the trailer parks, the seeds sprouting and flowers blooming, then Pop hooking up the trailer to our old Buick and heading off to the next trailer park.

Mom was ready to settle down.

Pop hooked up the trailer for what turned out to be its last long journey. It’s about five hundred miles from Newhall to Point Arena, which Uncle Walter said was about fifteen miles north of Gualala, and would be better for us than Gualala where he lived, because Point Arena had the schools. Five hundred miles is a long day’s journey today, but in those days, and pulling a trailer, it was an odyssey. I think the trip took us four or five days, and several tires – I remember Pop saying that even with the war over for four years, you still couldn’t get decent tires.

When we got to the Jenner Grade north of the Russian River, where Highway 1 was (and is) a narrow winding road tentatively clinging to the steep hillsides above the crashing waves of the Pacific far below, Mom was overcome by looking at the narrow road, the steep cliffs, and Pop working the car and trailer around the sharp turns. Mom told Pop to stop and let her and Ron and me out, then she took Ron and me firmly by the hand, and for the next hour or two we walked over the worst parts of Jenner Grade.

Pop and the trailer were waiting for us where the road finally got better, and we got back in the Buick and completed our journey to our new life. When we got to Point Arena, Pop arranged with the property owner, old Jack Pelascio, for us to park our trailer on a former tennis court next to the old abandoned high school building, where we could easily hook up to electricity, water, and the sewer.

Mom liked the location because we were only a hundred yards from the four-room Point Arena Elementary School.

We arrived on a Saturday, September 10, 1949. The following Monday Ronald and I were in school, with about 28 other students in the combined 1st and 2nd grade class taught by Mrs. Mae Phillips.

While we were in school, Pop visited Uncle Walter, who lived in the Old Milano Hotel (since burned down) on the north side of Gualala, and owned and operated a small general store (since burned down too) on the bluff above the Gualala River just south of today’s Oceansong Restaurant.

Uncle Walter introduced Pop to the manager of the Empire Lumber Company which was located less than a mile further up the Gualala River, and the following day Pop had a job working in the woods setting chokers near the Wheatfield Forks on the south fork of the Gualala.

We were home.

New Doctor in Town

One of our favorite family activities when we lived in the old abandoned high school was playing board games. Among other children we preferred “Monopoly”, but with Mom and Pop our favorite game was “Clue.” We all became adept at stratagems, such as calling out items in our own hands to determine the murder, murder weapon, and murder room, without tipping off the others.

“Miss Scarlett with a knife in the Billiard Room.”

One evening while the four of us were playing Clue on our dinner table in the center of the room that was kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedrooms, Mom fainted and fell from her chair.

A doctor had just moved into town, and lived in Ed McMillen’s old house. After his wife, Myrtle died of cancer, Ed moved into an attic room and rented the rest of his house to the new doctor. Pop sent me to hurry and bring back the doctor.

I ran as fast as I could and banged on his door. It was about seven in the evening, and he answered the door immediately. I told him to come quickly, my mother was unconscious.

The doctor told me to contact our family doctor, and have him take care of Mom.

We didn’t have a family doctor. The only doctor in the area was old Doc Huntley, and he lived in the country on Mountain View Road towards Manchester, over five miles away, and had been retired for years.

I ran back home to tell Pop the doctor wouldn’t come.

Without a word, he stood up, and walked quickly out the door and down the street to the doctor’s house, with me running behind. When he reached the house, Pop banged on the door, and then threw it open. The doctor was standing just inside, and Pop barked out, “My wife needs a doctor.”

“I’m not her doctor.”

“Get your bag.”

The doctor didn’t move, so Pop looked around and spotted a black bag on the table. “Is that your bag?”

“Yes.”

Pop grabbed the bag with one hand, and the doctor’s arm with the other, and pulled him out the door and up the street to our home without saying another word. Pop walked fast, holding the shorter, slightly built doctor under the doctor's arm, and it seemed to lift and propel him forward as they went. I could barely keep up.

Pop pulled the doctor into our one-room home, and finally let him loose when they reached Mom, still lying on the floor. The doctor checked Mom’s pulse, and her eyes, and her chest with his stethoscope, and said: “She’s OK. She should come around soon.”

He propped her legs up, and made her comfortable, and soon her eyes opened, and Mom started to sit up.

The doctor told her not to sit up yet, to just stay down and relax, and then told Pop that she didn’t seem to be sick, that she must have fainted.

Pop asked what to do next, and the doctor said probably nothing, just let Mom take things easy for a couple of days, and see how it went.

Pop asked the doctor what he owed him, and the doctor shrugged his shoulders, so Pop pulled out a five dollar bill. The doctor still didn’t do or say anything, so Pop put it in his bag, and handed the bag to the doctor.

Without another word the doctor left.

A couple of weeks later Pop was in McMillen’s General Store, where the widower Ed, Ralph and his wife Sadie, and Lloyd McMillen all worked. Pop asked Ed how the new doctor was doing, and Ed said that he had moved out and left the area. Apparently he never had any time to himself, day or night, when he wouldn’t be interrupted to make a house call or take care of some emergency. Being the only active doctor within forty miles was too much of a strain, so he had decided to go back to the city and work in a hospital.

Pop asked if Ed had found a new tenant, and when Ed said he hadn’t, Pop negotiated a lease for us on the spot. Within a week we had packed all our meager belongings and moved them into the Ed McMillen house, and parked our trailer nearby next to the clothes line.

Being in a real house again was nice, and quite a change after living a year and a half in the trailer in Lawndale, Carpentaria, Newhall, and Fosters Park, going to two schools in the First grade, and then living in the abandoned high school for three years.

All in all though, my brother Ron and I had enjoyed our travels and the adventure of living in a large abandoned high school. I think Mom was the most appreciative of moving into a real house. We now had a kitchen, dining room, living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom, instead of areas within a large room. We had a normal hot water heater, instead of water lines running through the firebox of the old wood burning cook stove. Mom had an electric stove, and an oil-fired heater instead of using the wood cook stove for cooking and heat too.

Civilization had overtaken the Combs family.

Honor Private Property Rights – California Marine Sanctuaries

My parents with my brother and I moved to Point Arena in 1949. We would go with Pop “rock picking” abalone, and I remember how Pop had to work hard wading among the rocks to find legal-sized abalone. I also remember how good abalone picking was on the Pedretti and Stornetta ranches where we were often invited by the owners to pick abalone and to fish from the rocks.

The reason fishing was so good was so few people were allowed by the land owners to fish and pick abalone on their property. In essence, landowners like the Richardsons, Ratcliffs, Stornettas, Pedrettis, Leporis, and others, were operating their own marine sanctuaries. Their families and friends didn’t take enough fish and abalone to make a difference. They constantly repaired fences damaged by trespassers, patrolled their properties to chase away poachers, and were far more effective and less costly to taxpayers than an army of game wardens.

The difference a change from private to public access can make is obvious on the Stornetta property turned over to the Bureau of Land Management. Abalone were rapidly depleted, and the land trashed. What the Stornettas did without cost to taxpayers, the government can’t afford.

Now the public wants fishing restricted on private lands, and not on public. This makes no sense. The private owners take very little from the ocean resources, pay large property tax bills, and spend their own money to reduce damage caused by the public. Restricting them on their own property would deprive them of valuable property rights they have enjoyed, and paid taxes on, for a very long time.

It would make more sense to make marine sanctuaries primarily in areas now open to the public, because those are the areas that have suffered the most over the years.

Surf Fishing at Alder Creek

Pop used to take Ron and me, and Puddles, and sometimes Mom would come along in our old International Harvester pickup, to the beach at Alder Creek to catch surf fish with a dip net. Back then, in the early 1950’s, Alder Creek formed a lagoon that lapped against the low cliff on the south side. We didn’t know it then, but the reason for the cliffs on either side of Alder Creek was that this was where the San Andreas fault entered the Pacific. The concrete abutments of the old bridge destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake provided a good visual to locate the fault line. 

The water lapping against the cliff meant that Mom, Ron, and I had to take a trail from the parking lot over the hill and then down to the beach. Pop and Puddles went through Alder Creek, in typical Pop fashion. When they reached the shore of the lagoon, Pop put his gear – six pack of Bürgermeister beer, gunny sack for the fish, dip net, and Puddles – into a galvanized steel washtub (which was also our bathtub), and waded across the lagoon pushing the washtub with Puddles proudly standing lookout. When they reached the opposite shore, Puddles jumped out to run in the sand, and Ron and I carried the washtub to a large drift log on the beach, where we gathered driftwood and started a fire while Pop checked out whether any day fish (smelt) were running. 

There are two types of smelt that spawn on the Alder Creek beach. The day fish are about six inches long, and come in to spawn at high tide. There are several ways to find if they are “running” (coming in to spawn). None of the ways are guaranteed or fool proof, but one of the best is to watch for sea birds “working” (diving to feed on fish near the shore). Another way is to watch for fish in the waves. Unlike grunion, the surf fish stay in the wave instead of lying on the sand waiting for another wave to come in and take them back out. That makes seeing them in the waves difficult, but when you do see them, you know you’ll get some fish. The way Pop would usually find fish was just start dipping his net into the waves. Often he would catch fish when there was no indication that they were running.