Rancho Doce Palos

Chapter 2

Just before we crossed the border from Mexico into the United States, I finally heard the whole story - Nancy was really 14 and had run away from her mom when she was 12 because her mom had prostituted her to her boyfriends. She worked in whore houses ever since – Nancy’s attitude was, “at least I finally got to keep the money and not my mom!” I was shocked. I gave her a plan; when we reached the states she would make a short visit to her family and then fly to Seattle to meet me, live with us and go back to school. I needed help with the boys and she needed a stable family. She liked the plan but just had to "get a few things", she meant to come back, I know it. I had to make a stop in Northern California to get some things and leave the children’s father for good before I returned to my little house in the Northwest. I didn’t have a good feeling about Nancy going. “They haven’t been nice to you,” I reminded her as gently as I could, “don’t go, you owe them nothing.” When the kids and I hugged her good-bye and put her on the plane in San Francisco, I never thought even for a minute, that it would be the last time any of us would ever see her again.

If this has been a novel I never would have introduced you to Nancy. I know it is not correct to introduce a character in the first chapter and then drop them from the story, but this is not a novel, this is my life and that is what happened. The details are even stranger and you will hear about them later.

Leaving the San Francisco airport the boys and I headed north for their Dad’s place. He had property about 200 hundred miles north of San Francisco. It was half way to the Oregon border from the bay area, but it seemed more than a world away. First is the drive across the Golden Gate Bridge that connects San Francisco with the Marin headlands and points north. As usual it was foggy and gray in San Francisco and sunny and warm once we crossed into Marin County. My head was filled with organizing plans; get to the kid’s Dad’s place, get our things together, celebrate Thomas’s 4th birthday with our neighbors and friends, leave soon after and head for our little house on the Olympic Peninsula. The house I had bought in Port Townsend last fall before we went to Mexico for the winter. The little house that we would move to, where the boys and I would have a stable home again. I look back now and search for any clue, how could I have know that Thomas would be alive less than a few weeks? That only 2 would move in, not 3.

I loved the drive up to Zenia, where their father’s hundred acres was from San Francisco. I now know, thanks to my husband’s insightfulness; (my only husband – I never married the boy’s father, one of my better decisions), that I thrive on contrast. The drive north from San Francisco is certainly that; from the city of Oz, to the remote mountains. We headed up highway 101 through the ritzy areas of Sausalito, Novato and Petaluma, with their beautiful and affluent architecture, landscaped gardens and crowded streets. My favorite building along that stretch is the one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright near Petaluma. The Marin County Offices or Courthouse or something, anyway when you are going south, you come down this long hill and off in the distance to the left is this amazing building. It has a blue tile roof and looks like some of the sky setting down in among the hills! The blue roof and the blue sky really work and it is a favorite place on the landscape for me. If Thomas was awake he’d say, “I see the sky roof building, I see it first!” Being two years older than Cameron was a huge advantage. Cameron would then see it too.

But we were going north that day and the roof is not so obvious, and though I loved the landscape, I didn’t look forward to seeing the boy’s father, except to leave him. My hope was to get through the birthday, and escape without a scene. He was almost 20 years older than I, an alcoholic, loved cocaine and besides that was just plain mean and nasty. (Ya? So sue me). That I was 23 when we met and fresh from the Midwest, that he was 42 and had been in southern California a long time has a lot to do with it. We met in LA and I would not have stayed with him if I had not seen his land in Northern California, I fell in love with those mountains. He had one of the most beautiful pieces of property I had ever seen. When I saw this property the first time, the shack, the 12 poles in the ground that were to be the house, the creeks, I was in awe and wonder. We went back to LA and I decided to move there and headed back north. I was there alone for awhile before he came up. One day, while hiking around on the hundred acres, I found a small floor built in under some rocks with a makeshift roof over it. It was a great spot to be, it was steep there and the floor made a perfect place to sit and contemplate out over the steep creek valley, if it rained which it did a lot that early spring, you were sort of protected. One day while hanging out there, I noticed that there were some things stored under the floor. One interesting thing was an old, tan, leather briefcase. This is one of those decisive moments that change your life, though you don’t know it at the time. I opened the briefcase; it took a while as it was funky from being out there for so long. Inside were letters, poems and stories that he had written years ago. Wow, it was a shock, a hook. He had feelings, he could write, he could think. Poetry too. Oh, my young heart said, I can now see through his crust, it’s romatic. Ah, a man worth saving, said my mother heart. I had just come from the Midwest as I said and the word Alcoholic was not yet in my vocabulary.

I actually came to spend more time in northern California than he did. When I first saw the hundred acres it was hard to believe that anyone could get to live like that, except Pooh. The property sloped south and had three creeks running the entire length of it. He had a small dirt floored shack by Dry Creek that I adored. The kitchen was totally outside and it was so fun to never sweep - just rake the kitchen floor. I grew up in Michigan and the weather in California felt like heaven to me. I slept outdoors and cooked outdoors that spring, summer and fall. That is what I fell in love with, nature, living outdoors, that freedom, being on that property changed my life. It left a taste that I have sought ever since and a quality that I must have in my life to feel alive. It is in my blood, the need to be outside, the need to be part of the natural world.

It is amazing what you can do without. I lived for year’s, with no phone, no electricity, no mail delivery and certainly no TV reception. Not only do without, but not notice, not mind, have a better life because of it, thrive even.

That day, the day we were driving up from San Francisco after dropping off Nancy at the airport, a large, comfortable, eight-sided pole house, with ponds and gardens awaited us in Zenia. Over those years much had been accomplished. I had favorite swimming holes in all the creeks and the house was filled with antiques I had brought with me from the Midwest. Though I was leaving it all, thankfully, for a little house of our own, the boys and mine, in the rainy northwest. I was looking forward to sanity in my life.

All this was going through my mind as we wound north up Highway 101. The freeway ended the other side of Santa Rosa and turned into a 2 lane road. The towns had become the familiar string of small towns; Cloverdale, Ukiah, Willits, Laytonville. The road becomes more winding and steep with each passing town. The drive up and over the next ridge was becoming longer. Leggett was the last town with a road west to the coast, as we were now deep in the coast Range Mountains. Soon we came to Garberville, our exit off the freeway. Yes, Garberville, then known as the center of the dope growing universe, seat of Humboldt County, home of Humboldt Homegrown. In retrospect I would have to say that the dope growing culture that grew and prospered the years I was there was as good a reason for my leaving as any. When we first moved there, I had no idea what some folks were growing in them there hills. My first introduction to the marijuana culture, was our crazy neighbor Spike, who came barreling up the driveway in his 4x4, (the only way to make it, most sane people parked on the other side of the creek) with the back of his pick-up filled to the brim with huge, bushy green plants.
“Quick,” he yells, “take these, plant these marijuana plants somewhere in the woods. They’re on to me I have to hide.” And he disappears in a spray of mud. It is hard to express how much I came to dislike that man. The father of my children (as yet unborn), thought he was wonderful. I can’t pass through here with out giving you one example of classic Spike behavior.

Our outdoor kitchen was set among the trees on a little meadow above Dry Creek. The house we were building was up the hill from there, a good walk. The house was not finished; the kitchen was still the outside kitchen in the meadow. I had a nice wind chime hanging up on the front eve of the new house. Well, Spike and a few friends and I are sitting, like I said, in the outdoor kitchen. Just out of nowhere, Spike, picks up his rifle and shoots the wind chime off the eve. “Ha! He says, “Got it”. It wasn’t even moving. He eventually went on to get busted for dope, lose his land, start a forest fire, get thrown out of a pick up going up the steep hill from Garberville, and finally, get this, lose his life in a game of Russian roulette.

Garberville is only 30 miles from Rancho Doce Palos, Twelve Poles, the name we had given to the place, the 12 poles that define the house. It still was a good hour of driving before we would get there. That always amazed me; that out west a short road on a map, if it was in the mountains, could take hours; I had grown up in the flat lands. The mountain roads didn’t scare me then, me of the flatlands, I loved that drive. I use to say that I knew I would not die on that road. Oh how arrogant I was. I never thought to say and none of my children.

Garberville was the last stop for supplies, before going up the mountain. We always ran into people we knew and that day was so exception. Lots of families lived back in the hills around there and we all called Garberville; home. Coming out of the produce isle of our favorite grocery store, I hear, “Hey Deborah your back from Mexico!” It was Kate, my midwife for both the boys, she is the best. We give each other a big hug and she has a kiss for Thomas and Cameron, “I knew you before you were born, and while you were born”, she loves to tell them.
“We are going up to the Zenia House to celebrate Thomas’s birthday before we move to that little town I told you about near Seattle. Hey come up to Zenia this Wednesday for the party, we just bought bubbles and balloons and prizes.”
“Great,” she said, “Alex will love it.” Her son was a little older than Thomas. “Then I can hear all about your winter in Mexico, and do you have photos of the house you bought in Port Townsend? I’ll miss you but I am so happy for you, getting out, I know it is what you have been wanting and needing to do. See you Wednesday.”

Driving out of Garberville the road shows you what is in store for you right up front, it is a series of deep switch backs, up the face of a ridge. One lane in most places. Guard rails? No way. Once you wind up and up and if your car does not overheat, you make it to where the road flattens out, though it gets no wider, you are rewarded with a view. Far to the east are the mountains of the Yolla Bolly wilderness area, the backbone of the Coast Range Mountains, looming above the horizon, majestic and snow covered. Some days you would be above the clouds by then and the tops of the hills and peak would look like islands in a sea of fog. Usually this was caused by river fog somehow; it was explained to me though I never totally understood it; it was always magical. The road travels along the mountain ridge. I use to love to stop along the road here, especially in the spring, when the new grass was that vibrant green color and the wild iris were blooming, we would spread a blanket out and relax, drink in the mountains, the stillness and the power of that place.

The road continued down and down to Alderpoint where it crossed the Eel River. We called Alderpoint a town but it really was just a few houses, a post office and a small store. It seemed like the unspoken challenge in Alderpoint was to have as many dead cars in your yard as you had room for. Story was that at one time Alderpoint had a bar, but the front window got busted out so many times that they had to close it. You could get an ice-cream, soda pop, quart of milk, maybe a few rubber like oranges and that was about it. Though after we had been on the mountain for too long, and it was 90 degrees out, coming down to Alderpoint and having an ice-cream was an exceptional treat. Now we wound our way up out of Alderpoint, across the Eel River Bridge and on to the Zenia Bluff road, not stopping for ice-cream. They didn’t call it bluff for nothing. It was a one lane road, straight up one side and straight down the other, it was a few miles of tension, even before the accident. It shouldn’t have even been a road. Big rocks fell and blocked it all the time. The road rises 500 feet above the canyon of Dobyn’s Creek. I had lost two friends on that road already, killed when their cars went off the road.

Once you have passed the crossed the Trinity County Line sign, hard to read as it is so full of bullet holes, you are about half way through the worst of the road. When you pass a big creek the road mellows out somewhat up out of the canyon and back on the ridge, never gets any wider though until you get up around the first big switchback. You have to be looking to catch the first road down to the property - past the first big switch back after the creek, take the dirt road at the back of the curve and not follow the main road around. The road is flat and goes across the side of the hill. Soon you come to a fence with a gate and a cattle guard that you must get out and open and then shut behind you or Bud Goe, the cows owner, will really raise a ruckus. I didn’t mind though, it was beautiful up there. You were still high on the ridge and the views are expansive looking south. We are still a few miles from where their Dad’s property starts. It is a bad road and not for the timid. It is steep as we drive down the mountain to the creek, deep ruts and no shoulder.

Crossing the creek at the bottom though is easier than it looks; I just head the Volvo right in and out the other side. I have to gun it though as there is a hill to get up on the other side. Obviously who ever named Dry Creek must have only seen it in the late summer because by late winter it was a torrent of water, or they would have called it “Dries up Creek.” There was only one time when I got stuck in the creek - it was during a storm, the creek was high and water got in the tail pipe and killed the engine. I have great photos of the car half in and half out of the creek. Not really funny, I had to wade into waist deep, cold rushing water and tie a rope to a tree on either side of the creek so I could rope us together as I took the boys one at a time to the other side. Then I had to leave the boys with a friend and walk up the mountain two miles in the pouring rain to go get Elmer to pull me out before the creek rose even more. This time I drove right through the creek with no problem and right up to behind the back door, it was summer.

The morning of the party Dana (rhymes with banana, as she always said) came walking up the road to the house. “Hey Dana, Hi,” I said, giving her a hug, “I am so glad you came early, you can help me with the decorations. “What is the town you are moving to like?” She asked while we were blowing up balloons. “How did you buy the house there?” “Well”, I said, “I had taken a trip up to see Bob and Mary in Bremerton, Washington, last fall. Bob had gone to grade school with Thomas and Cameron’s father. They had stayed friends ever since. While I was up there I thought I would go and see Terry and Chris, my friends from Marin County. Remember Terry is the one who built my cabin two summers ago out on Long Ridge. They had moved to Port Townsend. I really liked Susan, their friend who had also moved up there from Marin. She was really cool. She had twin girls about 5 years older than Thomas. She was my inspiration. She started a second hand children’s clothing store in Port Townsend and had just bought her own little home. She was married to an alcoholic, and I was just beginning to understand that word. He was a very depressing guy. He walked around like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, kind of bent down, or hunched over. He stayed in his room a lot and read Nazi war novels. She even got him to quit drinking; he went to AA, ate a half gallon of ice-cream a night and read. That he was a Vietnam War vet I knew, but I didn’t understand what that really meant yet.” “So what is this Susan like?” Dana asked, “and what are houses going for there?” “Susan was so great; she let me stay at her house while I looked for a place to rent. The house prices were so low in Port Townsend at the time that I decided to just buy one. I bought a cute little cottage that had a view of the water for $28,000! I had $5,000. for a down and the mortgage was $250. mo.” “Wow, you can’t get anything here for that. Last winter when you looked around the bay area I remember you saying you could not buy anything with $5,000 down.” “Plus,” I said, “I think it will be good to be farther away from the boy’s father. The town is really beautiful. It is an old Victorian seaport, with a two street downtown on the water. You can watch the ferry come in from Whidbey Island to the middle of downtown. There are many old brick buildings and it is very lovely to see the sailboats in Port Townsend Bay when you are downtown. It is a very small and manageable town, a great place to raise kids.” “Well, where we are certainly is becoming not a nice place to raise kids,” Dana interjected. “I am so bummed out at the way pot growing is changing our community. In the beginning, it was just a few alternative thinking people who had moved north out of San Francisco in the 60’s. Then a few of their friends moved up. Most of these people loved the land and had homesteads and food gardens in addition to growing pot. They were the original ‘back to the landers’. There were very few ways to love living on 80 acres outside of Garberville and finding a way to make a living.” “The thing I thought was cool,” I said, “was that for the first time these alternative folks, call them Hippies, had money and thus a voice in the community. They started private schools, a free clinic; they ran for city council, opened shops and service business that made Garberville wake from the slumber of the logging industry. Folks were friendly, helpful and tended to be generous.” “The thing I notice,” said Dana, “is that even the old timers here are into it a little.” “Yea, you know John Monroe, the guy on the other side of Monroe Creek from us, they named the creek after his dad, he owns all the way up to the Zenia store and the Kettenpom road. Anyway, he came over one day and said, “OK, I have worked this land hard here all my life, how the hell do these young whiper snappers drive these brand new pick-ups?” So we told him. Pretty soon he comes over and says, “How about showing me what I need to know.”
“Ya, now it is starting to be known and more than just nice hippy folks from the city have started coming up.” Dana agreed, “They don’t love the land, they don’t even like it, they are just into for the pot. They aren’t even into smoking it, they just want the money. I dread this coming harvest season when everyone gets so paranoid. Remember last year when you came to my house.” “Yea, I said, “and your neighbor chased me off with a gun. I think he has even met me. I was scared, jez I had the boys with me. Then there was the time that I was walking on the 80 acres above us, no one lives there, when all of a sudden I hear vehicles and then see 5 to 10 jeeps appear on the road below, a bunch of guys in camouflaged clothing jump out, each waving a big gun. Oh my god, I thought, they are busting this place. Lucky for me I knew the land and could go up and around so they never new I was there. It was as close to a war zone as I ever want to get.” “It is a war zone,” Dana shook her head. “The thing that sticks in my mind most,” I said, “was how many of them there were, how they kept jumping up and down with excitement and swinging their guns.” ”I am so glad that by this fall you and the boys will be in Port Townsend.” Susie said. “Oh, I will be there in 2 weeks if all goes well,” I was happy to remind us.

It is ironic how things look from different perspectives. How 20 plus years since the accident have blurred things. Some things stand out and others recede. I have a few photos of the birthday party. I stare at them. They are from another time, a time when I was happy, when I only really knew happiness and still felt the world was a safe place. Nothing bad had ever happened to me, I use to say.

Wow, I look young, long hair, no gray. Look there is Rita. There’s Dana, there’s Nancy and Wendy. It was early summer, June 23; I made carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and put fresh flowers from the garden on top. Each side of the cake had vases, well caning jars actually, of more flowers from the garden, roses, bachelor buttons and baby’s breath. There is a really wonderful photo of Thomas, Cameron and two little girls about their same age, looking at the lit candles on the cake. Thomas has his hands on the table, outstretched to the cake with a smile of contained excitement. Cameron, a little over 2 years old, looks positively mesmerized. One of the little girls, I wish I could remember their names, has her mouth open in a small O, eyes glued to the cake.

I see in the photo that the unfinished house is decorated with balloons, streamers and a piñata we had brought back from Baja. Thomas had on his red painter pants and a deep blue t-shirt that brought out the blue of his eyes. Cameron looked cute in brown corduroy overalls, with a shirt I remember now I so loved, a white cotton shirt with a collar, short sleeved with yellow and brown plaid on it. There is a photo of me standing over Thomas and looking down at the table and he is looking down too and we look so much alike, I never noticed that before. Five photos, that’s all, of his last birthday. I search our faces, our posture, our vibes, could we know that Thomas would be 4 years old for only 18 days. No, we were totally oblivious. I am staring a woman who was happy - a complete stranger.