sonora2sonoma

by Tim Konrad

Chapter Eleven

I attended grammar school at the old dome in Sonora. The primary grade kids attended classes in the basement of the old 3-story building, while the middle-school-aged students met on the second floor. The 7^th and 8^th graders had classes in the uppermost level, where the views out the windows were the best and the temptation to spend time daydreaming was the greatest. I found this feature to be of enormous benefit when the rigors of sentence diagramming would become overwhelming and the only available recourse was to check out for a while. I suppose it’s reasonable to admit I was a failure at sentence diagramming but that shortcoming doesn’t seem to have affected my ability to construct passable sentences, and I still have fond memories of that view.

One day during civics class, my 8^th grade teacher, Mr. Ostlund, spoke to us about a phenomena he termed gerrymandering. A then archaic term, it referred, we were told, to a practice, long since abandoned, in which representation in congressional districts had been manipulated not to accurately reflect census data, but for political reasons. The teacher explained that the practice had eventually fallen out of favor because it had unfairly disadvantaged some groups of people over others. As this illustrates, it’s folly to underestimate the power of a bad idea to resurface further down the road to once again perpetrate mischief upon the unsuspecting or uninformed. It’s also a good argument for the necessity of eternal vigilance as a countermeasure against such goings on.

Another (hopefully) well-meaning lie told us under that hallowed dome came from the lips of Smokey the Bear himself when he came to visit our primary grade class one afternoon. The iconic figure spoke to us about how destructive logging practices like clear cutting had once done great damage to watersheds but that enlightened foresters had since prevailed in getting the practice discontinued. A most reassuring message, I believed it for decades until the first time I flew over the Cascade Range in Washington state in the early 80s and saw mile upon mile of mountainous territory that had been stripped bare of growth. I later discovered the damage wasn’t confined to the northwest alone when I peered beyond a couple of rows of trees lining the side of Highway 108 in the forests above Pinecrest and saw a clear cut area just beyond. As shocking as it is to contemplate children being lied to by Smokey the Bear, I can think of no more powerful illustration of the change wrought by time than to compare the bear’s mendacity to that of the current occupant of the White House, a person whose dishonesty has reached epic proportions.

***

As previously noted, my father’s business partner had the gift of gab. He came fully equipped with a repertoire of stories and anecdotes, materials from which he could draw for hours at a time without running out of sources. If you were around him long enough, however, you would start to hear repeats. The story of how he used to fall towards moving vehicles and wasn’t cured of it until his friends tied him up to a telephone pole by the roadside to prevent him from falling was interesting, funny even, the first time I heard it. When people would offer him a beer, Ralph would politely decline, explaining that beer made his eyes cross. After the third or fourth time I heard these things, I became more interested in studying the reactions, clearly visible on the faces of the people listening as they labored to place what he was saying into some conceptual framework that didn’t leave them with a vague sense of unease.

Some of Ralph’s stories centered on people he knew in the community. One tale involved an Italian man he generically called “Tony.” There were many people of Italian heritage in Tuolumne County in those days, particularly from the Genoa region. As the story went, Tony one day decided to make an unannounced visit to see some friends, also Italian. Unbeknownst to Tony, these folks had been discussing him just before his arrival, one of them having just said, “That Tony, he’s a no good son-of-a-bitch.” The next instant Tony arrived and it was all “Hey Tony, Good to see you!”

My dad was not one to speak ill of people and would only say of Ralph that he was “eccentric.” A well-respected member of several fraternal organizations and an avid card player, Ralph was well-liked in the community. He also, I suspect,  had a guardian angel. I had occasion to ride with him up Highway 49 to Jackson on several occasions. Back then, before the construction of New Melones reservoir, the road wound down to the river at Melones and then climbed back up into the hills toward Carson Hill on its way north to Angels Camp and beyond. There were around twenty blind hairpin curves on that stretch of road and Ralph cut the corner on every one of them every single time but never encountered an oncoming car.

Fidgety and nervous, he was not a meticulous craftsman like my father. Possessed of a short attention span, Ralph once forgot he was counterbalancing me on a plank suspended 25 feet in the air and started to step off to go have a smoke. Many customers overlooked his shortcomings because of his personality; what complaints my father received about Ralph’s work he never shared with him.

You could say that Ralph was lucky he never had a collision, given his driving habits, and you’d be right! You could also posit that, by his never having had any problems arise on account of his poor driving choices, Ralph was denied the opportunity to learn that such consequences provide. Adversity, as they say, builds character, and, while Ralph was beyond doubt a character in his own right, having come by it naturally, his life experience might have been deeper had he not been insulated from consequences.