sonora2sonoma

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

The Guzzi Ranch

On the north side of East Mono Way just past its intersection with Sanguinetti Way once sat the bucolic and picturesque Guzzi Ranch. This was before the development of East Sonora, before Greenley Road was constructed, when the back-side of the Guzzi Ranch bordered the Silva Dairy holdings and most of the surrounding land consisted of rural parcels, much of it undeveloped.

The Guzzi Ranch was accessible from my neighborhood by crossing Baretta Street and following a trail, now overgrown and obstructed by fallen oak trees, up through the Truckenmiller acreage where, just before the crest of the hill, it bordered the ranch.

It was in one of those oak trees that I took my first drag off a cigarette. My childhood friend, Bill, and I had been playing under the tree when one of Bill’s older brothers, John, had offered me a drag off his cigarette. I must have been somewhere around twelve at the time. Bill was two years my junior and John was probably fourteen.

I was filled with both excitement and apprehension when John proffered me the puff. I’d been around smoking adults my entire life, so it seemed like a perfectly normal activity . . . for ADULTS anyway! Up to that point, however, it had never entered my mind as something permissible for me take part in.

With these thoughts spinning around in my head, I grasped the thing in my trembling fingers and put it to my lips. Hesitatingly, I filled my mouth with smoke, quickly exhaling as John’s recriminations rang in my ear, “C’mon, don’t be a sissy! You’ve got to inhale!”  

Now, the last thing I ever wanted to hear was someone calling me a sissy. It was bad enough when it came from a detractor, but, when a friend said it, the criticism hit even harder. Determined not to be upended by something as trivial as a casual remark, I drew another drag off the fag, this time acting like it was something I did all the time. My bravado was short-lived, however, when my false front dissembled into an uncontrollable coughing fit that left me gasping for air as I grasped to retain any remaining shreds of my departing dignity. 

The thing I remember most about my introduction to nicotine is the creeping, numbing sensation I experienced as the poison circulated through my body, beginning in my extremities and slowly spreading to my trunk and, finally, my head, where it settled in like a dark and foreboding blanket, dulling my senses as it did its deadly duty.

It would be reasonable to assume my first experience with tobacco encouraged me to stay clear of the stuff, and, for several years, it had that effect. Somewhere in my 16^th year, however, the allure and mystique of cigarettes got the better of me and I joined the ranks of those addicted to the devil weed. It would take another thirteen years and several failed attempts at smoking cessation before I would finally slip free of the clutches of Nicotiana.

***

Meanwhile, back to the Guzzi Ranch:  We neighborhood kids were drawn to a particular rock outcropping that once sat at a high point on the ranch grounds near the site of the present community hospital. The outcropping commanded the much-coveted high ground necessary to man defensive positions during the endless hours we enjoyed playing “army” or cowboys & Indians. 

That same outcropping was likely the one used by Miller Sardella and his friends in their youth to stash their “loot” after they’d  burgled a barrel of wine from the residence of a local Italian man. Their plan had been to return the following day to enjoy the fraudulent fruits of their ripped off rosè.

Unbeknownst to them, however, the local constable had received news of their caper from the town’s gossip mill.

When Sardella and his friends—some whose names he’d once told me I would have recognized, had he shared them with me—returned as planned, they were met by the constable, who, in the former sheriff’s words, “gave them all a good licking” and made them return the barrel, pushing it up the middle of Washington Street in broad daylight so all could witness their humiliation.

***

The ranch was peppered with piles of rocks, the result of work done decades earlier to prepare the pastures for grazing. The rockpiles provided the perfect habitat for a variety of small creatures like spiders, snakes and mice, to thrive in.

Among the most fascinating to us kids were the Black Widow spiders we’d find lurking in the rockpiles. These spiders were reclusive by nature and had a preference for hiding in places where they were not likely to be disturbed. One day, while overturning a few rocks, we caught a black widow and placed it in a pint-sized Mason jar.

The spider was an exceptionally big female and its underbelly sported the tell-tale red hourglass that distinguishes this species from all others. Fancying ourselves citizen scientists, we set about exploring what would happen if a big, fat earthworm was placed in the jar with the spider.

The worm’s writhing and twisting about drew the attention of the spider. As it drew closer, the two bulbous appendages that protruded from the spider’s face spread open to reveal a pair of pincers as the emerged, perpendicular to the opening. Then, grasping the worm’s soft fleshy body with its pincers, the spider injected it with a dark-colored and presumably venomous substance. The translucent quality of the worm’s flesh permitted us to witness the venom as it travelled the length of the worm’s body. We were at once fascinated and creeped out by the spectacle! 

As my friends and I grew older, we would hunt quail on the ranch, or more accurately, we would search for quail on the ranch, since it had been mostly cleared of the brush quail depend on to protect them from predators. What birds we did locate we found mostly in the brushier areas we crossed leading to the ranch property. That brush-covered tract partly belonged to a man named Eldon Truckenmiller. This fellow resided in a small housing tract that bordered the southern end of his property.

Truckenmiller didn’t appreciate us kids crossing his land, and we didn’t appreciate him for harassing us when we did so. With the conviction of teens not burdened by the wisdom of good judgment, my friends and I justified our scorn for this man as a perfectly reasonable response to an unwarranted and capricious provocation. After all, we meant his property no harm, or so we thought. Merely utilizing it as a means to get from point A to point B arguably did no harm. But rolling a spare tire down off the hill and onto his rooftop in the wee hours of the night, while it didn’t, fortunately, resulting in any physical damage, nonetheless stretched the limits of credibility as a justifiable response.

By this time, Miller Sardella, the teenaged miscreant, had become Miller Sardella, Tuolumne County Sheriff. When Mr. Truckenmiller alerted the authorities to the night-time tire raid, Miller immediately recognized the wider-than-usual footprints of one of my accomplices, Bill, along with a cigar butt he knew could only have come from him. A light but serious scolding followed—one that included Miller’s signature advice to teens “Don’t sweat the misdemeanors but avoid the felonies”—after which we all agreed to tread more lightly where Mr. Truckenmiller was concerned. We did not, however, discontinue using the trail across his land whenever we wanted to access the ranch beyond.

***

When I was sixteen, I instituted the first of what would become occasional night-time hikes where my friends and I would hike to the ranch by moonlight. These night hikes were a clandestine affair, since my parents would not have approved of my running around at night when they thought I was in bed sleeping.

My dad had built a small fort in our backyard for me and my friends to play in. It was big enough to house a couple of old cots for sleeping on. I would invite my friends Mike and Tom to overnight visits where we could easily slip over the back wall to the woods beyond without arousing my parents’ suspicions. I was reluctant to invite Bill on these hikes because by this time our relationship had taken on a competitive quality where we each wanted to be the leader.

That competition came to a head one day when it erupted into a fist-fight between the two of us. It happened at a place we called ‘Jackrabbit Meadow’—a natural clearing on a gently sloping hillside partway through the woods leading up to the property commanded by Mr. Truckenmiller. No more than 60 feet across and a like distance in width, the meadow was filled with tall grass turned yellow by the summer sun.

Bill and I rolled about in the midst of the grass that afternoon, all sweaty, as we wrestled, punched and poked each other for what seemed like an eternity. In the beginning, each of us more or less held our ground.  Bill was shorter than me and had a stocky, solid build. More important, he was stronger than I was and had more stamina. After a while, I began to wear down faster than Bill, which played to his advantage.

The tension had been brewing for some time between us as we’d both tried to assert our dominance on our outings. By that time, I had outgrown the fits of rage that troubled my earlier youth, but I still had the big mouth that had gotten me into trouble more often than I was willing to admit.

I didn’t want to fight Bill, mostly because I’d never learned how to fight, despite my father’s having tried to teach me. I could never seem to follow my dad’s advice to look in the other guy’s eyes for clues to when he would throw his next punch. When I failed to block a blow, the experience of being hit in the head, even softened by boxing gloves, was so disorienting it left me confused, bewildered, unable to think clearly.  And when you can’t think clearly in such a situation, or in any situation, for that matter, you have no business being there!

At several points I attempted to escape the struggle, only to be turned back by one of Bill’s two older brothers, who were present to  ‘referee’ the affair. So, there I was, locked in a battle that had been long in coming, a fight I couldn’t run away from, and one with no way out but through.

Nobody emerged the clear victor that day, at least not the way I saw it. and if the confrontation failed to change the dynamics of our relationship, it at least relieved some of the pressure that had been building up between us. 

***

The Guzzi Ranch was a picturesque piece of property set in a lovely setting that now resides solely in the memories of those fortunate enough to have beheld it in its heyday. The portion of the population that regards its current state as some sort of improvement is emblematic of the school of thought that sees the world through the lens of ledgers and balance sheets. According to such thinking, more nuanced concerns like environmental protection, historic preservation and aesthetics are viewed simply as obstacles to be overcome. 

How anyone could quantify beauty in the first place, much less value it beneath other more worldly and materialistic matters, is beyond my ken to understand. When I think of the Guzzi Ranch, my thoughts turn to the natural beauty of the place and its capacity to instill wonder, as it did for me on one particular afternoon in the 1970s.

I’d been standing by the side of the highway in front of the ranch, looking down the long driveway that sloped to a low point in the pasture fronting the road and then climbed back up, straight as an arrow, to the farmhouse beyond. A large weeping willow stood beside the house.

Alongside the driveway were lined fence posts on both sides of the roadway.  As I gazed down the lane, a red-winged blackbird suddenly appeared. In one long, graceful motion, the bird swooped in, raising up slightly as it reached the fencepost, before dropping down on the post with all the grace and economy of movement of an accomplished ballet dancer.

But, instead of merely witnessing the bird alighting on the pole, I experienced the sensation of BEING the bird as it performed its landing maneuver. It was exhilarating and unlike anything I’d ever experienced. At the time, I remember thinking, “So that’s what it feels like to fly, to land on a fencepost! Wow!!!”

There are no words in my vocabulary capable of accurately describing what that experience really felt like. How on earth could anyone perform a cost-benefit analysis on, or seek to affix a monetary value to, something capable of eliciting such feelings?

To be continued:

With time passing as quickly as it does these days, the old, familiar seven-day week to which we’ve grown accustomed has grown threadbare, tattered, worn thin by the specter of days seen scurrying by in a frenzied rush to get to God knows where . . . it almost makes one want to return to an earlier era, when the days dragged drudgingly along as if time, tamer of worlds, was  a renewable resource capable of endless iteration.

Oh, how I long for the time when the pace of days was slower! In past epochs, which is to say, in my youth, the days crawled by almost imperceptibly, like glaciers once did before men with more ambition than presence sought to “improve” what was always a perfect system.

Now, like glacial melt hastened by a warming climate, it’s as if the thawing days, newly energized, have become imbued with a newfound sense purpose that propels them forward ever faster.

How odd it is to recall, in light of the blur from the friction of the dance of days at its present pace, that the third grade was five years long. These days, months flash by like weeks once did, and weeks expend themselves more like days. On the ‘plus’ side, Winter is much shorter than it used to be; on the ‘minus’ side, so is Summer!

We need not further complicate this discussion with the fact, inconvenient though it is, that time is nothing more than is a compromise devised by humans, a construct conceived to make sense of something otherwise unexplainable, inscrutable.

Truth aside, however, time may also be viewed as an arbitrary arrangement, an agreement between all affected parties, which is to say everyone, to measure, divide and, among the more optimistic, to conquer that mysterious dimension that allows us to take note of the changes we witness, over “time,” in our surroundings and ourselves.

And, since this agreement is of our own making, we need not be bound by convention, or precedent, in our decision-making concerning its application.

In other areas of life, when a problem is identified, a solution is often devised to overcome it. Why should calendrical concerns be treated any differently?

If the current calendars can’t keep up with the accelerating onslaught of days, maybe it’s time to lighten their load, time to invent new ways, new days, to supplement  those overworked sentinels of sensate subjectivation.

While ‘seven’ may rhyme with ‘Heaven.’ the same’s may be said of ‘eleven.’

While some may see this silly rhyme

And think I have just too much time

That ought be put to better use

And judge me for my word abuse

To these I’d say, if only seven

Aren’t enough, perhaps eleven

Might better meet the facts at hand

And satisfy this new demand.

If eleven-day weeks seem too long, just remember that, as you grow older, that will change and, eventually, if you live long enough, eleven days will seem more like seven.

At least that’s my story!

And I’m sticking to it!

Tim Konrad

December 27, 2021

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

By
Tim Konrad

Not all the recollections of my 1950s childhood were warm and fuzzy. There were also other, less welcoming memories recalling a time fraught with peril, fear and disease. Antibiotics hadn’t been around that long back then, and people were more keenly aware of the risks posed by transmissible diseases. Before the development of antibiotics, something as simple as a paper cut often resulted in a deadly infection.

Abraham Lincoln’s favorite son died of typhus in the midst of the Civil War, and an infected blister led to the severe blood poisoning that took the life of President Coolidge’s favorite son, Calvin Jr., in 1924. Smallpox, the disease that took Benjamin Franklin’s son in 1736, wouldn’t be completely eradicated until 1979.

Prior to 1936, people routinely perished from complications originating from simple infections. That year, a drug named prontylin was used to save President Roosevelt’s son FDR Jr., who had been facing death from a bout with streptococcus.

Penicillin, considered the first true antibiotic, was accidentally discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but it wasn’t mass-produced until 1943 to meet the growing demands of the Allied forces during the Second World War.

          Curiously, Fleming’s colleagues had shown little interest when he’d presented his discovery to them. When initial attempts to refine the fungus proved unsuccessful, Fleming came to the conclusion that production of the compound for therapeutic purposes was nearly impossible.

          The project was revived in 1937 by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who attempted to devise a workable way to purify the penicillin from its natural state. By 1940, their team had produced enough penicillin to begin testing it in animals. Eight mice were infected with streptococci bacteria, but only four of them were given penicillin to counteract it. The half that received the antibiotic survived while the other four mice perished.

          It took time and great effort to overcome the obstacles to efficient production of the substance. Those obstacles were brought into sharp relief in 1941, when the first human trial began with a 43-year-old policeman who had developed a life-threatening infection from a cut. His initial response to treatment had been promising but, when the small supply of available penicillin had run out, his infection rallied and he succumbed.  

          What followed was a novel approach to increasing the supply of penicillin. Noting that around 80% of an administered dose of the substance was being excreted when a patient urinated,  a campaign was launched to harvest patients’ pee. Even with that measure, however, it was apparent a new mass production process was needed, but British industry was too engaged in the war effort to meet the challenge.

          In 1941, Howard Florey decided to look elsewhere. He assembled a team in Peoria, Illinois at a Department of Agriculture research laboratory. The Peoria team discovered that a by-product of readily-available corn starch, when added to the mold broth, resulted in an exponential  increase in penicillin production.

The team also looked into different mold strains, eventually discovering a strain on a rotting cantaloupe located at a nearby market that made six times more mold than the strain Fleming had been working with when he’d made his initial discovery. This paved the way for large-scale penicillin production during WW II.

Presaging the company’s later role in Covid vaccination research, Pfizer was one of the principal manufacturers of penicillin for the war effort.

Penicillin played a pivotal role in my young life when, as a baby, I came down with a mysterious illness. No one, not even, Dr. McGillis, the physician who’d attended me, could ever shed light on exactly what I’d fallen ill from, save to say that, had the drug not been administered to me  I might well have died from it.

The knowledge that, were it not for penicillin, I quite likely would not be here to write these words, has continually guided my choices concerning vaccinations, and has made me a staunch believer in germ theory and the scientific method as well as a supporter of science in general.

When Dr. Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine came into use in 1955, forty-seven years after it had been first identified in 1908, it wasn’t long before the first doses were administered at Sonora Elementary School. Polio cases had surged nation-wide in 1952, and the local community embraced the chance to protect its children from infection. My cousin George had come down with a mild case of it, as had several other kids in the community.

President Roosevelt had fallen ill to polio in 1921, and there were frightening tales of people confined to living out their lives trapped in “iron lung” machines because the muscles they needed in order to breathe had become paralyzed by the pathogen. Since it was a virus, there was no cure, which meant the only safe means of protection was through vaccination.

To my 8 or 9-year-old sensibilities, the only thing pathological about the affair was my fear of needles. Sugar-cubes loaded with the vaccine would be administered a few years later in a subsequent round of vaccinations, but the first few rounds of the drug were administered via injection.

The needles were short, similar to the ones diabetics use to administer insulin shots, but the mere fact needles and pain were involved was all that was needed to send me into an emotional tail-spin that would leave me consumed with dread apprehension for days leading up to each round of shots. And there were several rounds! Despite my fears, however, there was comfort to be found in the knowledge that I was protected from the virus.

I take that same comfort today knowing that my chances of surviving the current Covid pandemic are greatly improved because I got vaccinated. I find it hard to understand what motivates the people who refuse to take this simple step toward helping their fellow citizens achieve herd immunity.

Beyond all the arguments and reasons presented by those who oppose vaccines and vaccine mandates lurks a bigger issue, one with the potential to transform society, and not in a good way!  

The people advancing these ideas all appear to have failed to realize that their behavior isn’t taking place in a vacuum, that their actions affect other people, and that their choices place their neighbors, not to mention themselves, at risk.

This development points to a worrisome trend with potentially ominous ramifications for the future of our society:  The sense of social responsibility that guides the actions of those whose considerations extend beyond their own personal needs and interests appears to be missing in these people. Where this may ultimately lead is anyone’s guess at this moment, but it plainly points to trouble ahead.

To be continued:

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

By
Tim Konrad

Our vet back in the 1970s was Dr. Lewis Bergstrom. He was dedicated to his work, he loved animals and we trusted him. My first wife Jeannie and I had a lot of pets, so we weren’t strangers when we’d call on him. Our relationship with Dr. Bergstrom began in 1966, when we brought our beloved puppy, Salvador, to him for treatment. Salvador was a Doberman-Shepherd mix, but he looked more Doberman in appearance. 

At that time, Jeannie and I were living in a one-room bungalow we rented from  Geraldine McConnell for the staggering sum of $55 per month. It sat on North Stewart Street behind the Memorial Hall. During our relatively short time there, we acquired a puppy, naming him “Salvador” after a restaurateur in Mazatlan, Mexico I had met while vacationing there.

A busy street wasn’t a good place to raise a puppy and, one day, when he was around two months old, Salvador slipped out of the apartment and was run over by a car. Jeannie and I took him to Dr. Bergstrom, who found the accident had broken Salvador’s right knee joint. The Doc set the leg and encased it in a cast. I can still remember the overpowering smell of betadyne that emanated from our pal when we picked him up at the vet’s office afterward.

Everything went well, or so we thought, until we brought him back to have the cast removed. When the day finally arrived, Dr. Bergstrom took us aside upon our arrival. Since Salvador had still been growing during the healing process, the Doc explained, the leg’s immobility had permitted it to fuse at the knee joint. He presented us with two options: Have Salvador ‘put to sleep,’ or have his leg amputated.

We both cringed at the thought of amputation, but the Doc assured us that dogs can still get around well with one leg missing. We chose that option but, in actuality, there was only one choice to be made.

The operation was a success and Salvador grew up to be a wonderful dog and a great companion. He had a generous personality and. most importantly, he was gentle with our young son John. After a few months we found a more suitable home in a safer location, far removed from traffic—a two-bedroom house in the middle of an almond orchard at the end of a long driveway. Located out behind the County Hospital, it was close enough for convenience but far enough away to evince a rural feel.

Among our neighbors was an older couple—Mr. and Mrs. Larry Kraft. Mr. Kraft would hang their clothes to dry on a long clothesline in their back yard. One day, Salvador pulled a blanket down from the clothesline and brought it home to our house. We returned the blanket to Mr. Kraft the following day with our apologies. The next time he hung the blanket out to dry, Salvador pilfered it again, once more bringing it back to our house.

After we returned the blanket the third time, and Salvador again made off with it afterward, it became a sort of mutually recognized but unspoken ritual in which Mr. Kraft would hang the blanket up and Salvador would take it down, repeating the cycle over and over again.

One crisp morning just before Easter we looked down the driveway and spotted Salvador sprinting up toward our house clutching a large inflatable Easter Bunny in his mouth. Upon reaching the house, he took it straight to our son, John, so he could play with it. It took a bit of persuasion to convince John we needed to locate the toy’s rightful owners so we could return it to them.

Even with one leg missing, I could not keep up with Salvador when we played ball together. He could outrun me straight-away and, when he’d zig unexpectedly, I would keep going straight despite trying to follow him,  sometimes falling down in the process.

One day, a large mastiff-looking beast showed up at our house. Jeannie and I were in the habit of letting our pets come and go in the house, so she allowed it to come inside. When she tried to get it to leave, however, it growled at her menacingly.

The same thing happened the following day, so she called Animal Control for advice. The County Animal Control officer back then was a man named Vernon Reitz. Mr. Reitz came to our house the next day while I was at work. He told Jeannie there was nothing he could do about the mastiff, since one of our dogs, Serafina, was in heat at the time.

While there, he took note of the number of dogs we owned—5—and said to Jeannie, “You don’t need that many dogs. Why don’t you let me take one or two of them?” Offended at the mere idea, Jeannie told him “no” and asked him to leave.

A day or two later, Salvador went missing. We searched everywhere for him, asked all the neighbors if anyone had seen him, and even placed an ad in the newspaper, but had no luck locating him. His disappearance brought us terrible sadness. Losing Salvador affected us all deeply because we regarded him as part of our family.

A couple of months went by and the sting of Salvador’s loss slowly began to fade, Then one day we read a story in the local newspaper recounting how an older gentleman named
Russell Grigsby, who lived in the Jupiter area way out behind Twain Harte, had also lost his dog under mysterious circumstances. Grigsby was a truly unique character who also happened to be a friend and confidant of the Union Democrat’s editor, Harvey McGee. The newspaper periodically published articles by Mr. Grigsby in the form of fascinating letters recounting his various exploits.

Grigsby, it was reported, had heard unsettling things about the animal control officer that had led him to  suspect Reitz might have had something to do with his dog’s disappearance. Mr. Grigsby had even gone so far as to ask Reitz if he had taken his dog. When Reitz denied having done so, Grigsby followed the officer’s truck as he drove to the Bay Area laboratory where he was known to transport animals left unclaimed at the pound.

It turned out Reitz had indeed purloined Grigsby’s pooch, as he found his dog still caged in the back of the man’s truck parked in front of the Berkeley facility where he had taken the dog to sell it for testing.

Upon learning of Grigsby’s discovery, it became clear to us what had happened to our dog. Since nothing we could have done at that point would have brought our beloved Salvador back to us, we didn’t report our suspicions to the authorities. It might have been better, in retrospect, if we had reported the incident, but we were heartsick at the time and just wanted to put an end to the affair and move on.

***

There were many times after that when we brought various pets to Dr. Bergstrom for treatment, ranging from routine vaccinations to mending our cat Tchitske’s broken leg, to after-hours trips to have porcupine quills removed from our mixed-Terrier, Malcom’s mouth. There was also the time a neighbor found our dog, Sweet, trapped beneath a large rock that had fallen on her while she’d been digging a hole in a midden pile uphill from our house out past  Phoenix Lake.  She’d been trapped long enough to become dehydrated, but the Doc returned her to good health in short order. Dr. Bergstrom took each assignment in stride.  That is, until the night I brought him an ailing rooster.

Known simply as “the rooster,” this bird had developed a tumor-like growth beside one of its ankles. As the lesion had grown larger, the bird had become listless. When I took him to our neighbor, Ernie, an old retired prize-fighter-turned-farmer, his advice was as brutal as his diagnosis: “Put it out of its misery!”

After taking one look at the ailing avian’s appendage, Ernie had exclaimed, “That’s Bunglefoot!” When pressed further to explain what Bunglefoot actually was, Ernie was as vague on his details as he’d been definitive in his prognosis.

Yet, when I took the bird to Dr Bergstrom, he was absent his usual reassuring self. He seemed thrown a bit by the exotic nature of my request, as if it was too far afield of his usual bailiwick. This surprised me because I knew he worked on farm animals. Apparently, cows and horses were okay to treat but chickens were not.

He’d never heard of Bunglefoot, the Doc had confided, but he mirrored Ernie’s advice nonetheless. I can’t remember for sure, but I seem to recall him having actually added, “Hell, if it was me, I’d take him home and cook him!” The humor was lost on me, however, since that also meant it had fallen to me to dispatch the poor thing, and I absolutely detested killing. I so disliked killing, in fact, it was the reason I’d given up hunting some years earlier.

I was disappointed. I had hoped that, if the Doc had determined nothing could be done to cure the rooster, he would have offered to euthanize it. If I’d asked him to do it, he probably would have, but it hadn’t occurred to me at the time to ask.

Back home, it was time to decide by what means the bird would be dispatched. That old standby, the hatchet, seemed too gruesome a way to contemplate, so I elected to send the rooster off instead with a bullet to its head. I briefly considered using my shotgun, but when I thought of the mess that would have created, I quickly ruled it out.

That left me with the 22, a small-caliber rifle best suited for plinking off varmints. Without going into the weeds on the relative merits of ammunition and its intended purposes, suffice it to say that a smaller-sized projectile requires greater aim to achieve accuracy than does its bigger, louder and messier cousin, the shotgun shell.

Evening had arrived and the light was waning.  In addition, the bird kept moving his head, so my first attempt missed its mark entirely. I got luckier with the second shot, hitting the bird squarely in his head while sending him off as painlessly and unceremoniously as possible.

I spent the rest of the evening sorting through the riot of conflicting feelings, thoughts about those feelings and feelings about those thoughts about those feelings that comes apiece with violent acts of the sort I had just perpetrated.

To be continued:

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

By
Tim Konrad

My wife, Michelle, is fond of listening, each morning, to a segment on KQED-FM titled “Perspective.”  Each episode features a short essay submitted by a listener. The topic could be just about anything, so long as it’s informative,  positive and uplifting.

One morning last week, the show ran a piece by Santa Rosa naturalist Michael Ellis titled “Mistletoe,” that centered on mistletoe and the origins of its uses in northern Europe and beyond. Listening to it put me in touch with my experiences with mistletoe growing up.

The species of mistletoe originally associated with holiday tradition is European mistletoe. In North America, a close cousin, the oak mistletoe, fills that role. In times past, the plant was thought to possess not only medicinal properties but even magic powers. The practice of kissing under the mistletoe was first developed in England and was once believed to lead to marriage.

I used to gather and sell mistletoe as a kid. I got the idea from an old Donald Duck comic book. In those comics, Donald’s nephews, Huey, Louie and Dewey, were always on the lookout for new marketing schemes. The success they enjoyed from those ventures inspired me to seek out ways that I, too, might profit similarly.

As Christmastime grew near, I’d climb up into the live oak trees behind my house and harvest clumps of the stuff to package in small bags. Then I would take them around the neighborhood in search of obliging widows and spinsters willing to shell out a modest sum. Making  my customers happy with their purchases brought joy to my endeavor.

It never occurred to my young self to stop and reflect on the cognitive dissonance inherent in the act of peddling a parasitic pest to people who were as likely to use the herb in the traditional way as the skies were apt to suddenly fill with a preponderance of porcine aviators.

          My endeavors were not limited to mistletoe. In springtime, I would collect and package leaf-mold, the brown decaying matter found at the base of the trees in the woods behind my house. Packed with nutrients, the stuff could make a potted plant outgrow its container in no time at all.

Since it only took a small amount of mistletoe to fulfill its intended purpose, it had been relatively easy to package and transport. Leaf mold, on the other hand, was most useful when it was dispensed in larger quantities. Between the difficulties encountered in transporting, and then packaging the stuff, it soon became apparent that the success I’d enjoyed selling mistletoe would not be mirrored by the leaf mold venture.  

I also sold Christmas cards door to door for several holiday seasons. These various ventures  proved a good way to meet people. In this manner, I made the acquaintance of a number of the older folks who lived within the confines of the three or four block radius I canvassed.

One of those people was Miss Ethel King. She lived on South Shepherd Street a block north of our house. I routinely walked past her place en route to and from grammar school. One day as I was passing by, I spied a commotion on her front lawn. Moving closer to investigate, I found a cedar waxwing that was choking on a pyracantha berry. I quickly summoned Miss King, who came out armed with a pair of tweezers. She instructed me to hold the struggling bird and keep it still while she carefully grasped the offending fruit with her tweezers and freed it from the relieved bird’s throat.

Miss King explained to me how the fermenting berries would attract the famished waxwings, who would devour them voraciously, sometimes choking as they did so. To further complicate matters, the fermentation process produced alcohol that would intoxicate the birds and sometimes affect their judgment while exacerbating their feeding frenzy.

Another woman I met during this time was an elderly member of the Baer family who once invited me into her house and showed me old photographs of her and her late husband traveling the far corners of the earth. I remember being fascinated by one particular image of her sitting astride a camel somewhere in Egypt.  

Yet another of these folks was diminutive Miss May, a pleasant and kindly-disposed woman who lived on the west side of Washington Street. To my young mind, her face resembled the image of the Queen of Hearts featured on playing cards. She was older than my parents, which meant she was REALLY old, but then, at the time, everyone a few years older than my parents seemed really old. For that matter, so did my parents.

Miss May once led me down to her basement and showed me an antique bird cage supported by a floor-length stand. Inside the cage was a single perch suspended, trapeze-like, from its ceiling. When I expressed my admiration for the object, she offered to give it to me. Happy and grateful, I took the thing home, where it sat in my parents’ basement for the next handful of years until, when I was a senior in high school, I found a use for it.

By that time I had become interested in spelunking, or cave exploring.  On a recent outing I had come upon some bats suspended from the ceiling of a passageway. Fascinated, I decided I wanted to capture one of the critters. I emptied the two ‘C’ batteries from a spare flashlight, slipped the empty flashlight housing over one of the bats and quickly screwed the end cap back on, effectively trapping the bat inside.

When I returned home, I immediately sought out the birdcage in our basement and released the bat inside it, naming the bat “Radar” as I did so. Keeping the lights off in the basement mimicked the environment of the cave Radar had hailed from. I was delighted, when I returned a few hours later, to find Radar clinging to the perch, upside-down, looking appropriately bat-like and mysterious.

***

Two days later, the Friday night high school football game was followed by the traditional after-game dance in the school cafeteria. My good friend Russell Smith joined me and the two of us brought Radar and his cage along with us to the dance. Our pet was playing his part spotlessly as he dangled from his perch, looking the polar opposite of the songbirds I imagined had once graced the enclosure.

Some cheerleaders from the opposing school’s team came by to look. One of them asked, “what happened to the canary?”  “Radar ate it,” I replied. The girls shrieked at this news and Russell and I knew bringing the bat to the party had been the right move. Our elation was short-lived, however. After a while, the noise and commotion from the whole affair aroused Radar and, when we weren’t looking, he slipped through the bars and darted off to freedom.

***

At another of the after-game dances our senior year, Russell and I had been flirting with some cheerleaders from the opposing school when another student, Barry Boylin, walked up and muscled in on our action while putting us both down in his own inimitable fashion. Barry was one of those “cool” kids who had a knack for putting people in their places whether they deserved it or not. As he walked off, with the cheerleaders following in tow, Russell turned to me and said “I hope he dies!” (accent on last word)

Six nights later, some kids were drag-racing on State Route 49 where it ascended the grade heading north a short ways past the high school. One of them lost control of his vehicle and crashed it into a tree on the east side of the road. The crash cost him his life. That kid was Barry Boylin.

***

Russell joined the Navy after he graduated from high school. He was stationed in the South, where he trained to become a photographer. Along the way, he was sent to photograph a fellow seaman who had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a service pistol.  

Following that incident, Russell suffered a mental decline. He received a medical discharge and returned to Sonora, where his mental state continued to deteriorate. As his thoughts drifted farther from reality, he endeavored to rebuild his little two-cycle motorcycle from a pile of parts so he could use it to travel back to North Carolina, where he’d been stationed, to visit with friends.

His mother, Edna, fearful for her son’s safety, contacted authorities and had Russell detained. He was placed on a 5150 hold at the county hospital. While there, he set fire to a mattress.

What followed was a Court proceeding that resulted in Russell’s being committed to the state hospital system for treatment. There were two types of commitments—voluntary and involuntary, or Court.  A person who agreed to a voluntary commitment could revoke it at will at any time. A person, like Russell, who was Court committed had no such option; the duration of such a person’s stay was up to the Court.

I attended the hearing where Russell was committed to the state hospital system. I was confused by the outcome, so the presiding judge, Judge Carkeet, kindly set aside time to explain it to me afterward. Russell had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, the judge told me. What that meant, he said, was Russell was experiencing an inability to tell fantasy from reality. He had been placed into custody, the judge said, for his own protection.  

Although the judge’s words made sense, I wouldn’t be able to really understand what schizophrenia was all about until years later when I was in graduate school working on my masters’ degree in psychology. I still struggle at times with the question of who is in a better position to look after someone’s best interests than the person whose interests are the subject of debate.

In Russell’s case, looking after his best interests involved decades of treatment with an antipsychotic drug called Thorazine (chlorpromazine) that left him suffering from tardive dyskinesia, a neurological disorder characterized by repeated uncontrolled movements, a shuffling gait and lethargy.

As his confinement proceeded, Russell’s cognitive abilities also appeared to decline. His formerly brilliant wit and his originality of thought gave way by degrees until they were finally replaced by a general dullness that was dispiriting to behold.

Russell’s  institutionalization continued until his death. At that point, he had been granted privileges to visit his sister, Terry, on certain weekends. This went well at first until Russell began to have ‘accidents’ while sleeping on her couch. After that, a hotel room was provided for his visits.

One night, Russell fell into a deep sleep after he’d had a couple of beers in his hotel room. In his slumbers, he somehow managed to hang his head off the side of the bed with his neck resting on the edge of an open drawer of the nightstand that stood beside his bed. This restricted the flow of blood to his head long enough for his metabolic processes to cease functioning. A sad ending, indeed,  to a life so full of promise!

It seems highly likely, given the timing of Russell’s decline relative to the suicide he was assigned to document, that that incident played a role in his mental problems.

I can’t help but wonder, though, given the problems those affected with early onset schizophrenia can experience on account of their abnormal interpretations of reality, if Russell’s condition  might have also been exacerbated by the timing of Barry Boylin’s demise relative to his (Russell’s) having wished him dead.

It’s all academic now, just one among the many anecdotes collected along the way—one among the many reasons why I find such resonance with the lyrics of that Grateful Dead tune “What a long, strange trip it’s been!”

To be continued:

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing

By Tim Konrad

Recollections of my maternal grandmother

Going through old boxes from my childhood, I feel at times as if I were a psycho-socio archaeologist deeply engaged in the unearthing of long-buried themes, neglected memes and forgotten dreams.

My Grandmother, Lowney Wolfe

Among the treasures unearthed thus far is an intriguing letter, penned by my maternal grandmother, Lowney, to my mother, on the day I was born.

My grandmother’s letter provides clues, both substantively and stylistically, hinting at the origins of my decades-long love affair with the written word.

Instead of doing her laundry that day, as she had planned, my grandmother wrote the following to my mother:

“I sure must celebrate today, so I will hike up town and purchase me a bottle of whiskey, some seven up, and go on a high fling.”

 “I wish you were along with me, I know you feel like sprinting to night clubs and having some hi-balls, don’t you?”

Full of the usual motherly advice doled out to daughters at this point in their lives, my grandmother’s letter cautioned my mother to refuse to allow the hospital to discharge her early, as they sometimes did in those days.

My arrival on this speck of space-dust took place in the midst of the Second World War. During that period, many of the ordinary activities and procedures of daily life were either modified or curtailed for the duration of what was popularly termed “the war effort.”

Residents of Sonora prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my parents had relocated to El Cerrito during the war while my father worked in the Richmond shipyards doing his part to support the war effort.

Because our family doctor’s practice was in Tuolumne County, my mother spent the last few weeks of her pregnancy with friends in Sonora.

Our family doctor, Doctor H. H. McGillis, was an osteopath who enjoyed immense popularity in the town.

The other doctors in Sonora feared Dr. McGillis’s high approval rating. They believed it would impact their income streams if he were permitted to practice at the local hospital, so they conspired to deny him access. As a result, he was forced to travel to the next nearest hospital, in far-off Stockton, to perform surgeries or attend deliveries.

My grandmother addressed this complication with her usual droll candor. Referring to the 60 odd miles my mother had to travel, while in labor, to get to the hospital in Stockton, my grandmother wrote:

“I’m so glad you got there before the baby came, as it would have been indeed embarrassing to have had it on the way and in a car and on that long lonely wild road without a human being in sight.

She then added an admonishment:

Next time, “you can stay put in your town and not have to trip the light fantastic some hundred miles and enjoy your pain in a car.”

By way of lamenting she hadn’t been kept current regarding my mother’s labor, my grandmother wrote:

“I had expected to hear about it yesterday, so you see, I am not wrong at any time. I have a superhuman mind and can foretell and feel things ahead of the event.” 

Writing about how she had been thrown off her normal routine by the stress and suspense of awaiting my arrival, as she had with my ill-fated siblings before me, she said:

“I just did not want to do a thing but sit and stare and look dumb, which is not hard for your mamma to do, as I surely have had Bees in my bonnet the last two years and together with this maternity racket going on and such events, it does take and make a mother sit up and take notice.”

Indicating she may have preferred to have been at the hospital to welcome my arrival, she wrote

“it is queer that your own mother was not with you at the time of the baby coming, but when you take to flying all over the country to have it one can not keep up with such a flighty dame as yourself. You should live in a trailer. Then you can move as you fancy and have each pain in a different locality.”

Then her narrative shifts to address the after-pains and other joys that befall mothers following delivery, beginning with a bit of commiseration and then veering into an account of the flatulence my grandmother experienced following the birth of one of her children:

“The wind circulated through my body like a balloon being blown up, and the visitors coming in to see other patients kept me from exploding in their faces, and it made me extremely sore inside keeping back what nature intended me to cast out.”

I was delighted to find this letter tucked amongst the other bits of mementos and nostalgia I discovered boxed up from my parents’ house. I marveled at the resemblance my grandmother’s writing style bore to that of Mark Twain.

I loved how my grandmother’s humor was in evidence in her writing, and admired the skill with which she talked about her adventures in a different time and place—A world separated by time and forever altered by the constant parade of personages appearing, and then vanishing from the landscape, leaving nothing behind save the vermin-soiled detritus begat by years of neglect.

She used to write me letters too, often including cartoon-like illustrations, such as the one below, depicting future girlfriends she envisioned for me.

I was pleased to see my grandmother’s somewhat sideways sparkle shine through in her writing and regretted I was too young to appreciate her genius while she was living;

I felt envious of those, like my mother, who were there to enjoy it. 

To be continued:

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

by Tim Konrad

Examining Internal Landscapes

Histories of places, as noted in Chapter Three, rarely extend their scope beyond descriptions of locations, events and timelines. As a result, the internal dialogues of the places’ inhabitants usually remain unexamined.

That focus changes when a place holds emotional significance for someone, as Sonora does for me.

When a person becomes attached to his or her surroundings, they have embarked, knowing or not, on a love affair as potent and primed with possibility and pitfall as any other romantic relationship.

Because of my attachment to Sonora, it isn’t possible  for me to explore its history without also considering the emotional underpinnings that determined the nature of the impressions I formed while negotiating the twists and turns separating then from now.

In that sense, this story is MY story because, in the telling of it, as in the living of it, the tale and its teller are inextricably linked, forever bound by bonds that are, by nature, non-linear, inscrutable yet omnipresent, bonds beyond sight, beyond notice, tucked discretely into the spaces between commas, between breaths, binding us to our fates as reliably as molecules hold tight their atomic confederacies.

On Nearly Growing Up in Sheepranch

Of the many insecurities I felt as a child, one, in particular, stands out for the sheer devilishness of its ability to “stir the pot,” so to speak. by fanning the spark of uncertainty I experienced concerning the true identity of my birth parents.

My mother informed me when I was quite young that another baby boy had been born at the same hospital around the same time I was born. The other boy’s parents resided in Sheep Ranch, in neighboring Calaveras County.

When these parents were preparing to take their baby home, the nursing staff mistakenly bundled me up instead, but my mother became aware of the mix-up and set everyone straight . . or so she’d always told me.

Despite my mother’s assurances that the babies went to their correct homes, an element of doubt remained, in quiet moments, that troubled me throughout much of my early childhood.

Pesky little thoughts would intrude from time to time questioning how the error had been revealed and upon what evidence attempts at reassurances had been based.

Doubts provide fertile ground for the imagination to bloom large, and mine took full advantage of the situation.

Occasionally I would find myself wondering how different my life might have been had I been raised in Sheep Ranch by people I knew nothing about.

This uncertainty continued until, at some point, it dawned on me that it didn’t really matter; regardless of whether the babies had gone to their correct homes, my parents were the ones who raised me, with love, and that was all that counted.

***

My parents had two children before I came along. The first, a boy, was stillborn. My father once told me that they hadn’t named that baby since he hadn’t made it to full term.

Having recently been made aware, from my genealogical research, that families would sometimes re-cycle the names they had chosen for their children in instances where their firstborn suffered an untimely death, I now wonder if the name they chose for me was influenced in any way by that phenomenon.

My parents’ second child was a girl. They named her Pearl—after my father’s mother. Pearl lived for 18 hours and is buried in the family plot at the Mountain Shadows Cemetery in Sonora, alongside their long-time friend, Jim Covington,.

I was born the following year—1943.

***

When I was a child, my mother told me that she’d been advised by her doctors after Pearl’s birth that she might not survive another pregnancy. The effect this news had on me was twofold: I felt fortunate, and grateful she’d taken the chance and become pregnant anyway, and I also felt something else—like a combination of obligation and guilt all at once—and that cocktail of emotions contributed to the evolution of deep-seated feelings of unworthiness over my perceived shortcomings.

A Total Surprise

My musings over what might-have-been regarding the hospital mix-up were revived anew years later when I discovered, while going through old boxes long stored in Sonora, a letter my Aunt Dorothy had penned to my mother the year before I was born.

My father’s older sister, Dorothy was a constant presence in my life, from my earliest memories until her passing in the late 1980’s.

In the letter, dated July 26, 1942, my aunt was telling my mother of an opportunity to adopt a newly-born girl, suggesting to her it might “keep you interested until such time that you can have one of your own.”

The child had been born to an unwed mother from a distant town who had become involved with a married man. Everyone in her community believed she was away somewhere receiving treatment for a tumor. Because of her tender age (20), her family had thought it best to place the child for adoption.

Echoing the tenor of the times, the letter described the hospital administrator as not wanting the affair to “leak out,” because if it did “the authorities will take it . . and place it in a home.” On the other hand, the letter continued, “after the papers are signed, they can do nothing.”

The hospital administrator had first approached my aunt and uncle with the proposition. While my aunt was charmed by the little girl, my uncle was resistant, so my aunt,  aware of my mother’s failed pregnancies, reached out to my parents.

Judging from the fact I never heard anything about this from anyone back then nor have I at any time since, until I discovered the letter in January of 2020, my parents must have declined the offer.

I can’t imagine how different my life might have been had I been raised with a sister with whom to share my childhood. I had long wished, growing up as a single child, that my parents had produced siblings, playmates living under the same roof as me, instead of across the street or across town.

The closest thing to a sibling I had growing up was my cousin Linda, 20 months my senior. She grew up in the Bay Area, so we only got to see each other when our parents (usually mine) would undertake the 3-hour drive that separated us.

Linda and I would make up for lost time each time we were together; the memories of that time still resound happily in my mind.

To be continued:

By
Tim Konrad

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

Adventures with my favorite cousin

1953 was a long time ago—68 years ago, to be exact.

In the summer of 1953, I was a few months shy of ten years old; I had absolutely no notion back then of what it might feel like to be able to reflect back, as I do today, on what I was doing that many years ago.

And today, while I still can’t say I understand any more about time than I did back then, I feel no less marveled by its mystery.

That year, 1953, stands out for me as significant:

—a milestone, perhaps;

—a marker, denoting the point in time at which I came into my own in terms of my recall of events;

—the point around which the bulk of my early memories suddenly became organized.

Prior to that summer, my recollections had lacked organization. They’d consisted solely of random bits of memories, scattered about like fragments of dreams, with little in the way of threads with which to connect them. My memories prior to that point had existed more as vague impressions of moments separated from one another by the passage of unknown quantities of time.

That all changed in the summer of 1953 when my favorite cousin, Linda, came to visit us from her home in Hayward; a few weeks later, I would make a reciprocal visit to her house. Each visit spanned about a week, but they were precious weeks.

I regarded Linda, about a year and a half my senior, not only as someone to look up to, but, as we were both raised without siblings, my surrogate sister.

We had grand adventures, Linda and I. Entrepreneurial in spirit, Linda came up with the most novel ideas for activities with which to occupy our time.

Together, we dabbled in print journalism, producing single-page editions of the news of her neighborhood, with the help of her Dad’s old typewriter and plenty of carbon paper.

After she’d heard somewhere that there was a $50 bounty being offered for the capture and delivery of transients, or “bums,” as they were called back then, we dressed ourselves as bums and wandered the vacant lots by the railroad tracks in hopes of luring some hapless indigent.

Since we’d neglected to work out a plan for what we would have done had we ever succeeded in capturing a bum, it was probably fortuitous that our efforts were met with failure.

On one occasion, when my parents and I were in Hayward visiting Linda and her parents, I was disappointed to learn that Linda was confined to her bed with a case of the chickenpox.

While we weren’t allowed to play together during that visit, Linda was nonetheless generous enough, when we were leaving, to send me home with her ailment. 

On another occasion, while my parents had gone out with Linda’s parents to attend a burlesque show, Linda and I were left home with a babysitter.

There had been a rash of burglaries in her neighborhood around that time, and Linda, fearful someone might try to break into her house while our parents were away, enlisted my support in setting a series of booby-traps just inside her front door,

We put out pots and pans and other objects, all intended to create lots of noise in the event some unwanted visitor were to trip over them in the dark.

We believed our scheme was sufficient to alert us in the event any uninvited person should attempt to gain entry.  

Again, however, the plan lacked foresight, since we had no idea what we would have done had anyone succeeded in breaching our fortifications.

My memories of Linda’s visit to Sonora that summer revolve mainly around one particular event that has remained with me down through the years.

As mentioned previously, the Sonora of my youth had two movie theaters. One night, Linda and I went to the movies but we didn’t go together because we couldn’t agree on which movies to see.

Linda wanted to go see a horror flick called “House of Wax” that was playing at the downtown theater. The movie starred Vincent Price, and was the first major American film shot in color and in 3D.

I wanted to watch the Disney animated cartoon “Peter Pan,” which was showing at the Uptown Theater. Both movies got over around the same time, so we walked home together afterward.

I remember Linda complaining she wasn’t all that happy with the movie she had seen, whereas I was thrilled with my choice. Peter Pan was the perfect movie for a nine-year-old boy to see. Upon hearing Linda had regrets about the choice she had made, I was convinced I had chosen the right movie to attend.

The memory of that movie stayed with me for years.

If, on the other hand, I’d gone to see House of Wax, I probably would have forgotten it shortly afterward.

My sweet cousin is no longer with us, having passed on after a short illness two summers ago.  

I think of her nearly every day. I dearly miss her presence in my life. Every moment we shared together is a gift I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Thank you, Cuz, for your wisdom, your compassion and your gentle, caring nature.

Our roles change with the passage of time;

with Linda’s passing, I am now the patriarch of my mother’s side of my family.

To be continued:

By
Tim Konrad

The fifties were a fun time for an 11 year-old boy. Each fall, when the new cars came in, I would run down to the local car dealerships in excited anticipation of what new design changes awaited me.

My “go to” place was always the General Motors dealership because they manufactured Oldsmobiles  and that was the brand of car my dad always purchased. Also, because my dad bought his cars there, the sales staff humored me and put up with my many questions.

My interest in cars began several years earlier when the 55′ models were released and my parents deemed me old enough to go to the showrooms downtown by myself.

The Chevys in particular were very cool, with their fins sticking out in the back. The Oldsmobiles, too, were stylish, with their rocket ship looks and their classic-looking two-toned lines. The Chrysler Corporation cars  were more daring in design, sporting, beginning in 1959, the longest and most flamboyant fins on the backside of any of the American automobiles available.

The Chrysler dealership folks, however, were a little less welcoming. Housed where the Opera Hall stands today, when I would visit there, I always felt like I was in the way, which took the joy out of the experience and led me, over time, to avoid that dealership.

Called the Opera Hall Garage because their showroom had originally been an opera hall, the Chrysler showroom was dingy by comparison to the Oldsmobile dealership, similar to how the Russian pavilion at the 1988 Vancouver World Fair was dingy and grey-looking in comparison to the colorful and lively exhibits hosted by the majority of the other countries who participated.

The Russians erred significantly in the preparation of the glossy-paged print productions for their pavilion. Lavishly illustrated and nicely produced, in French only, someone must have failed to take note of the fact that Canada’s official spoken language was English and not French.

My fascination with cars began at an early age. The earliest car I recall my parents owning was a black, pre-war Chevrolet sedan, followed by a 1949 or 1950 Oldsmobile. The Chevrolet featured the rounded corners typical of such vehicles in the late 30s and early 40s.

A far more interesting car to my young sensibilities was the 1947 Fraser coupe owned by my Uncle Jack and Aunt Verna. Ahead of its time, it featured a rumble seat in the back that could be folded out to reveal a bed.

The pickup truck my father drove when I was little had a short bed in the back, with a rumble seat that he would never let me ride in no matter how much I pleaded with him to do so. My hopes of someday getting to ride in that highly desirable perch were dashed when my father replaced that vehicle  with a 1953 GMC long-bed pickup truck. I don’t recall being allowed to ride in the back of that truck either, but I do remember riding in the back of someone else’s pickup, along with a bunch of other kids, to a summer camp above Coulterville when I was eleven. 

The afternoon was hot and sunny and I was bare-headed, having just received my annual summer “buzzcut” crewcut a day or two earlier.  With no hat, and with a couple hours’ travel with no shade, the top of my head was one huge mass of sunburned scabs the following day. 

Each year, when the new cars were announced in Detroit and the local car dealerships geared up to show the new arrivals in their showrooms, I could hardly wait to go down and see what had changed from the previous years’ models. I did this for several years with such regularity that all the salesmen knew me when I would show up at their showrooms to gather pamphlets detailing the accessories accompanying the various models on display.

As noted earlier, the Oldsmobile dealership was always the most welcoming, since it was there that my father purchased his Oldsmobiles and his company’s GMC trucks.  One year, the dealer gave me a model of the previous year’s Oldsmobile Super 88 coupe that just happened to be the color of the 55’ model my father had just purchased from him. By contrast, the Chrysler dealership folks always eyed my visits with what seemed like suspicion. I never understood why they did this; perhaps they had little patience for kids. At any rate, the reception I received from them pretty much insured I wasn’t going to ever become one of their customers.

As enamored as I was of cars, I was equally fascinated with how they ran, and was envious of people like my older cousin George, who not only knew how to fix cars but had also modified an old Model T Ford in his garage with a modern V-8 engine. George was, in this as in many other ways, someone I looked up to much as one might look up to an older brother. 

Knowing how to work on cars was a good way to save money when I embarked on my driving career, as American cars of that period weren’t reliable the way they’ve been since the large-scale influx of Japanese cars began in the 1970s. Prior to that time, American auto manufacturers were rumored to have employed a term known as “planned obsolescence” in auto making. By using sub-standard parts in their cars, so the story went, the vehicles were more likely to break down and require repairs, thus necessitating the network of parts suppliers and automotive garages that proliferated at the time.

Whereas today’s automobiles are just getting broken in at 100K, in those days, a car with that many miles under its belt was regarded as nearing the end of its usefulness.  

In my own personal experience, auto repairs constituted a significant ongoing budget expense. Having been forced by necessity to drive second-hand cars, whose propensity to break down was more likely, a visit to the auto shop every 6 weeks or so was largely expected. The principal offender was my 61’ Chevrolet Impala convertible, a car bought on impulse that found a number of creative ways to malfunction during the relatively short time I owned it.

A close contender was our 1959 Rambler station wagon, a car that never functioned properly, regardless of the lengths to which I went to correct its many deficiencies. Inconceivably arcane things broke on that car, resulting in remarkable repair expenses. The fellow I bought it from, Mike Symons, likely held a celebration after I relieved him of his responsibility for its maintenance.

The third offender—a 1954 Ford sedan—was happy to provide its share of opportunities for the enrichment of our mechanic. But the vehicle with the most moxie when it came to creative engagements with auto repair professionals was my 1961 Riley One Point Five, a Peter Max-looking cartoon of a car that exuded the sort of childish optimism displayed by the Little Engine That Could.

My copy of this obscure vehicle was a  small, grayish car, bedecked with smiling chrome and regulated by two SU carburetors that seemed forever out of tune. Being English, the car’s eccentricities were only exacerbated by its temperamental nature. Its highly specialized propensity to malfunction found expression through such markedly outspoken actions as consuming axles as if they were hors d’ouvres at a free-for-all buffet.

The English, as observed by Geoff James, the father of one of my buddies growing up (an Englishman, coincidentally) , had the right idea when it came to the proper employment of suspension devices in their vehicles. Whereas the Yanks, so Geoff said, used spring suspension in their running gear and torsion bar suspension in their upholstered seats, The Brits did the opposite. This gave English cars more control on the road while ensuring a firm base upon which to sit. The American vehicles, on the other hand, had more cushiony and arguably more comfortable platforms on which drivers could rest their butts, but at the expense of the tight, more responsive handling afforded by torsion bar suspension.

The only American car I ever owned from that period that had a torsion bar suspension was a Plymouth Valiant from the early 60s; by comparison, all my other cars handled more like bathtubs full of water. My father’s 1955 Oldsmobile Super 88 coupe was a prime example of this. It also was my hands-down favorite of all the cars my parents owned while I was growing up.

The General Motors cars of the mid-fifties were all splendid-looking examples of the auto makers’ craft, the 1955’ and 1956’ Chevrolets being among the most sought-after by classic car enthusiasts. Two-toned green, my dad’s 55’ Olds was built for looks, style and class, and what it lacked in handling, it made up for in power. 

From a young age, I wanted to learn how to work on cars but, try as I might to get my father to teach me, he always demurred. His default position was that cars had changed so much since he was young that he didn’t know how to work on them anymore. Naturally, I was never satisfied with that answer, not only because it signaled defeat of my initiative, but also because it rang hollow, sounding to me more like an excuse than an actual reason.

Looking back on this today, I still recall the disappointment I would experience when my entreaties would be met with some version of the same old tired answer. Why it never occurred to me back then that I could have found other sources to learn how to work on cars spoke more to a lack of imagination on my part than it was a reason to indict my dad for failing to teach me.

Recalling the story my father told of how he once fixed a broken clutch on his old Maxwell by replacing the worn part with a piece of leather from the tongue of his work boot, his lament of how cars had changed since his youth had some resonance. On the other hand, discounting the introduction of electronic ignition, the basic workings of the internal combustion engine hadn’t changed all that much from when he was a young man.

At any rate, regardless of the reasons, having lost out on the opportunity to learn about fixing cars from my father has long remained one of the regrets of my childhood, with implications I’ve felt throughout the intervening years. I suppose it’s reasonable to ask why I haven’t found other resources with which to acquire mechanical skills; the answer is, I confess I don’t know exactly why I haven’t done this, considering I have done similar things in other areas of learning. I think I just wanted to have that connection with him as something we could have shared together. Perhaps I even wanted to have that connection more than I wanted to learn about fixing cars.

To be continued: