sonora2sonoma

By
Tim Konrad

Growing up in the same house and living in it until I married and moved out afforded me a longitudinal view of how a neighborhood can change over decades.

The neighborhood in which I was raised has changed much and yet looks much the same as it did in the fifties, with a few exceptions, such as the small apartment building sitting on a corner lot once dominated by a single-family dwelling. The light illuminating the building’s parking lot now shines directly into my living room, intruding upon the serenity once afforded by the evening twilight.

That spot was previously occupied by an old wooden garage—a structure with no signs it had ever seen a paint brush save for the message scrawled across one of its doors, an artifact from WWII that stated “Kilroy Was Here.” Those three words, according to the Smithsonian magazine, “appeared almost everywhere American Soldiers went” in the years following the war, often accompanied by a cartoon-like drawing of a man with a big nose peering over a wall.

The message was so ubiquitous it was featured in a 1948 Bugs Bunny cartoon where, believing he was the first rabbit to land on the moon, Bugs failed to notice the slogan clearly displayed, carved into a rock behind him.

One day, when I was eight or nine, I chanced to lean against a wall of that structure long enough to receive a wasp sting, the experience of which is probably the reason I still recall the building these many decades later.

The other houses in the immediate vicinity remain intact save one across the street, which caught fire after the inhabitant at the time, recently widowed and on oxygen, lit a cigarette too close to her oxygen tank. She survived the fire but the house did not. The people who rebuilt had the good taste to construct a dwelling that retained the architectural spirit of the original building, which was a boon to the neighborhood.

The one house in the area whose destruction would be beneficial remains undisturbed, uninhabited and unsightly, as it is literally falling down.

Situated directly opposite and across the narrow street from my parents’ house, this looming hulk can barely keep its foundation dry any more, ravaged as it’s been by time’s handiwork.

Abandoned, decrepit, fallen way past disrepair, Betha’s house awaits a purported end date that seems forever forestalled by life’s little setbacks—the glacial pace of destruction permits, a profusion of unforeseen developments plus other assorted Coyote tricks. Having outlived its purpose(s), Bertha’s house hangs around ghost-like, looming, too caught up to notice the show ended years ago.

Built right to the edge of the street on a half-lot, in a time with fewer rules, Bertha’s house has the look of an afterthought with a permanent foundation undergirding it. Two-storied, box-like and utterly devoid of aesthetic considerations, form fell prey to function before the ink had dried on its construction blueprints. The idea of setback ordinances was unknown to the Tuolumne County officials of the time, so there was nothing to prevent someone from setting foundations literally as close to street-side as possible.

Like her house, Bertha’s garden was humble but orderly, tended with the stern sort of love that doesn’t tolerate exuberance. On occasion a happy place, her yard was a child’s playground, a place to play kick-the-can on warm summer evenings as twilight faded and shadows deepened, enhancing places to hide amid the bushes.

Now overgrown and neglected, only fragments remain of the garden’s former glory—an iris here, a daffodil there—peering out from the chaos, sparking memories, real or imagined.

Grown entropic from decades hardened by remaining  rudderless, left behind and abandoned in all save title, Bertha’s garden these days is left with naught to do but watch the paint continue to peel off the tortured surfaces of its old companion, the familiar hulking frame towering over it, as both house and garden slowly surrender, like their owners before them, to their ultimate fate—decrepitude and ruin!

A happy haven in its time, Bertha’s house provided shelter and nurtured a loving family, sights set on a happy future, with a son to carry on the family name. Those hopes were brought to fruition—a college graduation, a budding career, a promising marriage, children, raised in a distant enclave, followed by years spent in professional pursuits—and then retirement, those golden years now turned to dust, the hopes and dreams of three souls, united in family, now united in death. Three hearts now departed, their earthly work finished, off to explore that other place beyond toil, where joy, sorrow or surprise are no longer relevant and where expectation no longer drives the narrative.

Haunted by ghosts real or imagined, Bertha’s house today stands as a melange of memories hearkening back to a time when the world had order, a peeling paint pavilion way past its prime, a cat-haven missing its cat lady and a fire awaiting its spark.

The souls who lived there now gone, every one, Bertha’s house persists nonetheless, as if determined to maintain its prescient display of deterioration and decay as a reminder, like the graveyard, of the fate that ultimately awaits us all.

While the rest of the neighborhood structures are mostly intact, none of the original inhabitants remain, all having either moved on to other parts or other realms—mostly, due to the dictates of time, the latter.

To be continued:

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By
Tim Konrad

Chapter Two

The wall in my backyard served as a gateway to the world that lay beyond—the wonderful and wild woods, with their deep sense of mystery and surprise, teeming with secrets to be revealed about the wonders of nature. Those woods not only captured my imagination as a young boy but also featured largely in my dreams, ultimately coming to symbolize the vast, unknown, open page, or tabula rasa, of my life as it lay before me, yet unexplored and awaiting time and caprice for its unfoldment.

       I often and distinctly recall a moment sixty-plus years ago, when I sat perched atop that wall in reflection: If reflection is not an appropriate term to describe the musings of a boy of eleven, then musing most certainly is. It was the first day of summer vacation and the whole of my favorite season lay before me like an exciting and mysterious present yet unopened. Not only did I have a summer free of duties, responsibilities and school requirements to look forward to, I “mused,” but I also had my whole life ahead of me, with the reasonable and hopeful expectation that it might be blessed with longevity.

       I still remember how it felt to think these thoughts back then, similar to how I felt as a boy at Christmas-time when first seeing the tree ringed with presents, or the way it felt before taking that first bite of chocolate sundae at the ice cream shop. I’ve always savored the expectation preceding the experience, whatever the event itself might be. I still do so today; the promise, the mystery and excitement never cease to hold me in thrall.

       Now, as my number of days past exceeds those that lie before me, that moment on the wall seems more poignant than ever.

As day turns into night, the dance of life and death, as with all the other dualities in life, denotes the beautiful yet frightening symmetry of all things. The poet and visionary William Blake perhaps said it best when he wrote, in his poem Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

       But what once was hope need not become despair. It’s all a matter of perspective, really. Life truly is what one makes of it and tomorrow, if one chooses to see it as such, is another tabula rasa just as surely as it was to that eleven-year-old boy perched on that wall so long ago. Only now I have much more to reflect upon.

***

       The intervening years have brought equal shares of joys and sorrows, unfolding, as they did, largely not according to plan, which wasn’t surprising since, in my younger days, I hadn’t placed much stock in planning anyway. Aware of the fable of the grasshopper and the ant but equally aware that investing years toward a goal only paid off if one succeeded in living long enough to reap the rewards of such planning, I used that line of reasoning to justify a life marked by sometimes questionable decisions. Retirement being a distant and somewhat mythical concept back then, I only pursued goals with short-term rewards and effectively postponed any notions of accumulating savings toward retirement. It was only in my later years that my wish not to die destitute gained authority over the part of me that had allowed me to remain profligate for so long.

To be continued:

By
Tim Konrad

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

Introduction

The threads of the personal and the interpersonal are woven together throughout the Universe.

***

While mystics may speak of living in the eternal present moment, or the “now,” for the rest of us, according to Hank Steuver, “there is only this sort of present-tense past that we all live in, full of remakes and revivals and constant nostalgia.” (Hank Steuver, Washington Post, 11/27/18)

The clamor of the present, Steuver tells us, competes for attention with the intrusion of recollections of unfulfilled dreams and memories from the past, along with plans thwarted and regrets borne of hopes unrealized, any of which can be triggered by the most surprising and seemingly insignificant phenomena. Any attempts to impose order over the resulting chaos appear at first blush as an invitation to fail, when they are just manifestations of the cosmic dance between order and chaos that has gone on uninterrupted for time immemorial.

In recognition of Steuver’s “present-tense past” and by way of acknowledging the fact that this is a state of which I’m only too familiar, what better thing could I do with the material thus exposed than to explore it via the medium of writing?

***

Chapter One

Growing Up in Sonora

Sonora in the 1950s was typical of small towns across the nation back in those days—quiet, familiar, intimate even,  and far-removed from the hubbub and furor of city life in almost every way. It was a place of safety, a place where parents could allow their children to roam about, free of the fears that plague families today.

My parents would frequently send me off with a couple of dollars in my pocket to catch a meal at my favorite eatery, the Europa, followed by a double feature at one of the town’s two movie theaters. A hamburger and fries at the Europa wasn’t complete without one of Mrs. Ball’s chocolate milkshakes, brought over from the Greyhound Bus station next door. Those milkshakes still remain among the best I’ve ever encountered.

My mother and father seemed to know EVERYONE in those days. Grocery-shopping was, for my mother, as much a social excursion as an opportunity to resupply the pantry. She knew the grocer by name, as well as the butcher, the postman, the milkman, the garbageman and the guy who brought us bottled water. Most of our neighbors were friendly and personable, and some were like family.

On Saturday nights, my parents would play pinochle with the sheriff, the head of the highway department and the president of the local lumber company. The sheriff’s wife was a cashier at the Sonora Theater, one of the two movie theaters in town, the other being the Uptown Theater. ; The town’s mayor, Odillo Restano,  owned the Sonora Theater, a grand, old-fashioned theater hall complete with sunken orchestra pit and balcony. It was demolished in the seventies to make way for a less artfully-inspired building dedicated to commerce, enterprise and healthy profit margins—in other words, a banking establishment.

But I digress!

As I was saying, the intimacy of small-town life provided a privileged setting for a child to grow up. Our dentist was my Uncle Charlie. Our family doctor officiated at my birth; he felt like an adjunct, if also scary, family member. In short, everything (but the doctor) felt familiar, safe, innocent, even. What unknowns lurked in the margins were still unknown to me. There were no recognizable impediments to my development save the ones I myself erected along the way.

It’s impossible to write a history of one’s place without also probing the history and nature of one’s personal contributions. And that personal element, in my case, veered as far afield as my imagination permitted—ranging from seeking any mental constructs capable of justifying self-indulgence in my younger years to, years later, “after my brains grew in,” (to quote, large animal veterinarian Baxter Black), searching for and identifying any remaining unsupportable mental constructs or beliefs in need of un-learning.

So, as is true of most things in life, what we bring to the party can have profound effects on what we experience.

Meanwhile, back to the story . . .

Beyond the street behind my house lay an open stretch of hills, meadows and oak forest that extended for miles, relatively unobstructed by fences or buildings, toward the Sierras to our east. A rock wall, erected in the 1930s by the Works Project Administration, marked the boundary between my backyard and the world beyond. As the back street was above the level of our yard, access to it required scrambling up the wall the five or six feet to street level. Spaces between the rocks provided footholds making this climb easy for someone young and nimble to accomplish.

To be continued:

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