Monthly Archives: November 2018

My brother-in-law Wendell died yesterday. A heart attack. Wendell was a story-teller.  He quit school as a teenager, went to work for the Illinois Central Railroad, and rose to engineer, first driving steam locomotives, then big diesels. He told stories of … Continue reading →

North Beach, Pt.Reyes Natl. Seashore Back at Tomales. It’s six-thirty in the morning and everything is grey, the sky, the water, the buildings, the hills on the other side of the bay. Smoke from the wildfires east of Chico has … Continue reading →

They used to burn the rice stubble every fall in the Central Valley, long lines of flame, thick smoke rising. Sunsets were brilliant and the air smelled of burning grass.  When I saw those long lines of flame I thought … Continue reading →

Packard. Once called the most beautiful car in America,  a Packard sold in the 1930’s for the equivalent of sixty-five thousand dollars in today’s money.  During World War Two, Packard made the Merlin aircraft engines that powered the P-51 fighter, … Continue reading →

Thanksgiving approaches. November, 1972 at Pepper Green cottage in Shillingstone, Dorset. . We wanted a Thanksgiving turkey. But our friend who sometimes delivered things to us, keeping an eye on the Americans who were often lost in English shopping, a man … Continue reading →

My brother Paul has been doing family research, and has sent me information about second great grandparents, starting in the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s  What’s interesting is the cause of death.  Things like dementia and exhaustion, pneumonia, shortness … Continue reading →

I have lived in Fairfax for more than fifty years.  I an writing this in a coffee shop that used to be The Corner Bar, a place where nothing changed, not even the air, and rumor has it that when … Continue reading →

There was a photograph in this morning’s Chronicle of a burnt-out house on Wagstaff Road in Paradise. Art Morris’s father, Wayne Morris, lived on Wagstaff Road.  He lived to be a hundred years old. He was in his late nineties … Continue reading →

My son Graham stood in the prow of the boat, casting toward the mangroves,  the guide poling silently, steering the boat gently and then he said, Ten o’clock,  thirty five feet,  and Graham laid out his line, so that the … Continue reading →

The town of Paradise is enveloped in flames, a wild fire rampaging through it.  It has grown to 70,000 acres in twenty-four hours, and is, according to Cal Fire, zero percent contained.  People have fled their homes, houses have been … Continue reading →