Over the Hill, the idea of Town was another country, another state of mind most of us were incapable of traversing. The Valley, with its rural poverty and geographic isolation was practically a third-world country by comparison. White’s Hill was always threatening to slip at the pass after heavy rain and the townies, they just kept away, afraid they’d slip off into the ravine, or worse, into poverty, as if it was the clap or something. The old timers always said the pavement at the pass was over 50 feet thick and that was before it dropped another 5 feet during the big storm in the Fall of ’64. So the townies, they mostly kept away, which was fine by us, except they called us Valley Rats just to even up the score.
And if the National Seashore hadn’t happened with LadyBird Johnson and all, I bet we’d still be cut off from the world. Instead, we prepared for mass invasions each weekend, but the townies, they never stopped, they never bought anything at the Little Store, or at the House of Richard—that’s a hippie store in Forest Knolls—or DeLacy’s Store in Lagunitas.
They say Darryl Wilburn mostly burned down the rest of both the villages—village is too big a word for where we lived— there wasn’t much left to stop for anyway—unless you needed gas at Urien’s gas station, which was coffee shop where you could get a candy bar, some smokes or a beer. By that time Darryl had burned down all the historic building and watering holes: Speck McAuliff's bar, The Little Store, the ice cream parlour. The only thing he didn't burn down was the Saloon, but it was made of stucco and a family later bought it, so it was a steadier source income than selling firewood.
There was also a garage at Uriel's where our school busses were repaired and a trailer park out back. The Uriels diversified—but the price of gas was too high even for the townies. But Don Uriel was fine to look at standing behind the bar in faded jeans and a white teeshirt choking down a cool one—even if he was old. He really looked like James Dean but if he fixed your car, there were extra parts left over.
I remember how I was so lonely that last year in grade school without ‘Lupe showing me the ropes like—how to rat your bangs. Or what happens if you throw a cherry bomb down the girl’s bathroom toilet and time the flush just right. ’Lupe was always explaining important things like that. Ratted bangs were where the older townie girls stored their arsenal, as she sprayed a half-can of Aqua Net on her bangs to keep them firmly anchored in place. They were frosted so stiff it was like a picture of the wire on top of the Berlin Wall in winter. We were all gearing up for the Big Move to high school Over the Hill. We were being bussed into new territory like those kids from Montgomery, Alabama, only we weren’t Black, we were just poor.
Talk about climbing over walls, I had to find out the hard way about the wall that also divided the Valley when I accidentally repeated to July about what I heard about Kathy Unterberg doing it and maybe being knocked up. I’d never been in a real fist-fight before. I refused, I didn’t want to hit her in the jaw; afraid it might break. It’s not like I didn’t know how, with my brother and all. I always got into more trouble if I hit his face. But she came at me like a watermill and I had no choice. I wasn’t mad at her, so my heart wasn’t in it. She was from Woodacre, you know—the snotty end of the Valley. I was glad ’Lupe wasn’t there to see me so humiliated.
I guess I was kinda jealous ‘cause Katrinka was going out with ‘Lupe’s cousin, Duane de la Ventana—who was to drop-dead-to-die-for gorgeous. July finked that secret out to the world too. Some friend she was. One step up from trailer trash, and living at the dividing line between San Geronimo and Woodacre, she was quickly figurin’ out what side of the Valley her bread was buttered on.
Duane, he was so gorgeous, I couldn’t wait for Thursdays after school—that was catechism day—when we all rode the bus down to St. Cecelia’s church together. He was so cool, he combed his hair just like Elvis. He was always patting his pompadour like it was a newborn baby, and admirin’ it in the mirror or in windows when he thought no one was looking.
Taydie Waverwick was absolutely nuts for Elvis too, she used to wear her hair like his too—which was confusing. She could croon every song he recorded but she was sorta weird with her big boobs and all. She always wore these cowgirl outfits with rhinestones and white go-go boots.
We used to speculate that Taydie's boobs were fake water balloons. She was big as a cow—not at all like Dolly Parton—and she wore rhinestone glasses to match. She used to pick on us runts until one day, in self defense, I accidentally punched her out in the boobs. I was cornered, no place to run—I was the fastest kid in the school. But like I said, I was cornered and I was too short to hit her in the jaw. I really expected them to pop, or something, but her eyes got all watery instead and I felt bad. Anyway, after that, she decided to be my friend. As long as she didn’t want to mash her lips on me it was OK, I guess.
That’s how I inherited the new girls, Phoebe and Elvie, as friends—through Taydie. I knew I was stepping down the evolutionary ladder a bit, but beggars can’t be choosers. Elvie and Eddie, the twins, had already been to Juvie a few times, and their mom was officially on welfare—we always knew who was on welfare on account of where they lived, down on Resaca Road where Papermill Creek always flooded in winter. What I didn’t know was many others were on welfare until much later. Folks was good at hiding things.
Phoebe talked funny ’cause she had a hare lip. She showed us the place where the hole in her palate was and then push some food through it just to gross us out. But sometimes after school, we’d all sit around as if we were good friends instead of accidental leftovers and we'd lip sing all the songs to Elvis’s albums: Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true... I heard Taydie later became a cowboy singer in Vegas. I didn’t ask as to what sexual persuasion.
When I was younger, I especially loved going over to ‘Lupe’s house after school, her mom would make us the best fresh tortillas and there were always babies to play with. ‘Lupe smelled so fine, like the roses on her saint’s namesake. Her mom only used her whole name when she was real mad at ‘Lupe, which was almost never ’cause ‘Lupe was that kind of sweet. I hardly knew who saint Guada’Lupe was—other than the fact she had roses on her lap.
Once I was chosen for Queen of the May and had to climb up the altar and crown Mary’s head with roses so that sort of made ‘Lupe and me sisters under the skin. One time we both had wounds and so we sealed it with blood. Like with Katrinka. It seems there were always plenty of babies smelling like sour milk and poop, not roses—no matter whose house I was at.
‘Lupe’s mom was usually expecting, but then, so was Katrinka’s mom, Mrs. Larsen, there were 11 kids in her family and we always thought there was something not quite right about Beanie & Booboo. One of ’em fell on his head out of a car which didn’t improve things any.
Mrs. Walton also had 11 or 12 kids but they were all way older than us—except for Scotty, the baby—his brother Clark was old enough to be his father, and he was blind as a bat as well, but he could sing real good. Especially Peter, Paul & Mary songs. He never shaved and looked like a prophet right out of the Bible with his beard and baggy clothes and all—I guess he couldn’t see to shave and no one else wanted to do it for him.
His brothers used to lead Clark up and down the dirt roads—it was like Blind Man’s Bluff, but for real. I was especially confused by this as I once thought he might be related to Superman, and I thought that maybe he was faking at being blind ’cause he was really in disguise, you know, like Clark Kent.
The Waltons lived at the top of the ridge where Mount Barnabe joins up to the long ridge where I lived on the other side. You could go for miles on those ridges and never see a soul: Nicasio, Bolinas, even Fairfax, but to get to Mount Tam, you had to cross the ravine at Alpine Dam but the horses were too afraid of the bridge.
Sometimes, after school, I’d sneak up over the ridge on horseback over the fire road that connected our little Arroyo valley, off Barranca Road, where I lived, to the Walton’s place in Lagunitas— only there weren’t any lakes in Lagunitas, they were all at the other end of the Valley, the rich end, but our end, all the lakes were dried up and stingy—except for the one at Borrillo Ranch near the school.
After ‘Lupe moved, Duane’s family moved into the Borrillo Ranch for a while so I’d ride my horse past whenever I got a chance. When they moved to San Geronimo, it was harder to think up an excuse to ride by ’cause they lived at the end of the fire road. And if I did ride by, you know, casual-like, to be cool, but then I was stuck riding for several hours along Bolinas Ridge above Kent Lake to Lagunitas and then I had to double back on the next ridge just to get home ’cause you couldn’t get off the ridge in between, the ravines were so steep and besides, the scrub was impenetrable. And in fall, with the days growin’ shorter by the minute, there just wasn’t enough time after school to ride both ways and get home before dark. Forget about homework, you could hardly sit after that kinda ride.
Anyway, sometimes Mrs. Walton would give me fresh doughnuts—still sizzling from the hot grease. Don’t ask how I always knew when she was frying doughnuts, it was luck, I guess. Riding home in the dark, licking sugar from my lips took away some of the edge of being under the tall pines where you couldn’t even see the horse’s ears in front of you, but Chiquita—she was steady as a bulldozer—she could see just fine, even if it was pitch black and besides, she always knew the way back home, no matter how far we roamed.
The Wilburns—they had a lot of kids too but they were another matter altogether, they even adopted a couple of their sister’s youngest orphaned cousins—it seems she couldn’t handle her growing tribe. I was convinced Brenda, the redhead, was specially put on this earth to make my life miserable whenever possible. But she’s dead now. Water under the bridge. And my grandma said not to speak ill of the dead. I wonder whatever happened to her that she’d take her own life like that, behind the post office where we’d smoked our first cigarettes....
Don’t you dare tell a soul...I don’t wanna say too much more about them as I’m telling you about real people and they’re all still alive and as mean as ever, thinking they’ve come up a notch in the world and now they own the local bar—the one Darryl didn’t burn down. Them’s that aspire toward the middle class are the most vicious.
But it’s my story and I have the right to remember—even if some folks don’t like it that way, preferring revisionist history to the truth. I guess I could change all the names for the story’s sake, but then I never could think of anything better than the real thing. Besides, their real names resonate in me like bells until I get goose bumps on my heart like when I look at the sacred heart of Jesus or like when the cat licks your lips and your stomach goes all squidgy on you like with your first kiss.
Besides I’ve nothing they want, and it’s all common knowledge anyway. Except they could burn down my granma’s house—which at this point would be a favor since the cousins moved in. As I was saying, it’s really ironic, as Darryl, the eldest kid, proceeded to burn down half the Valley, leaving us with no villages at all—just greasy wide spots in the road where the buildings used to stand. Darryl, he got ’em all, only no one could prove he did it.
The Lagunitas ice cream parlor, both train stations, and the Forest Knolls store with its covered boardwalk—which was a cryin’ shame as they were just like props out of a western movie, only they were real, not fake. But all that pyrotechnics put poor Harry Bolton right out of business.
Harry, a newcomer with money to burn, fell in love with the vintage buildings and had big plans for the Valley long before Marin was “discovered.” It was pretty exciting while it lasted. We even forgave him for building his monstrosity of a house on Horse Hill at the foot of Arroyo Road. It was real cool, with a fake waterfall inside it.
But Darryl really fixed his wagon. Wherever Darryl went, buildings mysteriously burned down. I bet he burned down half the River. Maybe it’s because his father sold firewood, I don’t know. Why, when he was a young child, he even burned down his own family home. Only problem is, everyone was still at home when it happened. That was when it all started, when we knew something quite right, but everyone said he was just a child—couldn’t have known what he was doing—except two youngest brothers also died in the fire.
I remember Mr. Begley coming around collecting clothes and mattresses for the Wilburn family—on account of him having a truck. It was a baby blue Ford and it looked so odd without its camper shell and its vegetables all in neat rows. Instead, all our discarded belongings were stacked up naked like in the movie, “The Grapes of Wrath.”
I didn’t want to give up my favorite old quilt as it was my grandpa’s and he was dead… but Grandma said I had to, ’cause there was folks out there less fortunate than us. But Darryl knew what he was doing alright when he burned down the store, ’cause he did it a third time too. Any empty building seemed to be fair game.
Someone later said that one of the new owners of the Lagunitas Store banked on Darryl's firebrand reputation to burn down the Lagunitas Store and collect the insurance. Stories have a way of coming out eventually. Darryl got blamed for it just the same.
Anyway, up the hill from McAulliff’s, that was where Mrs. Begley and her whole tribe of kids lived—all in ragged Ma Joad clothes and that wall-to-wall dirt on their faces made their eyes seem especially watery and puckery on account of the Pink Eye—they were like sour grapes when you bit them in two. You just wanted to squeeze their eyes until the dirt made runnels down their cheeks.
Mr. Begley—who sold us vegetables from his camper truck, he was nice—he sometimes gave us kids the small wilted carrots. We’d all pretend we were Bugs Bunny and say: Hey, what’s up. Doc? and munching like demented rabbits. Here the Begleys had no money at all, and he was giving us the stuff he needed to sell. Dinner at the Begleys consisted of lots of rice and vegetables. That’s the first time I ever ate zucchini with catsup.
Now, Mack’s mom, Mrs. LaRoche… I sorta lost count of how many kids she had—maybe ten? twelve? Anyway, Mack—he was an altar boy along with Mark French and Johnny Hoffmann—they used to finish off the sacrificial wine on the sly when Father Connery got done with it. But Mack was murdered by the Zebra Killer and later on, his little brother went crazy, killing an old lady he was robbing for dope money. The hardest thing about his trial was that I had friends on both sides of that courtroom. He pleaded insanity.
Come to think of it, it seems like there was something not quite right about most of the youngest kids in all those big families. It’s hard to say whether it was genetics giving out, or that it was the mothers who were just plain old worn out after raising and refereeing a baker’s dozen of kids squabbling and carrying on like banshees—with the babies literally getting away with murder.
My grandma, she only had eight kids, and the only one who was really crazy was my mom. Two of my aunts are a bit crazy too, but everyone thinks they’re perfectly normal—which is much scarier than having a bonafide crazy mom. We call them The Bags on account of the cavernous naugahyde purses they carry—you could furnish entire bathroom suites with them.
At least everything’s out in the open with my mom. I didn’t see very much of her as she was always off to Hollywood or Vegas—working for Frank Sinatra doing the showgirl costumes. Mostly feathers and beads. Yes, Sinatra. Old Blue Eyes himself. She said he was real nice; had a drink with him. She knew people like that.
Sometimes it was off to Napa State Hospital too. So it was hard to tell fact from fiction…. Remind me to tell you sometime about Tommy Smothers and Sterling Hayden—they used to baby-sit me over at the Gate Theatre… but that’s another story…. Also, remind me to tell you about the time my baby cousin visited Jerry Garcia’s medicine cabinet on Resaca and had to get her stomach pumped too...
Where was I? Oh, yeah, babies. Anyway, I hardly ever saw any of the moms at the communion rail who weren’t expecting It was as if there were this invisible line across the Valley at the Nicasio turn-off where the big families began. We were all segregated out in second grade when the nuns came and asked us Catholics to raise our hands and there we were, branded from the San Geronimo and Woodacre kids who came from small families and usually had their fathers living with them.
My mom must have had something of the bad Valley seed with her as she once sent me home a baby brother which I didn’t particularly want. Home was with my grandma. My mom was always wild, bucking what my grandma said about sticking to your own kind—you know, race, religion, and all.
My mom, she was like a cat always dropping litters—most of them died—two more lived, but I don’t want to talk about them. One was adopted by an aunt but wound up in Pelican Bay and the other lives in Azuma somewheres—see, he has cerebral palsey and was in a wheelchair—he was kidnapped by the state. That’s what made my mother crazy.
‘Course, I never actually told a soul that she was crazy. I said she was an actress in Hollywood, which was true, and she was in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World with Jack Lemmon—but she was pretty hard to spot in that crowd scene.
Anyway, the state, they lied about stealin’ the baby and my mom spent 25 years looking to find that poor child. She knew that he existed, I mean, she gave birth to him and that’s something you’re not likely to forget—even if you were crazy.
He—Billy Panis, the baby, he was named after this Filipino guy she married so that he could get a green card— he made costumes too—but some gay lover murdered him. It was in all the papers. I once helped sew beads on Miss Korea and Miss Universe’s dresses—they were like angel wings.
Anyway, Billy, he eventually found her when he was an adult and the laws changed, but by then, it was way too late. She was just too used to being crazy. I think it was 60 Minutes or some TV show like that who wanted to do a story on the reunion and all, but I don’t think middle America was quite ready for us. Even we were never quite ready for us, ourselves. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was telling you about my first major crush, on Dennis De la Ventana….
Once a week, I used to love waiting out at the fence post by the bend in the road, for Duane's father, Dean, who was the milkman. He always had something for me: a candy or a kind word. But in winter it was just too hard to get up that early and sometimes the milk would freeze in the bottles and the cream would push up the little paper flap that said “Lucas Valley Dairy” on it, and all the cats would be lined up around the three bottles licking away at the little white pillars of cream while fighting off the birds.
My grandma always got three bottles. If one went off, she made these cottage cheese pancakes for dinner—especially during Lent. One time I ordered orange juice from him but she made me give it back ’cause we couldn’t pay for it. You could get eggs too but we got ours’ from Mary Bianchi.
Dean—he looked like Dean Martin—he used to drive around in this big white convertible with red seats—it was like a steamboat. Sometimes he’d pick up Duane and ‘Lupe after school and give us rides home. But one night after the bars closed, Dean, he flipped that big white convertible on the hill at Lucas Valley Road, and that was that. They say it was a closed casket ceremony.
I was surprised to see Duane in school the next day. Didn’t know what to say to him. I mean, what do you say to someone whose father had to be scraped off the road with a spatula? But Duane, he wore this black sweater with a big purple band like arms wrapped around his chest and carefully patted his hair. That was when I decided purple was my favorite color. I was a little in love with death and wanted to embrace the color of mourning, or of forgiveness, more like it.
But after that, things began to change, everything unraveled and ‘Lupe’s family moved away, into town. I was so lonely without my best friend. The others didn’t quite fill the void that ’Lupe had left. And I never even got to kiss Duane, not even once.
10/31/2001
rev © 2002 Maureen Hurley
This version of these pieces were written in our childhood dialect for a MFA monologue class with Roy Conboy. We had to change the names of the people but not the actual events. An interesting assignment of reportage and character development. I was surprised at how visceral the characters became when I changed the names to protect, in this case, the guilty. It is an interesting tightrope between monologue and memoir as fiction. I had an interesting correspondence with poet Sharon Doubiago who is writing her memoirs, She said that when she wrote about famous people and poets, she always used their real names, but with close friends, she tended to fictionalize them. Apparently I am Lacy Murphy. Maybe Lacy will appear in some of these stories.
1 comment:
Wow! Great writing style... and you are the first that I know of to write of the "curse" that seems to hang over us "Valley kids". Everyone knows of the curse, but no one talks about it.... Thank you... and keep writing!
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