A TASTE OF REDWOOD

 

...They entered the forest from the south end of town, descending into the cool lush darkness of the redwoods via Maloc’s Pinto looking for and finding the good pullout that they wanted. Shouldering their backpacks they steamed up a hillside rife with emerald fern and green redwood twigs turned to the rust duff of decay, until they reached the trail that took them out of sight from locals and tourists alike driving in occasional cars on the winding road below.

Maloc led. Unseen strands of spider web encountered on his arms and face assured him of the trail’s disuse. Multi-colored mushrooms of vivid orange and red and bright white mushroom ghosts dotted moss of neon green. The hollow tok, tok in the upper reaches of the trees and bold swoop of wings announced a raven or two...

 

 

 

...Crossing the vociferous creek I accidentally slipped all the way up to the cut on my leg. The way the body on my back shifted in the pack felt repulsive.

I saw a mushroom in the woods–fat, saucer-like, chalky, looking like a moldy white discus jammed in a tree. The fungus on the mossy bark reminded me of my own burden. Envisioning myself back in the cave, holding the alien in my arms, I was struck with the image of an alien pieta. Hosts of images assailed my mind. It was as though a mask had been removed from the world. In the most distinct and profound manner imaginable I felt a sense of the perennial presence of magic...

 

 

 

 

 

...Some point soon after I tripped on a banana slug scrunched up to the size of a foot stool. It left a wet smear on my pants leg with a beefy audible slap. The dirty yellow body, dotted with black over-ripe spots, moistly oozed as it stretched across the trail in the span of several seconds, four obscene and canny horn-like feelers bobbing on the end of the bulging hood as it lurched into the primordial fern with skin dimpled like an elephant’s...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...Hopping over some brush not far from The Burl Barn, I saw on the road roll into town a masked man clad in motley, cap and bells. There were harlequins and mimes, Shields and Yarnell. Sonny and Cher ponderously pedaled the Yellow Submarine Sandwich. The Captain and Tennile worked the Hieronymous Bosch and Loam eight-wheel Pullman car with mustered diligence, looking like fish with legs on a green shag carpet as they labored up the steep hill into Madrani.

             
Aboard the Danish Inquisition, the Grim Reaper Ballerina conveyed a contraption consisting of various torture devices and glazed rolls. A UFO on wheels rolled by with a hatch at the top propped up. The driver pedaling away inside wearing a Richard Nixon mask hunched up his shoulders and flashed sudden peace signs.

             
It was Local-Motion Days’ Promenade of the Odd. Up the street past Just Desserts was the road to Mrs. Hutle’s. That was where I had to go. She was the only one who could help me. Everything’s riding on her. I’ve been at her place about an hour now, writing...

 

MY REDWOOD HOMELAND

 

My redwood homeland.

When you're used to this, everything else looks weird. 

 

There needs to be vertical green.

For those who have been ruined,

too many other places seem too flat.

 

In the redwoods, 

one cannot help but hear the snap of timber

as the giant freak, Bunyan, approaches

at the ringing of the ancient gong. 

 

He was a giant, axe-murdering freak.

And his name was Bunyan.

To this day, his idol is worshiped.

 

Copies available at Rookery Books, Arcata, CA

Copies available at The Booklegger

Eureka, CA

Copies available at The Hemp Connection

Garberville, CA

Copies available at Branscomb Radio Shack
Garberville, CA

THANKS,
REGGAE SAXOPHONE LEGEND
DEAN FRASER!

The fourth print book in the Humbaba County cycle will be DREEM. This will consist of two short novels. THE BOG leads into DREEM. Check out the first part of THE BOG posted here in the blog!

Audio book version.

Copies available at Ray's Food Place

Selma, OR

Garberville, CA

And at Shop Smart

 Cave Junction, OR

Redway, CA

Click link to buy print book:

http://www.amazon.com/Avenue-Giants-Stewart-Kirby/dp/1478177284/ref=la_B00572M8JC_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400625227&sr=1-1

MUCH OBLIGED

MIGRANT TRIMMER RUSH STUMPS SOHUM

SoHum is short for Southern Humboldt County.

MIGRANT TRIMMER RUSH

STUMPS SOHUM

It's the number one topic in town. Ask anyone who goes into Garberville and you hear the same thing: What is up with all of the street people?

Cory, 27, has been living on the streets for ten years. He heard about Humboldt County growing up in Santa Rosa.

Sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, Cory held a sign which read Just Hungry. Up and down Redwood Drive and on either side, indeterminate numbers of street people sitting, milling, and strolling dominated the Garberville business district view.

When asked how he would respond to the news that Ray's Food Place, a few doors up the street, has a Now Hiring sign on the door, Cory replied, "You have to be willing to clean up a little bit."

Cory indicated his lack of shoes and shirt.

When asked what would be wrong with doing that, he said, "Once you start cleaning up, you have to keep that appearance running."

Finally, when asked what would be wrong with that, Cory responded, "I don't want to change."

For Gary Futrell at The Cuttings, the prevalence of the street people in Garberville is destroying the community.

"We're overwhelmed," he said at work in his barber shop, trimming. "A lot of these people aren't looking for jobs. They're just living off the community here. You see more street people than you do local people at times."

Many of them panhandling with dogs. The impression may be likened to downtown San Francisco, or any urban area with striking economic contrast.

“It’s running tourists out of here,” said Futrell. “We’re losing the town. It’s no longer safe for women and children to walk the streets at night.”

In front of Ray’s Food Place a clean-cut homeless man, college-age, filled a pipe bowl and lit up with a joyless air. Initially defiant and suspicious, he walked off warning his fellow street person Cory, “Bacon, dude!” Not the first time someone thought I was a cop.

A week later, he said his name was Aaron, that he was from Mississippi, and that he used to work at The Blue Room.

Cody, 19, has been in SoHum for six weeks.

“I was in Colorado and I traveled to the Rainbow Gathering in Tennessee,” said Cody. “I hooked up with a group that knew something about trimming jobs.”

Not all of the street people migrating to the Gold Rush of Humboldt County marijuana trim work are as candid, but Cody plans to return to Colorado.

“A buddy of mine says he might already have a job hooked up for me,” he said. “I’m figuring I might as well go back to where friends and family are.”

Inside, atop, and around a colorfully spray-painted modified school bus, barefoot young people playing music lounged in the Ray’s Food Place parking lot with their dogs. One was from Colorado, another from North Carolina. About a third had heard of Ken Kesey.

Responding to numerous complaints, Sgt. Ken Swithenbank of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene, and the bus people moved on.

For many local residents, having to adjust to Dickensian hordes in town is not a desired change. A change that most business owners asked are as reluctant to address in print as workers migrating across the country are on clipping bud.

Local horror stories range from overexposure to general seediness, to verbal abuse, to the threat of being bitten by the dog for failure in panhandling compliance. Last week, an Arizona man flipped out in Garberville on LSD, and a resident of North Carolina shot a man north of Redway.

More commonly however, there’s just something about near-constant overripe crowds hanging around outside of businesses accosting passersby for change that becomes exceedingly tiresome.

“All the commercial marijuana growers,” Swithenbank said, “should possibly put in a town tax for us to have more enforcement on the transient trimmers.”

Copies of REDWOODLAND    

THE MESMERIZER  

and
AVENUE OF THE GIANTS

inside the store

at the book rack

in front of the video counter!

A VISIT TO REDWOODLAND

Chapter 9 from the huge short story/novella REDWOODLAND,
available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/REDWOODLAND-ebook/dp/B0050D2WTE/ref=pd_sim_sbs_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2


FROM THEIR SEATS on the thick green grass so perfect it could almost be fake, Joe and Leanne took in the Haunted Fernden view stretching below before them. Off to the side, a bright green tent was pitched. Hers.

“It’s beautiful,” Joe said. In the distance could be heard mad howls of glee as the train picked up speed and went through the trees. Leanne leaned back on an elbow.

“What should we do for dinner?” she said.

“That’s a good question. I think they have some places to eat in the middle of town. There used to be real restaurants down there. I can barely remember—I guess I was about two or three—my mom and dad thought it was a pretty big deal when the town got bought up for Redwoodland.”

“Big deal in a good way?”

“No, big deal in a bad way.”

“Well, I hate to change the subject but it’s five-thirty now. What do you say we head over and find something? I’m starving.”

“I don’t suppose we need to take our stuff with us?”

“I’m just taking my card. I’m not worried about leaving my pack in the tent. Everything’s on camera. Besides, I haven’t really seen anybody else around.”

“I saw one couple walking through town.”

It sounded to Leanne like Joe nearly said another couple. He almost did, and it almost spoiled something magical and dream-like by being manifest and rushed. Neither was attached. Both felt relaxed. They knew everything about each other and nothing at all, and when Joe realized how uncharacteristically quickly the clicking was going for him—as indeed it was for her—there came to his mind rich with resonance and sounding just like Taj Mahal an inner voice which said, “Everybody’s got to change sometime.”

It was the off season. Also, people were having to save more and more longer and longer to finally get to go in the summer when the cool clean air of the tall green trees was a strange safe haven, and if people weren’t spending their lives saving for summer then it was winter they were saving for at Redwoodland instead. The park was far from empty. Still, the colorful homes and shops of the stately Victorian town, simultaneously possessed of quaintness and majesty, frozen spotless in bygone time, today all ran for Joe and Leanne.

They reached a restaurant. A menu placed in an ornate window with white and blue trim was available for perusal. Both agreed it looked good, but were surprised to find inside that the sounds of cups and utensils clinking in a low hum of chatter belonged to the animatronic guests, activated when Joe and Leanne broke an invisible beam not far outside the door.

Off in a corner played a player piano. Joe and Leanne grabbed a couple of trays and examined the foods displayed in windows to be unlocked by swiped cards. Joe got the Zesty Herb Chicken Supreme dinner plate, a chocolate mousse and a Guinness. Leanne went with the Dungeoness Delight dinner plate, a chocolate mousse and a glass of chardonnay. In each case, the removed selection was immediately replaced by another exactly like it from behind.

Upstairs at a balcony table the lighting was low, just a few tables lit with what appeared to be candlelight dimmed by the tinted glass of small round candle holders glowing on the middle of each table. Joe and Leanne sat down next to an animatronic family.

A turtleneck-wearing man sporting sideburns and a perm sat opposite a woman with feathered hair and a large open collar. The kids, a boy and a girl, were hanging on the ornate wooden railing, swinging their lifted knees and hanging with the rail under their arms. The couple seemed to have just recently received their drinks.

“By the way dear,” said the woman, “did you watch ‘The Bob Newhart Show?’”

“No dear,” said the man. “I watched ‘Starsky and Hutch.’”

“I can’t wait to watch ‘The Brady Bunch,’” proclaimed the beaming animatronic boy. “I can’t wait to watch ‘Scooby-Doo,’” announced the smiling animatronic girl.

After dinner Joe and Leanne took in the theater. Every step of the way, the necessary sights and sounds were activated, effects tripped by unseen beams broken by the strolling pair.

While they watched the Fernden Theater production of “Camelot”—the animatronic cast all convincingly local—the only thing Joe could think about was whether he would be seeing any action that night. He hated to reduce the magic down to bare terms, but he really did want to know. It seemed like she was putting off some heavy signals in that direction, but then again, perhaps she was merely feeling comfortable and friendly, and totally capable of setting him straight in a firm and unmistakable manner at any given moment should he take any liberties and instigate the need to define clear boundaries. Which would suck to have to hear.

“It says here in the playbill we’re welcome to explore the theater,” said Leanne. “Want to?”

“Sounds excellent,” said Joe. “Let’s explore.”

Backstage in the wardrobe area, upstairs in the costume department, then back onstage with the animatronic cast singing about how there used to be a really great place and time seemed strangely depressing to Joe, mostly just from still not knowing, but he brightened up heading back to the cemetery when Leanne crooked an arm through his and walked with him that way all the way to the top of the graveyard’s biggest crypt.

It was night, though due to the lights not especially dark, and had been a big day, but Redwoodland never closed and Joe and Leanne were hardly tired at all. The crypt was made of some sort of stone, flat on top with a raised lip running the circumference on which they sat. Except for a large faux two-handled concrete urn at each corner, the top of the crypt was bare.

“So are you going to sleep in the tent with me tonight or what?” Leanne said.

“Well, I kind of figured.”

“You liar.”

“That’s true. Do you…want to head on over?”

“What is wrong with you? You have to say the one thing that ruins the entire evening?” Leanne laughed. “Look at those stars.”

The stars were not as bright as they used to look. Redwoodland never closed.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess we might as well head on over.” She took him by the hand. “Did you just hear that sound?”

“Sounds like one of the effects in there must be broken.”

“They have scary robot things in the crypts?”

“Well, I guess so. Sure, why not?”

Whatever it was, it certainly sounded odd. They stepped from the top of the crypt to a low wall near some stone stairs and went around to the front where they tried to peer in through the bars of an iron door.

“I can’t see anything,” she said. Now the noise had stopped.

“Me either,” he agreed. They gave it another moment.

“All right.” She took him by the hand again. “We may as well go get the damn thing over with. But remember, clothes on, no touching . . . .”