Jane and I visited Fort Bragg, California the first time in 1971. It’s important for those not aware than the Mendocino County Fort Bragg is not the Carolinas Fort Bragg which is a for real US Marine Training Base. Fort Bragg, California was named after General Braxton Bragg, same as the Fort in the Carolinas but Mendocino’s Fort Bragg started populating with hippies in 1968-9 and these kinds of folk didn’t like killing. Our first view of the ocean was coming into Albion, S of Fort Bragg. It was larger than I had imagined and truly made the world look round.. The clincher came when the first movement we saw on the ocean immediately after pulling onto the Pacific Coast Highway was a whale blowing off. While our stay was a matter of months, we did come back 5 years later to live. My biggest mistake was thinking I was rich. Rich in children maybe but not in dollars. We spent our summers in South Lake Tahoe. None of our children could swim but boy can they now and so can their kids, our grandchildren.We tried hard to make it from Fort Bragg to S Lake Tahoe inane day but I am the only driver, or was as I no longer drive). On one trip we blew a tire going 80MPH. It was a back tire and I feel lucky to have controlled the car so well. That night we spent at the Shadow Motel in Woodland, about 10 miles N of the Sacramento Causeway and Airport. We ended up stopping for the night every time we went from Mendo to Tahoe…and then tragedy struck. Jane’s mother died of breast cancer. She was the light of the family and we still miss her very much. We still stopped at Woodland. One evening I was reading the Sacramento Bee and started paying close attention to the new homes and how inexpensive they seemed. We found one right there in woodland and at 84 thousand appeared doable. The developer thought I must be nuts. Here we were on AFDC, Food Stamps, SSDI and SSI. I worked the system well and legally. I had to do something as I was a seriously ill bipolar client. We did it however. Our closing seemed like months but we were the owner of a manufactured home pasted on to another. The kind written about by the Weavers. Houses made of ticket tacky and all looked the same. And going to Tahoe no longer seemed fun. We lost the house in 1988 because the 3-2-1 buy finally reached a point where when I was done paying the mortgage, we and nothing to eat. This was where Ferry County came in. Through a complex situation we ended up buying 20 acres. In just over a week Chris our second eldest and I built a small cabin. We were in a hurry. Cold weather was already coming in. I would like to note that many who lived in Ferry County, also had lived in Mendocino, and same for Seattle. This was true so much so that a bus system just of hippies grew around the areas. Today the Green Tortoise serves large areas of the west and is well know as the easiest way to fly without leaving the group. In Ferry County I broke an ankle, broke my back and when my mother died I was no longer subsidized and broke the budget. So as soon asa the last child graduated from Curlew High, we moved to Cheney. I would visit my old homestead but 5 years ago I came down with q ost serious syndrome, Guillai Barre in which I almost died 3 times. It’s starting to look like HUD is our finally stop. There may be a time when we can travel short distance, but not for long…. If you are into reading my free electronic book, with Youtube,bobshannon.org/coyotehtml/CoyoteHTML.html Click on Coyote; s Guide to Wilderness Living.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 16:46:04 +0000
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