Pebbles in His Pockets-Dirt in His Shoes

If you felt the earth move Thursday evening, it might possibly have caused by my making an appearance at a most noteworthy event, the Bell Springs Volunteer Fire Department fund raiser. After all, it required me to actually first, make a public appearance and second, extend that remarkable set of circumstances past my bedtime.

Truth be told there was a mitigating circumstance, because by itself the fundraiser was enough to pry me out of home, but still not for more than a minute or two. A certain LittleMan was that proverbial carrot, which enticed me to stretch my social boundaries just a smidge.

DancingGirl had told me she planned on bringing him, and I was stoked, plain and simple. Nothing floats my boat like spending any amount of time with this young human being person. To follow him around and view the world through his eyes is a humbling experience. To witness an awakening awareness of the reality of what simply exists, is something to cherish.

LittleMan’s fascination with flowers, pebbles, trees, little orange beetles, grandfather’s beard, sticks, pine needles, dandelions, twigs, ants, flies, pine cones, thistles, leaves, bees, tree bark, acorns, straw, birds, rocks, branches, lizards, dirt, a king snake, a raven’s feather, and manzanita berries, puts electronic devices to shame.

All items are worthy of the same scrutiny, especially in the venue filled with smiling, happy folks, presented Thursday night. LittleMan led; I followed. He was mesmerized by a young man who was juggling out in front of the live music, using three of the brightly colored plastic balls that were magically gathered together in the Kid Zone.

As the guy juggled, LittleMan started to get into the act, heaving first one and then the other of the two plastic balls he had been holding right at the unsuspecting performer. Laughing, he redirected two of the colorful orbs to LittleMan, who was delighted. This juggler had it within his capacity to include LittleMan and he did so, as many times as the child kept the game in play.

Later, when he saw the pony that was so short that the two saw eye-to-eye, LittleMan was enchanted. Heck, Emma the dog was darn near as tall as that horse, at least from LittleMan’s perspective. He stood gripping the fence where the pony was temporarily stationed, ogling him. As we were standing there, a young couple approached, both to see the pony too, but also because of LittleMan. 

“That is so cute,” the gal said, indicating the intent focus that LittleMan was exhibiting. “What’s his name?” When I informed her, she exclaimed, “I know who he is, and I know his dad!”

Her response epitomized the gathering; community connects people and those bonds create a sense of comfort. Comfort is seeing kids everywhere, with appropriate options for entertainment. Of special note was the woman who was painting faces. Again, LittleMan stood transfixed, watching her do her artwork.

We are not talking flamboyant strokes, with a face instantly transforming into a unicorn. No, she was creating a tiny swirl on this child’s forehead, but it may as well have been a rainbow, crisscrossing her face, for all of the attention she garnered. LittleMan was transfixed.

Then there was the woman hula-hooping. LittleMan sees hula-hoops in action from his own parents, and his Auntie BossLady, hula-hooper extraordinaire, so this woman had his undivided attention. It took the little keyboard and the bongo to wrestle his attention away; LittleMan played them both with equal enthusiasm. 

There was another small boy there, silently watching him. After a few minutes, still without speaking, the other boy waited until LittleMan paused, and then dispensed a few crucial tips on keyboard playing. I watched the interaction with great interest.

Letting his index fingers create single notes, rather than the more exuberant fist pounds to the keys by LittleMan, the small boy played and then paused for effect, tossing the ball metaphorically across the court to LittleMan. To my surprise, his tiny index fingers began duplicating what I had just heard coming forth from the small boy.

It’s the little things, I tell you.

And speaking of little things, I had been wanting to hear Blue Luke, but my assumption was that he would not appear until late. That’s what the sign said, even if most people would not consider sunset “late.” Therefore, I was pumped when I saw Luke striding toward me from the front entrance still early on, instrument case in hand, obviously intent on the stage.

As he moved past me, I suddenly felt his arm drape around my shoulders, as he stopped, stooped and gave my shoulder a squeeze. I don’t even remember what I said, just the warm and fuzzy feeling any kid gets when someone he admires acknowledges him.

I knew Luke a long time ago, when he was a student of mine in middle school, so I have followed his career from the beginning, from a distance. Now, I got to hear his band in person. I wondered idly if these were the same musicians he played with when he was touring with Julian Marley. 

Ray and the Revelers

What a show that must have been and I don’t even know if there were other artists too. At our fundraiser, we had been highly entertained from the outset by Ray and the Revelers, comprised tonight of Jeff Daniels, Bear Kamoroff, Cory Hannah and Lauren Kaplan. 

All mountain folk, I have been listening to at least three of them for more than thirty years, and the fourth one was born and reared on the mountain. I never enjoyed them more than Thursday night. 

VelvetAntlers

The Velvet Antlers followed, and though I was unfamiliar with them, I was immediately drawn to the lively music they were producing. What’s more, LittleMan was attracted to the music as well, which is where he encountered the juggler and let the right side of his brain absorb it all.

When Blue Luke began their set, we were not disappointed. Considering the venue was not located in a concert hall, somewhere in Europe, those musicians put on quite a show. I know LittleMan and I got our money's worth.

Live music rocks the soul and mine was rolling as well all night. The combination of enjoying the moment, while watching LittleMan take it all in, was most uplifting. It made me want to do something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

That was fortunate because GlutenFreeMama nailed it the next day when she announced,

“I ordered this pretty cool keyboard for LittleMan; it will be here next week.”

See what I mean? It’s the little things.

When You Have Lemons, [Make Dried Tomatoes]

I wear my discomfort like a badge of honor; if I ain’t hurtin’, drop the curtain. By definition farming is a demanding profession, and a young person’s profession at that. I got into the game late in life and I can’t possibly play catch-up without it all, well, catching up to me.

The author of Mark's Work, circa 1983

My special area of interest is tomatoes, primarily because of their versatility when it comes to preserving them for winter use. Beginning in 1974, the summer following my release from the Big Green Machine, I began growing tomatoes in San Jose, and putting them up in a couple of different ways.

I cut them in quarters and cold-packed them, and I made a marinara sauce, to the extent that I always canned enough to get me through to the next year. Still, I am talking maybe twenty or twenty-five tomato plants, not enough to call in the cavalry.

Compare that to this summer, where there are a total of 295 tomato plants on the west end of HappyDayFarms, or as I like to call it, my back yard. I harvest Sunday and Monday for Monday’s market, and Wednesday and Thursday for Thursday’s market. About three-fourths of the work must be done Kaepernick-style, taking a knee. Either that or I must just plop myself down on my bottom, and scoot along, because I sure am not popping up and down like a weasel.

Already I have done a marathon marinara sauce batch, and a mammoth batch of catsup, each producing almost exactly seven-and-a-half gallons. I have plans to put up varying amounts of pizza sauce, tomato paste, hot sauce and salsa, along with as many cold-packed tomatoes as I can get away with.

There is one additional player in the lineup this summer, making its debut (for me) in quite a splashy style, and that is the drying of tomatoes. Though GlutenFreeMama has dabbled in the past, it was always for use in her own kitchen. Now, I am drying tomatoes for either selling at market, or putting into one of the CSA’s (Community Sponsored Agriculture) that HappyDayFarms orchestrates.

I was motivated by the dozen Giuseppe tomato starts given to me by BossLady, back in April, but since then the whole drying tomatoes thing has taken off. After I had harvested the first flush of drying tomatoes, I did a little research to find out more about preserving them.

The one common theme in all the sites I visited was that you can pretty much dry any kind of tomato you want. The difference is simply the amount of liquid contained within the tomato itself. With that thought in mind, the realization that I could also dry the Heinz sauce tomatoes hit me upside the head like a big squishy tomato.

I have more than 120 of these sauce tomato plants, and many of them are producing fruit as small as cherry tomatoes. Now catsup doesn’t care if the tomatoes are big or small, but small lends itself more to drying them because it takes a whole lot of little tomatoes to make even a teaspoon of catsup. 

A whole lot of little tomatoes, on the other hand, will produce a whole lot of dried tomatoes. Right now I have ten quarts of dried tomato chips, far beyond anything I originally envisioned. And this is only the third week in August.

As a farmer I am humbled every day of my life at the vagaries of growing food. Whether it’s critters, heat, blossom end rot, water issues, inconsistent production, or the harvest itself, I trip over my shortcomings daily. I know there is too much nitrogen on the newly extended part of the rows, because I was nonchalantly liberal with my distribution of chicken manure last March, straight from the coop to the fields.

Ach tung, Chucko. By skipping the time spent amidst the decomposing matter in the compost pile, I planted tomato plants in soil that was simply too hot. It was a rookie mistake and produced magnificent plants with fruit that is tainted. 

Additionally, I was nonchalantly stingy with both compost and amendments on the rest, taking for granted the potency of the topsoil. As a result the fruit is plentiful but small, making drying them seem so attractive. I call it making dried tomatoes out of lemons, if you get my mixed metaphor.

So sure, my surgically rebuilt right shoulder was aching this morning for some unfathomable reason, and my surgically rebuilt left knee was grumbling too, but both have rallied bravely, thanks to my meds. There is just something too magical about a pristinely clean bong, and a rip of AC/DC, to get my body parts all in synch.

I’ll need them running on all [two] cylinders today because GlutenFreeMama wants to make batch of smoked paprika catsup, my favorite!

Eh?

I completed the dismantling of a redwood deck this weekend, stacking the denailed planks neatly off to the side, along with girders, posts and what remained of the 2x8 floor joists. The wood was rotting and the nails were reduced to a fraction of their original girth by rust, the result of thirty-five years of summer heat and winter snow. 

Whereas I might have contemplated the absurd notion of a refurbishment as time passed, nothing hastened my thought process quite like having a good portion of the deck collapse under the weight of snow slip-sliding off the metal roof above.

Bombs away!

I posted photos to this effect on face/book last February, but until a couple of weeks ago, that had been the extent of my response to this particularly rude gesture on the part of Mother Nature. Now I was at least clearing the detritus out of the arena, that costing nothing more than my time.

The significance of this rather mundane bit of business is simply that I was taking apart, that which I had put together, so many years ago. I am quite certain that at the time, I firmly believed that the redwood deck I was building would outlast me. Swing and a miss.

Time has this funny way of prevailing, regardless of whether we choose to acknowledge this or not. My belief that I was building a deck which had no shelf life, was as naive as me thinking that I will still be around when the new deck I am building, decides to give up the ghost.

That I am even having these reflections shows I am getting along in age, approaching my 67th birthday early next month. I can still mix and pour concrete, and build the undercarriage of a redwood deck with my eyes closed, but now when I fall, I don’t bounce back as easily as I did when I was thirty, so I don’t try it with my eyes closed anymore.

I also have my eyes wide open when it comes to realizing that I will collapse and fall some day, metaphorically, just as the redwood deck did. We lost Brady recently, a voice that I thought would always be there, eh? You too?

But Brady talked about his coming demise with a familiarity of an old friend. I think the only thing he hated was the confusion around him he felt towards the end, not that which was inside his head. He also had health issues which pointed to an inevitable conclusion to a long and productive life. His dry sense of humor and his wit were present in all he wrote, and I miss him dearly.

For those of you who did not know retired high school teacher, Bruce Brady, he was a colleague at the school district, teaching among other things, AP English. That GlutenFreeMama and I survived HeadSodBuster's senior year at Laytonville High, is testimony that we all thought the little guy had big 'tings to accomplish. 

Just as Brady was, I am prone to sharing what is going on inside my noggin, with the universe. I remember Brady noting-and I'm paraphrasing here-that in a hundred years’ time, it would matter not whether he lived an addition x number of years, or y. The passage of time would blur all events so that a hundred years down the line, who would be around to know or care? 

A wise man, Brady.

That I am still able to do manual labor, or grow and harvest tomatoes, I am grateful for. I am also grateful for the presence of a sixteen-month-old child, our grandson Ollie Mac, with whom I have been hanging lately. I look forward to the day when he can help me “hold the board and cut the wood.” I look forward to teaching him.

That way, when the redwood deck I am rebuilding now, collapses and needs to be replaced, Ollie Mac will be able to do so. That’s a little part of me living on, eh?

But still, in a hundred years?

Seize the day, embrace the moment, smell the roses and love those with whom you come into contact, madly. That's all that really matters.

Blunt Force Government

According to my careful calculations,
the helicopter landed right where the
pond lies today.

Like the spinning rotor of a helicopter, my thoughts swirl around my head as my own Day of Infamy arrives on the summer calendar, July 23rd. It was a day like any other day, back in 1985, except that a helicopter came out of the sky and set down in the field below our ridge top home.

Out streamed a crew of rent-a-cops, wannabes being paid ten bones an hour to eradicate cannabis, and up the hill they charged. Though the front gate was unlocked, instead of opening it and passing through, they kicked the gate in, splintering it, and requiring that it be replaced. They did the same thing with the gate onto the front deck, though they did manage to restrain themselves, entering the house without kicking in the unlocked door.

These thugs ransacked our home, using a crow bar to pry open GlutenFreeMama’s unlocked hope chest. Exactly what they expected to find in a woman’s hope chest, that would link us to a grow, is beyond me. They took nine hundred dollars from us, money that had been prepaid to me for carpentry services. In other words, before I could start earning income again, after the bust, at ten bucks per, I had to first work ninety hours just to break even.

Sweet Baby Lee

When the chopper set down, pregnant GlutenFreeMama had snatched up fifteen-month-old BenJamIn and grabbed not-quite-three-years-old HeadSodBuster by his hand, and headed out overland. They were trying to get three parcels over to my folks' place, where they waited for the invasion to end. 

I was nowhere in the vicinity, being gainfully employed installing blocking, while working on a construction crew building a new house. I received a phone call from a terrified GlutenFreeMama, after clambering down form the top of a ladder to take the call on the land phone inside Jeff and Carol’s old house, back when we were still anchored to kitchen walls.

Michael sang at our benefit.

No warrant was ever issued for my arrest and I never faced charges on the local scene. Instead, the raid having been conducted by federal “agents,” my home and twenty acres of land were seized by the government, a notice to that effect having been affixed to the destroyed gate on their way out.

For the dastardly crime of growing cannabis plants, I was going to lose my home.

I hired Ron Sinnoway, the pro from Dover when it came to cannabis. His specialty was land seizure cases, and he waved his magic wand and made it all go away, nine months to the day after we had been CAMPed on. For this service I was charged $17,500 and I paid it with a smile. 

About a third of the loot came from family and community contributions; we even had a benefit or two done in our name. The other two-thirds was given to me for services not yet rendered, by Michael for whom I was doing carpentry. In exchange for helping him the following year with his grow, he paid what was left of those lawyer fees, around ten large.

Indiana Slim and Bear

Thirty-four years ago today, the government tried to seize my home and property for the “crime” of growing plants. Its agents invaded my space, created havoc, stole from me and left a seizure notice behind, and all I could do was defend myself or lose everything.

All of this occurred because of 33 plants.

Placed in a historical context, what happened to me was not out of the ordinary for the time period. Just up Bell Springs Road the previous year, a couple had experienced the same invasion, but instead of fighting it, they had given up and moved along, losing their home and land. 

I was sweating blood.

I personally use cannabis daily to treat my mood spectrum disorder, and I use it exclusively for pain management. As a 66-year-old farmer, I have my share of aches and pains. 

Here at HappyDayFarms, we are licensed to grow medicinal cannabis on both the local and state level, no longer outlaws. We played the game, we pay exorbitant taxes and consequently, do not have to worry about the current eradication efforts going on around us. 

That does not mean that I have forgotten, or those around me have forgotten, what it's like to be invaded by agents of the government. I am outraged to learn that current efforts in Mendocino County, in Humboldt County and in other places near and far, include similar invasive tactics. I continue to struggle to understand why growing six or twelve plants, or thirty-three for that matter, gives authorities the right to invade and ransack people’s homes. It’s grandstanding, nothing more nothing less, on the backs of small farmers doing no harm.

As someone who has experienced Blunt-Force-Government, I call bullshit. Get a warrant, take the plants and then leave. It’s as simple as that. Treating these victimless crimes as though they were some sort of abominations, is reprehensible.

It needs to stop.

My parents, Pauline and Robert, and neighbor Rex at a benefit,
1985.

Got Zucchini?

I feel pretty much the same way about zucchini, as I do about reading. If you do not like to read, I maintain it’s because you are not reading the right stuff. If you (a) do not like zucchini, (b) are tired of squash in general or (c) have gotten bored with the green submarines, I might suggest that you expand your horizons as far as how to prepare this summer staple.

Have you ever tried:

…simply sautéing thinly sliced zucchini, with onions/mushrooms/pretty much anything, and adding desired spices?

…thinly-sliced and sautéd squash as a last-minute add-in to pasta sauce, over spaghetti/any-kind-of-pasta?

...roasting sliced zucchini in an olive oil/balsamic vinegar mix, along with peppers, onions, broccoli, mushrooms, and serving it over pasta? Or putting the mixture on a pizza?

…the ever-popular fried zucchini patties, with grated zucchini, some onions/scallions, flour, egg and salt/spices? Lightly salting the grated squash and allowing it to drain in a colander, prior to cooking, helps prevent soggy patties. Adding a topping, such as guacamole, salsa, sour cream, ranch dressing or anything that piques your taste buds, is a must.

…preparing patties using equal parts drained, grated zucchini, and grated, rinsed potatoes, and then the rest of the ingredients? (Cheese optional)

…simply steaming cut-up zucchini and adding butter, salt and black pepper?

…zucchini casserole, a dish that layers zucchini, rice, pasilla chili peppers, fresh tomatoes, cheese and is topped with sour cream?

…including zucchini in such traditional dishes as [minestrone] soup, shepherd’s pie, quiche, veggie tamales, enchiladas?

…making an omelet, including onions, cut-up baby zucchini, mushrooms, sweet peppers and cheese?

…wait for it: zucchini bread? With coffee in the morning?

…zucchini on the grill? Whether pre-steamed for a brief visit, or sliced length-wise and grilled over the coals?

…a variation of zucchini on the grill, wrapping cut-up squash in foil, with butter, salt and black pepper, and grilling it over indirect heat?

…stuffing one of those got-away-dudes with a rice/ground meat combo, and baking it with cheese?

…zucchini noodles or zoodles? Using a spiral vegetable slicer, prepare zucchini and add olive oil, garlic, salt and anything else you choose, and serve cold. 

…zucchini tacos? Grate zucchini and sauté it with diced onions and add beaten eggs, paprika, salt and hot sauce, and cook until eggs are done. Put the mixture into corn tortillas that have been heated on the griddle and add cheese. 

…raw zucchini sticks, served alongside sliced cucumbers, carrots and cherry tomatoes, with ranch dressing?

On-farm we eat zucchini every day, and why not? It’s fresh, it’s free and it’s tasty, if you are willing to broaden your horizons. If you do not grow zucchini, but know someone who does, chances are that person would love to share some with you. 

Be sure and bring a truck when you stop by to pick “some” up. Chances are, you will need it.

zucchini casserole

These Little Piggies Got Sunburned

“Peace, pot, love, groovy, posters, candles and incense,” was an old expression dating back from my childhood home on Fellowship St. I turned eight years old in 1960, so I was seventeen in 1969, formative years to have come of age. To this day I am not certain whether the expression above was intended to mock or glorify hippiedom.

I battled my boss(s) at Sunrize (sic) Market about sideburns and hair over the collar, from 1967 until I was drafted in December of 1971. I indulged in the Devil’s lettuce from 1968 onward and once I was finally released from the Big Green Machine, I officially accepted my vocation as a hippie.

Complete with 199th PSC fatigue shirt...

I wore my hair in new location, along with a fiercely red beard, long enough to once get caught in the spinning fan belt of my VW bus, the generally accepted hippie coach of choice. I didn’t shave afterwards; I just learned to keep my head out of the immediate arena of spinning pulleys. 

I wore bell bottoms, attended college from September of 1970, through May of 1982 (With that two-year hiatus as a draftee in the United States Army) and believed nonviolence was of paramount importance, the irony of my military service having a good chuckle. While overseas, I was a clerk in a redeployment division, the second-most powerful position for a grunt, behind only those who labored in finance. 

What is all of this leading up to? Well, I have been in crisis for the last eighteen months, my hippie lifestyle severely jeopardized by an inability to acquire correct footwear. Fortuitously, I managed to find salvation in the form of a severe paradigm shift, by changing to a different style sandal.

What happened was simple enough: The company manufacturing my old-style sandals went out of business, throwing me into crisis. This disaster led me to question my very existence. After all, I don’t even own a pair of shoes anymore, just two pairs of boots that I can’t get my right foot into.  

New look sandals...

My new sandals don’t have that problem because my toes simply flop in the breeze. It is a new-to-me style of sandal, one that is infinitely more carefree and daring, but one that leaves my toes exposed. I had resisted this approach to life-steadfastly-but capitulated when forced to admit that my feet were tied, at least metaphorically. 

Nowhere in the vastness that is Mendocino County, were the desired sandals available. I went as far as Ukiah, for heaven’s sake. Ultimately, I made the journey up to Garberville, in Humboldt County, where I felt I had as good of a chance as anywhere, only to be similarly disappointed.

However, for $71.00, I could refit my feet with what appeared to be the only viable option, eschewing the ever-popular flip-flops. I am a farmer, after all, but the reality is that both of my dilapidated pairs of sandals had given up the ghost within hours of each other, the second via Freddie the French bulldog, and I was desperate.

So I gave the pleasant woman the required loot and donned my new footgear. My initial assessment was that they were working out better than I could ever have hoped for, and I simply loved them. This balloon burst, ending up distributed amongst several of my toes, which took their time expressing unhappiness and then blistered up like fat, little pink sausages.

The funny thing is I had anticipated this response and had been cautious about how much time I spent in the sun in the early going. It was not until a full ten days after I had begun wearing the new sandals, when I had forgotten about caution, that they showed the cumulative effects of being in sunlight far too long.

What’s a respectable hippie supposed to do? When I asked my 295 tomato plants if they could get by without me for a few days, while I remained indoors, they cringed while the weeds chortled. GlutenFreeMama inquired-innocently enough, I suppose-why I didn’t just put socks on.

Horrified, I informed her that no hippie worth his salt, would ever wear socks with sandals. (It. Simply. Is. Not. Done. Period.) No, this was obviously a case for cannabis salve, and why not? It fixes everything else. But such was not the case, the salve making the little pink sausages squeal with discomfort. I was clearly out of my league.

The only thing that helped was soaking them in cool water, and time, which heals all wounds. Time was the big factor, but time refused to take, well, time off, and I was stuck having to carry on. 

Then, from the dim recesses of my cauliflower brain, came the answer, two days too late, but still welcome: baking soda. I put a tablespoon of it in a little dish, made a paste using water, and applied it to my tootsies. The discomfort, and equally important, the itching, ceased instantly, and the crisis was averted. Not only did the baking soda soothe, it served as a protectant from additional discomfort by an unforgiving sun.

With, I might add, my reputation as a bona fide hippie, still intact.

These little piggies got new shoes,

These little piggies got sunburned,

These little piggies turned red.

DMV 101

I arrived at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Garberville five minutes prior to my 10:40 appointment, Thursday morning. I had necessary documents accompanying me in my trusty backpack. Having been operating a motor vehicle without a valid California Driver’s License for about five months now, skulking The 101 apprehensively, I was here to rectify matters.

It had taken me three months to decide that the problem was not going to fix itself; it was up to me to do something. Unfortunately, the DMV in Garberville did not have any appointment available on the day I called, so I asked about the next day.

It was not until we got to June 20th that an opening, well, opened up. I accepted the assignment happily enough, figuring that another couple of months would not matter one way or another, and I was right enough.

It was the old lost wallet syndrome, miraculously the first time it has ever happened to me. The last place I remember having it was the Spaceway in Willits, where I not only unloaded a mammoth cartload of groceries onto the moving belt, but bagged them as well at the other end, into bags brought from home.

Somewhere in the chaos I also shelled out about a third of my monthly stipend to the cashier, and that was that. Exit, stage left.

I never missed that wallet with my driver’s license, my VA card and a couple hundred bones in it, until the next time I got ready to go to town, about two weeks later. When we contacted the bank, they informed us that no unauthorized transactions had taken place on our lone credit card, and that out debit card was equally unaffected. We went ahead and cancelled the two cards and had new ones issued. What happened to the wallet remains a mystery.

You’d think with the number-and depth-of the pockets on my cargo pants, it being January, I could have managed to slip that old San Francisco Giants wallet into one of them, but no, as many times as I checked those pockets, that wallet remains missing in action. The odd thing about the whole caper is that I am a much better driver without my wallet than with it.

A driver who is paranoid about attracting the attention of the CHP, is a safer driver by far.

Reggae on the River, 2017

Though I catastrophized about the upcoming journey north to Garberville for a week prior, my concern being the purported “slippage road repair” alluded to in Cal Trans’s highway report, our journey progressed uninterrupted. GlutenFreeMama and Ellie Mae, the rescue dog, had accompanied me. On our way we passed French’s Camp, known for hosting the annual Reggae on the River festival each August. 

Not. This. Year. High Times Magazine has announced that 2019’s festivities have been cancelled.

We pulled into Garberville’s somewhat congested DMV parking lot five minutes early. Grabbing my backpack, I entered the facility and noted the five individuals sitting to the left on the designated Group W bench, while I assessed what I needed to do. Over at the far wall, ahead of me, a man and his middle-school-aged kid were in front of one of four wall-mounted machines. Making my way past those sitting on the bench, I inquired of no one in particular, “Are we supposed to check in?” 

Got it. Go stand at the end of the white line and wait for someone to take pity on me. Well, there’s two windows going, so there’s that.

I did not wait long before the gal at the right window inquired of me, “May I help you?” while continuing to wait on the gentleman in front of her window.

“Yes, thanks. I have a ten-forty appointment to get a replacement driver’s license. Do you need my confirmation number?”

“No, I just need you to go over those machines on the far wall and check in. Then come back here and I’ll get you squared away.”

Cool. This should be a piece of cake. Far wall, machines, I see keyboards. I should be in good shape. Now what? I’m playing a tune on this keyboard and nothing is happening. I don’t see any instructions. Shoot, the kid next to me doesn’t seem to be having any problem, but I can’t just stare at him and his screen. Guess I’ll go back and seek guidance.

“Sir. Did you check in?” 

Is she talking to me? I felt like a sunflower out of soil.

“I’m unclear on what I’m supposed to do,” I responded lamely.

“You need to check in so that I can access your information up here at my desk. You do that at those machines on the far wall.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. I went over there and there are no instructions. I don’t know what to do.” 

She’s got to take pity on me. I know I would take pity on me.

“Oh. No problem. Just press the gray bar,” and she returned her attention to the gentleman in front of her. 

Retracing my footsteps, refusing to acknowledge the Group W bunch, I selected the machine on the far left, instinctively, and started searching for the gray bar. Again, I saw the keyboard, with a small black box to the right, and the monitor in front of me. Nary a gray bar in sight.

I returned to the check-in spot, now in a full-on tech meltdown, and awaited my fate.

“Sir. What seems to be the problem?”

“What seems to be the problem is that I can’t find the fucking gray bar!” I screeched at her.

“I’m sorry. I can’t find any gray bars,” I informed her, in a very small voice.

She stared at me uncomprehendingly, as though I were a monstrous Jerusalem beetle, obnoxiously waving my six feet long antennae around at her. 

She heaved a sigh of frustration, beckoned for me to return to the far wall and joined me a moment later, as I once again searched for the gray bar, in vain. Hell, I’d take any color bar at this point in time, preferably one that served Jameson.

She beckoned to the monitor, “Now do you see it?”

I’m supposed to be looking at the monitor?

Along the top right side of the monitor, was a dull gray bar. Now what?

I hit every button on the keyboard once again, to demonstrate to her that none of them did anything. 

Glaring at me, she leaned forward and pressed the gray bar on the monitor.

An application came into view on the screen. The woman turned on her heel and headed back to her station.

The cursor blinked off and on inside the box that said, “First name.”

I got this-I know my first name. Small victories count too.

I felt this-years-old...

“Mark,” I typed confidently, and then hit the space bar on the keyboard. I went to type Damien and glanced up to make sure all was copacetic. The cursor blinked unwaveringly from just after the k, in Mark, mocking me for my ineptitude.

Things were starting to spin out of control by now. I hit all the keys on the keyboard again, just for good measure. Depression set in.

I bet you Group W crowd is having a great time, watching the old hippie battling a machine that any first grader could handle. Well, laugh away. If you ever hit 66, then you’ll laugh out of the other side of you mouths.

Dejectedly, I went back to the check-in point for the fourth time, feeling more lost than ever. There was even a guy who was all done with his DMV business, hanging out to see if I ever get it all figured out. I should charge him admission. 

This time the look I got from the woman behind the counter, was laser material, delivered with a scowl that indicated she was looking around for the proverbial fork. As in done.

“What is the problem now?”

“I don’t know what to do,” I murmured, “and I’m afraid I’m going to be late for my 10:40 appointment.” I gave her such an abjectly miserable look, that her scowl disintegrated, and she looked at me closer. 

“You’re here. You can’t be late for your appointment. Let’s try this again.” Only she wasn’t mad any more; she spoke kindly. Once again stepped away from her spot, and escorted me to the far wall.

Her entire manner had changed; she no longer treated me like a miscreant; now she was clearly helping a “special needs” person, and an elderly one at that. It took about two minutes but we blasted through that application, she making the guy at the counter wait while she helped me out. 

Did I feel like a kindergartner? I did and I was OK with that. All I needed was that piece of paper that I had been lacking for five months, and I wouldn’t need to come back for a month of Sundays. 

Meanwhile, it was time for my graham cracker and milk. And a long nap.