Suzy Says

It was a lovely drive from San Francisco to Albion on Friday morning. Despite the gloomy weather forecast, the sun was shining, and the usually “golden” (read: brown) hills were still green from the winter rains. Delicate, orange California poppies, waxy white Calla lilies and bright yellow daffodils bloomed together by the side of the freeway. I even saw little fawns poking around the flowers, completely unperturbed by the noise of the freeway. My brother and sister consider deer to be garden-destroying nuisances, but I’m a city girl, so I think they’re cute.

I never pass San Quentin without thinking of when my sister taught in a preschool where San Quentin could be seen in the distance. The kids thought it was a castle, and she never told them otherwise.

Maybe I’ve been married to John too long, but a big sign for a luxury housing development in Sonoma County caught my eye. In big, bold letters, it shouts, Captain John’s Passage is now open! There’s something both vulgar and amusing in that. I can’t imagine proudly telling people that I live in Captain John’s Passage.

When you’re going to Albion, you get off Highway 101 in Cloverdale, “where the vineyards meet the redwoods”. I finally realized how the town got its name. What looked like drifts of snow were actually drifts of snow white clover.

Stopped at the Anderson Valley Brewery in Boonville for lunch (though we didn’t drink beer), and bought a pint glass for John. It was nice to have lunch overlooking the beautiful valley, with hummingbirds buzzing outside the window like giant bees, and turkey vultures and red tailed hawks swooping overhead, looking for their own lunches.

Boonville is a small town, but the brewery has been listed in the top ten in two World Beer Championships. Boonville also has its own language, called Boontling. For example, signs above telephone booths in Boonville all say “Bucky Walter”, which is Boontling for telephone. It’s a pretty interesting place for having a grand total population of 700. I’ve been reading Robert Mailer Anderson’s very entertaining first novel, Boonville, lately, and only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

For those unfamiliar with Highway 128, take a look at the curves and you’ll see why it takes almost 4 hours to drive from San Francisco to Albion, despite the fact that it’s only 150 miles. Because of the curves, there are signs every few miles reading “SLOWER TRAFFIC MUST PULL OVER”, so those who haven’t driven the road before will do the right thing. But sometimes you get stuck behind someone (particularly RV’s driven by ancient, withered people who can barely see over the steering wheel) who just won’t pull over. Then you honk the horn and flash your headlights. I can tell that recently someone had a bad experience, because on one of the signs, someone had spray painted a circle around the “MUST” and underlined the “PULL OVER.”

But it’s all worth it to end up here.