Feb 10 2010
Local
My former neighbor
I recently learned that Gene Clark of the Byrds used to live right here in Hooterville.
Not only right here, but about two miles from where I live. I have to admit to a certain amount of posthumous stalking, driving down his road to look for his house, immortalized on a record cover. Said house was sold to him by none other than the husband of Betty of the famous Betty eggs. He’s something like a sixth generation Hootervillite, and these are extremely rare. I think he’s the only one.
He’s pulled over to say hello to Megan and me when we’ve been walking the Schatz, regaling us with tales of hunting for wild mushrooms (don’t pick the ones with the gills underneath) and elk (no luck this year), and one of these days, I’m going to ask him about Gene Clark.
For some reason, maybe because Gene, at the height of his considerable fame, turned his back on Hollywood to come to this obscure corner of the world – the same corner that has become my refuge – he’s been haunting me. I always look down his road when I pass, and I think how the road almost certainly looks the same that it did forty years ago, when he lived here.
He would have reached the same place on the road to the store where the ocean is first glimpsed through the trees in its many moods and different beauties. He would have driven across the wooden bridge across the river (built during WWII and now the only surviving wooden bridge on Highway 1) on his way to the Little River Inn for his habitual drinks.
When I pass the beautiful Little River Cemetery, of my earlier posts, I wish he was there instead of Missouri (he died young, at the age of 46).
And his songs have been in my head, my soundtrack as I drive the same roads he did: Eight Miles High, No Other, I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better (covered successfully and almost identically by Tom Petty on the hit CD Full Moon Fever). His haunting voice, the artistic inspiration which I can clearly see and hear came from this rugged, beautiful landscape.