Yesterday my son Ethan flew with me to California. He’ll be with me on the rest of this tour. Today was a show day but since we were only an hour from Smartville, Grass Valley, and Auburn, I wanted to show him a little of the area where I lived from around 8 to 13 years of age.
I rented a car early this morning, around 7:45am, and we set out from Lincoln towards I-80 and Highway 49. Just up from Auburn on 49 I saw the Bear River, and realized I had lived right there, at the juncture of the river and 49, at a little campground when I was around 12 or 13. I pulled in on the wrong side at first – there was no operational campground anymore, but soon figured it out. I pulled the white Chevy onto the dirt road just down from the river. The road went up a little steeply, and then I turned down a little lane as wide as the car and realized that was the little lane of the campground. The whole site was overgrown, dense with tall brown grass, burs, thorns, and especially blackberry bushes. My brother John and I used to eat them by the handful.
You could still see the some of the electrical and other hookups for the campers, peeking through the tall grass. The asphalt lane was still intact, though washed out sometimes on the edges. Near the river the lane made a circle back around to the lower part of the campground. We parked and got out. The second we opened the car doors I breathed in that air, the smell of river water rolling over rocks, of dry moss, of brown grasses, dusty oak trees, and blackberry bushes, and reddish dirt. It gave me chills down my back. It always strikes me how smells can call up such vivid memories and feelings. I saw decrepit picnic tables and remembered when they were in good condition, saw myself sitting on them at 12, playing guitar, reading books.
The memory of living in a tent for three months by that river when money was tight came back to me. To an adult that sounds like a bad experience, but as a boy I was completely thrilled to live in a tent for months. and I pointed out the spot to Ethan; it was completely overgrown by blackberry bushes, and of course our next move was to eat several handfuls. They were sweeter and much more full of flavor than anything one gets at Costco or places like that. I like taking three or four ripe ones, almost black, and then one that has one unripe side about the color of a raspberry. It adds a sour tang to the sweetness.
We continued on to Grass Valley and grabbed some food at a Starbucks. As we passed the Nevada County Fairgrounds, site of the Grass Valley bluegrass festival, I remembered going there with my mother around 1980, when I was around 15 or 16. I jammed and listened to the bands all weekend as she went along with me, and we slept in her orange Datsun B210 Friday and Saturday nights.
We drove down Highway 20 to Smartville, also known as Smartsville. When I lived there, one city limit sign said Smartville and the other one said Smartsville. They changed the name officially in 2008 to Smartsville, but I'll always call it Smartville (that's also the tune that kicks off the new instrumental record). We turned right and headed down the smooth curves of Mooney Flat Road. Off to the left not far down the road were the cliffs and a small lake where my brother John and I would go to fish for catfish. Hydraulic mining years ago had created the cliffs and dug the lake. At ten years old, we would walk up Mooney Flat Road about a mile, slip through the barbed wire fence, and take the deer trails to the lake.
Ethan and I turned onto the street where I had lived, and I parked the car. I was amazed, as with the lane in the campground, at how narrow the street was – it was barely a driveway. There were the same five or six little houses, now in much worse shape but well-lived in, but also much smaller than I remembered. I took a few photos and drove down around the corner to Deer Creek bridge. From there I could see the sloping half-acre backyard we had that jutted right up against the creek, and the creek itself, full of huge boulders, gray, randomly wrinkled or smooth. We had played right under that bridge as boys, on the support that went right down into the creek.
The thing I felt when I looked at all this was gratefulness. What I was grateful for, even though there were hard times and sometimes emotionally jagged experiences back then, was that there was so much good. The creek, the rocks, the trails through the dusty oaks, the buckeyes to throw, Englebright Lake, the swimming hole, the catfish lake – all of this was our playground. When we are young we don’t realize how our environment in those early years soaks into us, and shapes us, begins to form us into who we are meant to be.
We continued our drive up Mooney Flat Road to Englebright Marina. At 10 or 11 years old, I went to school with Mike Munro, whose parents owned or leased the Marina. I would come down there on my bike, riding the brakes all the way down that winding, steep road. On some days, when few people were on their boats, we would swim from houseboat to houseboat, dive off, swim to another. Or we would canoe, or fish. We once took some boating rope, that thin, nylon sort, I think it was white or yellow, and we were climbing a small cliff, probably 15 feet. I was foolishly wrapping the rope around my hand as I climbed, and as I got to the top I reached for a branch to pull myself up and loosened my grip on the rope just as the branch broke. I went all the way to the bottom as that rope whizzed around my hand and burned my outer layers of skin off. I still have a faint scar about the width of the rope.
After seeing Englebright, both the marina and the dam, we headed back, returned the car, and walked into the hotel around 1:30pm.
Soundcheck was high temperature, to say the least. We didn’t stay out there long in the heat. The show went well despite the temperature, and it cooled off a little as we neared the end of our set.
After our set I went with Ethan to visit with some extended family – my aunt, uncle, cousin and his wife, their three daughters, my niece, her mom, and her two grown daughters, and the daughter of my nephew, and her mom. I hadn’t seen some of them in years, so it was a beautiful time. The Willie medley came up so I hopped on out there with Barry and Jerry.
This was an extremely full and rich day, and I’m really thankful I could experience it with Ethan. I’ll crawl into my bunk to do some reading to decompress a little.
I rented a car early this morning, around 7:45am, and we set out from Lincoln towards I-80 and Highway 49. Just up from Auburn on 49 I saw the Bear River, and realized I had lived right there, at the juncture of the river and 49, at a little campground when I was around 12 or 13. I pulled in on the wrong side at first – there was no operational campground anymore, but soon figured it out. I pulled the white Chevy onto the dirt road just down from the river. The road went up a little steeply, and then I turned down a little lane as wide as the car and realized that was the little lane of the campground. The whole site was overgrown, dense with tall brown grass, burs, thorns, and especially blackberry bushes. My brother John and I used to eat them by the handful.
You could still see the some of the electrical and other hookups for the campers, peeking through the tall grass. The asphalt lane was still intact, though washed out sometimes on the edges. Near the river the lane made a circle back around to the lower part of the campground. We parked and got out. The second we opened the car doors I breathed in that air, the smell of river water rolling over rocks, of dry moss, of brown grasses, dusty oak trees, and blackberry bushes, and reddish dirt. It gave me chills down my back. It always strikes me how smells can call up such vivid memories and feelings. I saw decrepit picnic tables and remembered when they were in good condition, saw myself sitting on them at 12, playing guitar, reading books.
The memory of living in a tent for three months by that river when money was tight came back to me. To an adult that sounds like a bad experience, but as a boy I was completely thrilled to live in a tent for months. and I pointed out the spot to Ethan; it was completely overgrown by blackberry bushes, and of course our next move was to eat several handfuls. They were sweeter and much more full of flavor than anything one gets at Costco or places like that. I like taking three or four ripe ones, almost black, and then one that has one unripe side about the color of a raspberry. It adds a sour tang to the sweetness.
We continued on to Grass Valley and grabbed some food at a Starbucks. As we passed the Nevada County Fairgrounds, site of the Grass Valley bluegrass festival, I remembered going there with my mother around 1980, when I was around 15 or 16. I jammed and listened to the bands all weekend as she went along with me, and we slept in her orange Datsun B210 Friday and Saturday nights.
We drove down Highway 20 to Smartville, also known as Smartsville. When I lived there, one city limit sign said Smartville and the other one said Smartsville. They changed the name officially in 2008 to Smartsville, but I'll always call it Smartville (that's also the tune that kicks off the new instrumental record). We turned right and headed down the smooth curves of Mooney Flat Road. Off to the left not far down the road were the cliffs and a small lake where my brother John and I would go to fish for catfish. Hydraulic mining years ago had created the cliffs and dug the lake. At ten years old, we would walk up Mooney Flat Road about a mile, slip through the barbed wire fence, and take the deer trails to the lake.
Ethan and I turned onto the street where I had lived, and I parked the car. I was amazed, as with the lane in the campground, at how narrow the street was – it was barely a driveway. There were the same five or six little houses, now in much worse shape but well-lived in, but also much smaller than I remembered. I took a few photos and drove down around the corner to Deer Creek bridge. From there I could see the sloping half-acre backyard we had that jutted right up against the creek, and the creek itself, full of huge boulders, gray, randomly wrinkled or smooth. We had played right under that bridge as boys, on the support that went right down into the creek.
The thing I felt when I looked at all this was gratefulness. What I was grateful for, even though there were hard times and sometimes emotionally jagged experiences back then, was that there was so much good. The creek, the rocks, the trails through the dusty oaks, the buckeyes to throw, Englebright Lake, the swimming hole, the catfish lake – all of this was our playground. When we are young we don’t realize how our environment in those early years soaks into us, and shapes us, begins to form us into who we are meant to be.
We continued our drive up Mooney Flat Road to Englebright Marina. At 10 or 11 years old, I went to school with Mike Munro, whose parents owned or leased the Marina. I would come down there on my bike, riding the brakes all the way down that winding, steep road. On some days, when few people were on their boats, we would swim from houseboat to houseboat, dive off, swim to another. Or we would canoe, or fish. We once took some boating rope, that thin, nylon sort, I think it was white or yellow, and we were climbing a small cliff, probably 15 feet. I was foolishly wrapping the rope around my hand as I climbed, and as I got to the top I reached for a branch to pull myself up and loosened my grip on the rope just as the branch broke. I went all the way to the bottom as that rope whizzed around my hand and burned my outer layers of skin off. I still have a faint scar about the width of the rope.
After seeing Englebright, both the marina and the dam, we headed back, returned the car, and walked into the hotel around 1:30pm.
Soundcheck was high temperature, to say the least. We didn’t stay out there long in the heat. The show went well despite the temperature, and it cooled off a little as we neared the end of our set.
After our set I went with Ethan to visit with some extended family – my aunt, uncle, cousin and his wife, their three daughters, my niece, her mom, and her two grown daughters, and the daughter of my nephew, and her mom. I hadn’t seen some of them in years, so it was a beautiful time. The Willie medley came up so I hopped on out there with Barry and Jerry.
This was an extremely full and rich day, and I’m really thankful I could experience it with Ethan. I’ll crawl into my bunk to do some reading to decompress a little.