Hiding the ghosts ..
There are a lot of those stuck in my head … The Milk Farm (always known as “The cow that jumped over the moon” amongst us Hanks kids), The Golden Eagle Hotel where we roamed at will, Grandma Hattie’s apartment in San Francisco … but what popped immediately into my head was a sometimes stop in my father’s wanderings of the back roads between hunting and camping trips on hot summer days.
Whiskeytown, California … In the 1950s and 60s my father used to drive us through a small Northern California town of a couple of streets with clapboard houses, a store and very little else. It was scenic and pioneer-flavored, being a relic of the days of Gold Fever and expansionist mentality. We’d stop, buy a soda and stroll around soaking up atmosphere and sensing ghosts amidst the minimal hustle and bustle a population of under 100 could manage to stir up.
Dad was big on history, so related much about the time the town thrived, including tales of hardships and hangings, imagination fodder for hot and thirsty pre-teen kids primed for adventure after hours in a car, even with all verses of “Sixteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest” and “The Big Black Bull Came Down From the Mountain” sung loudly while passing the miles.
Sometime in the mid-60s we made a special trip … the final visit. Within a week, the town was to begin the process of being covered by millions of gallons of water that would fill the space behind the new Whiskeytown Dam.
Whiskeytown looked exactly as it always had to my brothers and me, with one exception … there were no people. The houses, rundown as always, stood, but doors were ajar offering a view into formerly private spaces littered with broken bits of furniture and odds and ends of life not worth toting away. Ghosts seemed much more tangible as we walked from building to building, tentative in our snooping but fascinated.
In my mind, the town remains, somehow preserved in all its dilapidation at the bottom of the lake and the ghosts still walk there, unaware of the elemental changes to their old haunt.
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
That was poetic. You write well from your memories.
Well talking about those ghost a friend of mine was camping up there a few weeks ago. He took a picture after he looked at it and there was a little girl standing right behind him in the pic
Many ghosts there … many …
Thanks, Michael.
Reminded me of my trips to Nevada City and Grass Valley. Took my mom and dad up to Nevada City and they loved it. Also made me think of the year it was so dry that the Folsom Lake got so low the tops of the buildings it had covered started to stick up out of the water. Perhaps some ghosts were getting some fresh air after many years. Ahhhhh. Memories. Thanks
great post. we have similar memories from before the dam in Melvern KS went in. takes us back, for sure.
Having turned 50 this year dashes down memory lane seem to be a pastime of an evening, along with a cold beer. After reading your post I was reminded of Carina’s place down on Baie Lazare beach. She was a tie-dye artist and all colouful. She got sick and went back to Europe for medical attention where she died of cancer. I went down to her place about a year later. It was a shell of a place then. Windows gone, along with much of the roof. There was a handpainted, red and wobbly table. I took it home and it sat on the verandah for a few years. I loved it. Maybe you or Gay are loving it now. Hope all is well.
Ali! What a wonderful gift this is on a Tuesday morning. I was thinking about you recently … your birthday always prompts a thought since Gay and Lucy have it, too.
Carina’s was the first place I lived in Seychelles, but you wouldn’t know it now. The whole area is under development, and presently the area where Tony’s house was sports housing for 350 Korean construction workers. There will soon be a $12 million house where Carina’s sat. Anse Soleil is changing far too much …
I have Carina’s old bathtub … all refurbished and shiny … in my house now, her gift to me when she visited the last time only weeks before her death.
Would love to hear how your life is all these years later.
I’m waiiing for the mining town I grew up in to become a ghost town – it will be one sad day indeed.
Thank you for thinking it’s a gift! Love ya. Life is rough right now. What I wouldn’t give to be laying naked on the beach at Anse Soleil with you and a Scrabble board (oh, and of course the OED) and a Seybrew. Good times.
Life is rough here, to, Ali … but I do have the beach, and a Scrabble board, of course! (We now use a little computer instead of the OED. How times change, heh?)
Oh, well, just sod you then!
Happy to see you haven’t lost your edge, Ali!
Whiskeytown Lake…drove by it on our way to French Gulch on Mother’s Day. It’s a beautiful lake. Cold blue water surrounded by pines….you remember.
You brought back many memories and a reminder of the history that surrounds me. Do you remember Old Shasta? It still has it’s original jail from pioneer times. Much of it is the same….the old west….where you half expect to see women in long dresses and bonnets, and men in cowboy hats and spurs.
Thanks….
I have very clear memories of Old Shasta … there are some family stories from that court house, actually.
Really? I’d love to hear about them sometime.
You will, V … you will …