Diana Boyd
Photo by Phil Shermeister

Is falling hard again and again for years any way to bring balance to your life?

For Diana Boyd, whose seemingly contradictory passions are the fine art of oil painting and the rough-and-tumble sport of roller derby, the answer is yes.

On Saturday nights the 55-year-old Sonora woman pulls on tight shorts and fishnet stockings, straps on a helmet and pads and hits the High Country Sports Arena as Sheeda Bomb, her derby alter ego.  Left temporarily behind are her beautiful, colorful canvases of livestock and ranch life in the Mother Lode.

As Sheeda, Boyd is a fiercely competitive blocker for Tuolumne County’s High Country Hellcats. Her job is to put her well-muscled, 5-foot-3-inch body in harm’s way. Doing so while skating at top speed amid the barely controlled chaos of a derby bout has expected consequences: getting knocked onto the sports arena’s track in Standard and scrambling back up on her skates to do it all again.

Or catching the opposing team’s jammer before she laps the pack and earns points – then knocking her down.  “I’m an old lady who makes other people fall,” Boyd laughs.

In her five-year roller derby career, Boyd says she’s fallen “thousands of times” in practice and in bouts with few apparent ill effects.

“A few bruises, a few scrapes, but not one broken bone,” she says.  “Sometimes I knock a rib out of place, but my chiropractor puts it right back.”

Solidly in the AARP demographic, Diana/Sheeda is the Satchel Paige of her sport, which enjoyed its heyday as a 1950s, all-female, scripted, drama- and faux violence-laden answer to pro wrestling. Although sexy outfits and bad-girl names remain – Sheeda’s teammates include Amber Waves of Pain, Mixon Up Trouble, Charmin Slammer and Ammo – Roller Derby is enjoying a renaissance as a legitimate sport, with thousands of teams competing in hundreds of leagues nationwide.

Still, what the heck is Diana Boyd doing skating, blocking and shoving with women half her age? None of the doctors, physical therapists, exercise class leaders or tai chi gurus who appear in this issue’s other stories prescribe roller derby as the key to a long, safe and healthy life.  It’s not for the money: Team income only covers expenses.

“For me, it works,” says Boyd. “I’ve roller skated since I was four. I’ve done quad skating, in-line skating and roller hockey. It gets rid of my stress, it keeps me in shape – I love it.”

So when Coach Maria Hines began organizing a derby team in 2008, Boyd jumped at the chance. Or, more accurately, fell for it.

“Falling is a big part of the sport,” confirms Boyd. “When we’re not falling in bouts, we’re practicing falling. You learn to fall forward, fall on your wrist pads and kneepads and, if you can, roll up tight in a ball and then get up as soon as you can.”

The goal, she says, is always to “fall small” so as not to trip up other skaters.

But what about of her teammates, most of whom are between 21 and 35? Do they cut Boyd any slack?

“Most start by treating me like their mom or grandmother in practice,” she grins. “They’re a little reluctant to come after me. But once I knock them down, all bets are off.”

Still, that High Country Sports Arena rink is concrete, covered only with a thin layer of plastic tiles. Don’t those falls hurt? Especially at age 55?

“You build muscle mass,” answers Boyd, who also teaches youngsters to skate and fall as coach of the 8- to 17-year-old Junior Hellcats. “You can’t see it, but it’s kind of like a layer of callus where you go down. The falls aren’t as painful as you might think.”

When an overly eager horse a few months ago pushed her onto boulders on the Sonora-area ranch she and her husband share, Boyd got up, realized she was OK, and thanked her sport for surviving the tumble unscathed.  “I’m so glad I do derby,” she said to herself while leading that horse back to the barn.

Roller derby has also helped Boyd attain that sought-after sense of mental, physical and philosophical balance. But how does she square the deft brush strokes that yield her beautiful, coveted oil paintings with the far less subtle moves that can deck a rival in the heat of a roller derby bout?

There is a connection.

“I attack my paintings with a little more enthusiasm and drive than people might imagine,” says Boyd. “A lot of people see art as a languid, dreamy, wispy thing, but it’s not that way for me. Some of the high energy I bring to roller derby, I bring to my painting.”

Maybe that’s why Boyd’s roller derby number is 24/7. Although she’s not knocking people down every hour of the day, her passion for life – be it art or sport – is always there.

“I guess painting and skating are my yin and yang,” she concludes. “They are my balance.”

That balance will soon shift:  Although she may stay on skates to referee derby bouts, Boyd will retire from competition after the 2013 season and leave what she calls “the slash and bash” to others. Instead she’ll spend more time on the ranch, more time painting, and more time teaching art classes at Galleria Copper in Copperopolis.

“I could keep going back year after year, but I can hear my teammates now: Oh God, she’s here again at 100 years old,” Sheeda laughs. “It’s time to make a graceful exit.”

Which will no doubt be a relief those who skate against her – because who wants to knocked to the track by a 100-year-old woman who paints portraits of chickens in her spare time?

Sheeda and her High Country Hellcat colleagues will host home bouts at the High County Sports Arena (18960 Waylon Way, off Camage Avenue in Standard, 588-0776) on April 27, June 8-9, June 29, Sept. 28 and Nov. 16. For a full schedule and tickets, visit the team’s website, mountainderbygirls.net.

Tickets ($10 in advance, $15 at the door, $5 for kids 5-12) may also be purchased at Jamestown Harley-Davidson, The Outpost in Mono Vista or Togo’s in The Junction shopping center in East Sonora.

© 2013 Friends and Neighbors Magazine

My outrage echoed through the Twain Harte Veterinary Hospital lobby. A gaggle of waiting cat and dog owners looked up, suddenly alarmed that their own bills might also be unexpectedly high and perhaps put their families on all-Alpo diets for months to come.

Jack guards recovering Clucker

“Can this possibly be right?” I continued, waving the $1,016.29 invoice and wondering what combination of sophisticated organ transplants, heart bypasses and cosmetic surgery (Beak job?  Wattle tuck?) could total more than a grand. All to save a Rhode Island Red that might go for 10 bucks at the local feed store.

The receptionist took my bill, studied it item-by-item (which is more than I had done), then handed it back. “Looks like everything’s in order here,” she said without even a hint of surprise at the amount.

Suddenly I was embarrassed.

Dr. Marv Ordway is a good friend and the least likely guy in the world to overcharge.  If he’s billing me over $1,000, he probably did $5,000 worth of work on Clucker. I just wish he had let us know before going forward with the skilled, technical and no doubt heroic measures he had taken to save and/or pretty-up our chicken.

But I pulled out my checkbook, again drawing the stares of fellow pet owners.  “Is that idiot really going to pay?” they no doubt wondered as I readied my pen.

But before I could sign, a technician emerged and said Dr. Ordway wanted to explain the charges.

“Listen, I’ll forgive the bill if you give me that chicken,” he told me.

I know that Marv loves chickens. He once drove the length of California with two hens and a rooster in the cab of his pickup truck. Later, encountering an injured rooster midway through a morning-long bike ride, he stuffed the bird into his jersey, completed the ride, then fixed up Foghorn Leghorn at the clinic. And when one of his laying hens at home dies, Dr. Ordway presides at a reverential backyard burial.

But trading away $1,000 in office revenue for Clucker? That’s crazy.

the gargantuan growth

“It’s a deal,” I said.

“Well, I guess I should show you this first,” said Marv, opening a drawer and pulling out an egg.

Clucker is a prolific producer, but her latest egg was, well, different. It was a golden egg.

“You didn’t see it on your bill?” Marv grinned, and I looked down at the last item, “$900: delivery of golden egg.”

I’d been had.

But I did leave the clinic with a fixed chicken, a spray-painted golden egg (which tasted pretty good over easy), a bill that had been cut by 90 percent, and the partial consolation of knowing I wasn’t the first of Marv’s victims.  When a client comes to pick up male dog that’s been neutered, for example, the vet  often brings the formerly well-hung patient into the lobby with a purse around his neck. The gag works particularly well on owners with an exalted sense of their own masculinity.

No, he has yet to put the removed canine jewels in that purse. But, he concedes, “I’ve thought about it.”

So I carried Clucker back through the well-populated clinic lobby, leaving this question hanging behind me: “Did that guy really pay $1,000 to fix a chicken?”

The answer was no, but the mathematically inclined among you have probably figured out that I did pay $116.29  to fix a chicken. Yes, a chicken that might go for 10 bucks at the local feed store.

When he’s not vetting, Ordway is riding … even in the snow

Credit my wife. She discovered a growth on Clucker’s right foot and brought her to the vet. Had our ailing bird been part of a multi-million-hen corporate flock laying for one of the nation’s largest egg producers, she likely would have been ground up and fed to her co-workers. Heck, very few backyard chicken farmers take their sick birds to the vet.

“I see maybe 10 a year,” said Marv. “Most people don’t think chickens are worth saving.”

But he was more than happy to save Clucker. After diagnosing her with a granuloma – a penetrating infected wound – Marv took our chicken to the operating room, removed the growth, stitched up her foot and sent her home with strict instructions: Keep her inside for two weeks, give her antibiotics regularly, make sure her living conditions are clean, then bring her back for a checkup before she rejoins the flock.

“Keep her inside?” I wondered. “How are we going to do that?”

Suzy had the answer. She put some hay, a feeder and a water bowl in the guest bathroom’s shower stall,  and told Clucker it was home. With central heat, soft lighting and daily maid service, our bird was living the good life.

Now Clucker’s back with our eight-hen working class. She’s healthy, laying regularly, indistinguishable from her fellow reds, and moving just fine on her repaired foot. Two week in a glass-and-tile penthouse apparently didn’t spoil this hen.   

So, yes, even at $116.29, we figured Clucker was worth saving.

But, alas, we’re still waiting for her second  golden egg.

Chris Bateman, 66, is a journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Central Sierra sun. 

Copyright © 2013 Friends and Neighbors Magazine

So said one critic when the Tuolumne County staff in November suggested naming a short road leading to the new Law and Justice Center site “Justice Center Drive.”

County supervisors delayed their decision for a month, professing to be open to more engaging, mellifluous suggestions from the public. More than 30 ideas rolled in and, after some consideration the board, yep, named the road Justice Center Drive.

The unimaginative logic: “That’s where it goes.”

“That” is 50 acres off of Old Wards Ferry Road, about a mile away from the 1898 downtown Sonora courthouse, which could become a museum.  This acreage, county officials tell us, will in decades to come accommodate more than $300 million worth of buildings, including a new court complex, juvenile hall, probation office, jail and quarters for the sheriff and DA. So, no, you don’t want trifle with the name of a road leading to this legal Xanadu.

The road to nowhere, across the Sonora Bypass from Wal-Mart

So relegated to the circular file were Decree Drive, Second Chance Road, the Green Mile and, my favorite, Hang ’Em High Way. So were Corral Court (a jail and juvenile hall are part of the planned center), Law and Order Lane and The American Way. Also thrown out: Sacramento Road (perhaps a nod to where the cash for this multi-million-dollar center is theoretically coming from), Field of Dreams Drive (perhaps an acknowledgment of how likely or unlikely state funding might be) and Gold Standard Road (perhaps hinting that a reopening of our rich mines is the only way we’ll pay for this center).

Joining names unlikely to be seen on a street sign anytime soon are My Way Or The Highway, Litigation Lane, Arbitration Alley, Plea Bargain Parkway and  Habeas Corpus Court – all of which I made up.

One wag suggested Nixon Road, to commemorate a president who adroitly escaped his own day in court. But road officials here are wary of duplicate names, and Tuolumne County already has a Crooked Lane.

Others proposed that the road be named for local dignitaries, ranging from the county’s first sheriff, George Work, to its most recently retired judge, Eric DuTemple. But putting the word “Work” on a street sign on the way to the office could encourage U-turn absenteeism. And, given DuTemple’s politics, the judge’s road would have only right turns.

Gary Cooper Drive was also nominated, evoking the drama of “High Noon” and Old Western-style justice. Yes, “High Noon” was filmed in Columbia, but would Cooper be happy having his name on a road to this center of 21^st Century justice? After all, in its shiny new halls “High Noon” arch-villain Frank Miller might strike a plea bargain and escape with a few weeks of work release program.

Also, County Supervisor John Gray warned against naming the road for “any person,” arguing that “it can lead to hurt feelings over the potential names that are not chosen.” He didn’t mention anything about hurt feelings over really boring names that are chosen.

There is, however, a case to be made against colorful road names: Their signs are often stolen.

Those marking Redneck Ridge Road, Big Foot Court, Whiskey Creek Road, Wild Oats Trail, Rattlesnake Gulch Road, Jackass Ridge Road, Hells Hollow Road and a few others, said the Public Works Department’s Duke York, have proven prime candidates for theft.

“The more interesting and unusual a road’s name is, the more often its sign is stolen,” said York. “So there’s some resistance to crossing the line into colorful.”

That color is seldom crossed, reveals a quick review of the nearly 1,500 public and private roads whose names the county either came up with or approved. Most of those names are unremarkable to the point of boredom. Key exceptions are dozens of roads named for mines, gulches, creeks, ditches and diggins from our colorful past.

Sugar Plum Lane is not one of those, but its story is worth telling:

More than a decade ago, a rookie subdivider not only gave that name to a dirt track in rural Columbia, but got the Public Works Department buy into it. He’d divide his property into a few lots, call the tract Sugar Plum Ranch and invite would-be buyers to skip merrily down Sugar Plum Lane to have a look.

Over my dead body, countered Ron DeLacy. Literally: “Can you imagine calling 911 and asking them to send an ambulance to Sugar Plum Lane?”  said Ron, over whose property the road to Candyland runs. “I’d rather die first.”

So he launched a campaign among his neighbors to rename it “Whiskey Ditch Road,” supposedly for a real mining ditch dug by 19^th Century workers who were paid in rotgut after the mine’s cash ran out. Tuolumne County blew DeLacy off, but Google Maps some years later asked, “Why not?”

So ask online directions to Ron’s neck of the woods these days, and up will pop “Whiskey Ditch Road/Sugar Plum Lane.”

Yes, it’s an unwieldy six-word bastardization that will never fit on a sign. But I’ve got an answer:

Sever “Sugar Plum Lane” and give it to the county for its new entrance road. The name would not only say something about the administration of justice in the politically correct 21^st Century, but would cheer the inmates and young delinquents who may someday live there.

After all, it’s pretty tough to say “I’m doin’ hard time on Sugar Plum Lane” with a straight face.

The bottom line, however, is that all this may be moot: Last I looked, Hang ’Em High Way/Sugar Plum Lane/Justice Center Drive was still a road to nowhere, as not a shovel of earth has been turned on the planned multimillion dollar, largely state funded but still very imaginary complex of buildings.

Which seems to undermine the board’s “that’s where it goes” logic.

So maybe we should let Walt Disney name our brand-new road, because at this point the only place it goes is Fantasyland.

Chris Bateman, 66, is a journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun. 

Copyright © 2013 Friends and Neighbors Magazine

Doc’s logo: a happy naked pig

This year it came early.  

Tuolumne County enjoyed its annual 15 minutes of fame on Feb. 12, when a woman, 72, and a man, 62, were caught by the cops naked and having sex in the back seat of a Ford Taurus. They were cited for indecent exposure.

That the couple was nabbed in broad daylight (1:45 p.m.) in the very visible, very public parking lot of a popular Sonora barbecue joint, gave this story legs – which coincidentally were among many body parts visible through the car windows.

Within 24 hours, the “news” was all over the Internet and in papers up and down the state. Sacramento TV stations carried the story and even the Huffington Post, with more than 43 million monthly readers, picked it up. The tale, one county resident heard from a Midwestern friend, even made a tiny North Dakota radio station with maybe 43 monthly listeners.

Website comments piled up faster than flies on fresh manure.  “Go Granny go!!” cheered one.  “The officer should have cited them for being awesome at their age,” second-guessed another. “Stop! In the name of love!” reprised a Supremes fan. “You never know when the little blue pill is gonna kick in,” opined an amateur pharmacist.

“Maybe the AARP will send a pro-bono lawyer in their defense,” guessed a legal scholar.  And, observed one self-appointed wildlife biologist, “There are several cougars and a few snow leopards on the prowl in Sonora, although daylight encounters are rare.”

“We’ve gotten calls from Sacramento, San Diego and everywhere in between,” said Sonora Police Chief Mark Stinson, who had enough news sense to put the incident on the department’s Facebook page. The frisky couple, he added, has “drawn more attention than we’ve had since the flying Burrito Supreme.”

That loaded tortilla flew in 2010, plastering a patrolman with lettuce, tomatoes and refried beans. The hurler, an impatient women that the officer had been questioning at Sonora’s Wal-Mart, was arrested for assault. The incident not only went national, but was named “Taco Bell Crime of the Week.”

Which seems to be the way it is in our neck of the Mother Lode.

We never make the national news by winning Pulitzer or Nobel prizes. We don’t cure cancer, broker peace, discover cheap, clean energy sources, invent labor-saving devices that change the world or write books that give millions of Americans a new outlook on life.

Instead, we sue each other over the paternity of puppies, get arrested for snorting toad slime, repeatedly report seeing Big Foot, won’t let a high school kid play basketball because his hair is too long, and – Holy Harper Valley PTA! – gang up on a local mom because the skirts she made for the grade-school cheerleading squad are way too short. All this, of course, makes the Big City news.

When a local cop shot himself in the foot while showing a reporter the department’s new sidearms, the late, legendary Paul Harvey made sure we yokels made his radio show. When blackbirds snatched the wig off a shopper’s head at the Sonora Safeway, the wire services snatched up the story just as quickly. And when Russian cyber-raiders commandeered the local Farm Advisor’s Web site and offered “Porn Tryouts” and “Orgy Machine” instead of “Begonias for Beginners,” all of California found out.

Since this trend is unlikely to change, we should probably make the best of it.

Consider this: The two seniors caught in flagrante delicto have already been lionized by at least half the online commentators. “If they were my grandparents, I would be PROUD,” wrote one. “This is what family legends are made of,” echoed another. “I have just found my two new idols,” gushed a third.

That the backseat lovers, according to those at the restaurant,  carried on for nearly 30 minutes and looked much younger than their actual years only enhances the story. (And doubles the county’s annual quota of fame).

So is there something in our foothill air or in the Tuolumne Utilities District ditch water we drink that enhances libido?  If so, let’s get the Visitors Bureau and Economic Development Authority on it.

Touting Tuolumne County as the headwaters of a fountain of sexual youth could, pardon the expression, pump millions of dollars into our economy.

But maybe it was just the chicken.

“Some people are saying it has magical properties,” laughed Rachael Shevlin, owner of Doc’s Barbecue and Burgers on Sonora’s Stockton Street. Doc’s, of course, is where the soon-to-be-passionate couple met.

“They both ordered chicken,” said Shevlin, who wasn’t at all bothered that the sweethearts were hitting it off. Until, that is, they paid up, retreated to the woman’s Taurus, and didn’t have the time, inclination or discretion to drive five minutes to an even slightly more secluded venue.

“I called the police,” Shevlin confessed. “I mean, they were parked right out front and people were looking out from the restaurant and going, ‘WHHAAT?’ With customers coming in and going, I had no choice.”

Since then, the incident has been a nonstop topic of conversation at Doc’s and, Shevlin says, has brought in more than a few new customers. One driver heading south from Oroville detoured miles out of his way to see the restaurant – and eat the chicken.

If this starts a trend, it might soon be tough to find a table – or a parking space – at Doc’s.      

Which just might drive would-be diners, lovers, and strangers in the night (or day) to other local restaurants. And a few of them just might – as the couple in question did not – take advantage of one of our many comfortable, cozy and private motels. They might then stay another day to browse and spend in our charming shops.

Given the potential economic stimulus the parking-lot lovers may bring to our community, I urge the district attorney to drop all charges.

Instead we should offer them a token of our appreciation. Like, perhaps, a gift certificate for a night – or an afternoon – at the local Best Western.

Chris Bateman, 66, is a journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Central Sierra sun. 

Copyright © 2013 Friends and Neighbors Magazine

Whatever it was, Sunday’s reunion of owner Renee Clopton and Cash, the beloved Australian shepherd who ran away from her Columbia area home on Jan. 4, defies logic, probability and common sense. If Vegas bookmakers had laid odds on Renee recovering her dog, they’d be 100,000-to-1.

Yes, Renee and her boyfriend, Dave Scheller, had plastered a half-dozen counties with hundreds of flyers and huge, full-color banners.  They spent every spare moment scouring hills and pastures for their lost dog. They ran down dozens of leads. As the weeks went by, however, the likelihood of the finding Cash seemed increasingly remote. (See Jan. 23 post, “Can You Help Renee Bring Home Her Missing Cash?”)

Renee and her daughters with Cash and Doc

But Dave Bergersen, a 58-year-old Livermore retiree and dog lover, on Sunday, Feb. 17, made the call that Renee had been waiting weeks to get.

“I’m in Copperopolis and I think I have Cash,” he said.

A few minutes later he sent a photo of a merle Australian shepherd to Renee’s phone. “Is this your dog?” he texted.

But Renee, riding her horse at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds, had left the cell phone Dave had called in her pickup truck and didn’t get his messages until 11:30 a.m.

“Oh my God,” she said. “It was definitely Cash. I was so happy, but my truck and trailer were boxed in and my horse was still there. I couldn’t go anywhere.”

So she called Scheller, who drove right to Copper.

The shepherd, which Bergersen had adopted from the Fremont Humane Society Shelter on Jan. 17 as Banjo, was in fact Cash – and he immediately recognized Scheller.

“He did the happy dance, he was really excited,” said Bergersen.

He had become very attached to the year-old Australian shepherd during their short time together.

“But I saw the lost-dog flyer Renee had put up at the Copperopolis Shell station and I knew right away Banjo was her dog,” he said. “I had an Aussie of my own run away eight months ago and I did the same thing, working for weeks to find Sadie, but she never materialized. So of course I had to do the right thing.”

Cash and Renee had their long-awaited reunion at home late Sunday afternoon.  “He was so happy he just couldn’t contain himself,” said Renee. “And for me it was a dream come true. We never gave up and I don’t think we were ever going to give up.”

But what’s the rest of the story?

How did a dog last seen running in Highway 49 traffic in the dark of an early January night end up within a week at a shelter in Fremont, an East Bay city more than 100 miles from Renee’s home? And how did Dave, who adopted Cash from that same shelter later in January, end up in Copperopolis on Feb. 17?

The 45-day drama began Jan. 4, when Cash, apparently spooked by gunfire in the area, dug under a fence and escaped the Clopton yard with Doc, a Chihuahua.  When Renee and her daughters arrived home at 7 p.m., both dogs were gone. Doc returned a few hours later, but Renee stayed out until 2 a.m. looking for Cash, to no avail.

Renee speculates that a couple in a brown pickup truck seen by several witnesses scooping up Cash around 6 p.m. – presumably to save him from being hit by cars on 49 – in fact wanted to keep him. But Renee’s quickly launched, well-publicized campaign to find Cash, she figures, made things a little too hot for the alleged dog-nappers.

“So I they might have tried to get themselves off the hook by driving Cash to Fremont and just letting him loose,” she guessed.

Animal Control officers, said Dave Bergersen, spotted the dog “roaming the streets of Fremont”  on Jan. 10 and took him to the shelter.  Volunteers there found the Australian shepherd had an implanted computer chip, but no information on file to go with the chip’s number.

Cash was then renamed Banjo and his picture went on Pet Harbor, an adoption website featuring dogs from more than 200 California shelters.  Dave, a retired industrial mechanic, saw the photo and signed up to adopt Banjo. “I love the breed,” he said. “They’re energetic, smart and great companions.”

Which is important for a guy who bicycles up to 200 miles a month with his dogs, and feeds them a carefully prepared diet featuring ham, rice and fresh vegetables.

When no one came forward to claim Banjo within the shelter’s required week-long waiting period, Bergersen took him home and began riding with him. “Banjo picked up on it quickly,” he said. “And he got along great with my other two dogs, Hank and Molly.”

Hank and Molly

Dave Bergersen

Fate intervened a few days later, when an online dating service paired Dave with Kathy, a presumably ideal female companion who just happened to live in Copperopolis. Their first date was Sunday and, because Dave knew she loved dogs, he loaded Hank, Molly and Banjo in his car for a trip to the foothills.

But before a day of driving and hiking in the Mother Lode, he stopped at the Copper Shell station for gas. Nearly a month earlier, while pursuing yet another blind lead, Renee had posted a flyer on the station’s bulletin board.

“I saw Cash’s photo, went back to the car and looked at Banjo, returned to the flyer and realized it,” said Dave. “They were the same dog.”

So he made the call that made Renee’s day.

Yes, Dave was sorry to lose his new dog. But on the other hand, he said, “I had to do the right thing, and that made points with Kathy. I think we’ll go out again.”

He also made points with Renee.

“Dave’s  just a great guy,” she said. “I can’t tell you how thankful I am.”

Meanwhile, Renee, Dave Scheller, and her daughters are enjoying a protracted, wonderful reunion with young Cash. But to assure no more searches are in her future, she bought a heavy-duty, wire-bottomed kennel so Cash never goes roaming again. She’ll also get that computer chip, which the presumed dog-nappers may have had implanted, armed with her own information.  

She’s not sure, however,  what to do with the 1,000 lost-dog flyers and 10 new banners that just arrived. If nothing else, they’re proof of her persistence.

And that persistence, along with Dave Bergersen’s determination to do the right thing, may have trumped fate, chance, coincidence and blind luck.

Chris Bateman, 66, is a journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun. 

Copyright © 2013 Friends and Neighbors Magazine

Has he got a deal for you: Ian Owens and his ’67 Silver Shadow Rolls Royce

“You’re not really thinking about buying that thing?” My wife gave me a look. “Are you?”

“No, no,” I said, waving her off. “It’s just for a story.”

Yet the image kept going through my head: Me, a semi-retired journalist on an income that’s fixed pretty low, tooling down Sonora’s Washington Street behind the wheel of a 1967 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. Or easing the iconic beast into the Express Lube for an oil change – and asking the guy in charge to polish up my walnut-and-ebony, Nardi-designed steering wheel while he’s at it.“You’re not really thinking about buying that thing?” My wife gave me a look. “Are you?”

“No, no,” I said, waving her off. “It’s just for a story.”

Or pulling into Columbia Nursery to get fresh roses for  the standard-equipment rear-seat vases (pronounced VAHH-ses by the upper crust). Or maybe just handing off a jar of Grey Poupon to another snooty Rolls-owner buddy out on Rawhide Road.

A classified ad in the local paper made this improbable dreaming possible.

“SPECTACULAR,” trumpeted the ad, which included a minuscule black-and-white photo of the Silver Shadow. “Runs well. Needs some cosmetic restoration. $9,500.”

I called right away. Moving up to a Rolls-Royce for less than half the price of a Prius?  Who wouldn’t call?

Almost everyone here in the land of pickup trucks, it turns out.

“You’ll be the first to look at it,” said Ian Owens, a transplanted Brit who was having no luck selling his 1967 coupe for the seemingly surrealistic price.

A 70-year-old Oxford grad who retired to Marin County and Sonora after a career in astrophysics and telecommunications, Owens had an explanation.

“It’s like that guy who was giving away $100 bills in New York City,” he said. “People thought there had to be a catch, so they didn’t take the money. But with this Rolls, there’s no catch.”

“Can I test drive it?” I shot back. “Certainly,” said Owens, and I jumped in my own pickup truck and headed his way.

Tucked in a far corner of an East Sonora mobile-home park,  the 46-year-old Shadow is faded red with a tan vinyl top and, of course, the trademark Rolls grille and “Flying Lady” hood ornament. Its interior is rich in leather, walnut, and cashmere, which lines the roof.

This aging beauty in ’67 retailed for about $30,000 – which translates to nearly a quarter-million in today’s dollars.

“All it needs is a tune-up and a coat of paint,” said Owens, raising the hood to expose a mammoth V-8. My heart skipped a beat.

“This Rolls is handmade with more than 900 man-hours into it,” he continued. “And there are probably fewer than 200 of these Coupes left here in the U.S.”

Fewer yet have right-side steering, which makes this particular Shadow perfect if I take a part-time job delivering magazines or mail. But the thing weighs nearly 4,700 pounds, has an appetite for high-test gas and is not at all politically correct. Total mileage? “Anyone’s guess,” said Owens, adding that the ’67 Shadows’ odometer rolls over every 100,000 miles.

But Rolls-Royce cachet trumps all that.  

Owens, who over the decades has owned more than 50 cars and restored more than a dozen, bought the Silver Shadow in 1996 and joined the Rolls Royce Owners C lub.

“It’s a spiritual thing,” he said of the nearly 10,000 miles he has driven the Rolls. “Looking over that long hood at the Flying Lady ornament, it was like, ‘I’ve made it.’”

Owens added that the Shadow “will beat a Porsche off the line” and that its ride is so smooth, so quiet “that you can’t even feel the road.”

“It makes a Cadillac seem like a tank,” he said.

“Let’s take her out,” I urged, thinking that yes, I wanted a car that states in no uncertain terms that, “My urbane, very cool driver has made it.”

But for all its touted virtues, the Silver Shadow wouldn’t start on this cold Sunday morning. Its battery, fresh from Kragen, tried and tried, but Owens finally gave up. “It needs a tune-up,” he said. “You spend $500, and this car will run just fine.”

Owens admitted that a paint job (I’d opt for a patrician, understated gray), along with other “purely cosmetic work,” might run up to 10 grand.

“It’s still a bargain,” he insisted.

If so, why is he selling it?

“I have too many cars, not enough time and not enough money,” said Owens, scientist, poet and, according to a Mensa membership card tacked on his kitchen door, a genius. “I can only do one thing at a time.”

Once freed of the Rolls, he will devote his considerable talents to building a replica of a classic 1929 Mercedes SSK roadster. And some lucky buyer, Owens added, will get the Silver Shadow for a song.

“Well, I’m just here for the story,” I hedged, backpedaling toward my pickup.

I drove home and forgot about the Rolls until the phone rang two days later. “I got it started,” said Owens, and I jumped back in my truck.

Thirty minutes later my heart was again skipping beats at the mobile-home park. The Shadow’s engine may need a tune, but it sounded magnificent – quiet, dignified, but incredibly powerful. But, no, Owens told me, we couldn’t go for a ride.

“The brakes,” he explained. “They’re seized.” He said he’ll have them fixed within the week.

My ardor again cooled – until Owens confessed that he really doesn’t care whether he sells the Rolls or not.  “I’d be just as happy keeping it.”

For reasons only a psychologist could explain, I warmed to the car again. Then I went to  Arizona and Reno, getting out of the Shadow’s alluring shadow. When I got back to Sonora, Owens called. “I’ll have it running in a week,” he said. “You can drive it.” What’s more, he added, “I’m going to repaint it — probably silver-gray.”

But alas, I’ve reluctantly put away my checkbook, rubbed the stars out of my eyes, and come back to the world of French’s mustard, Chevys and Fords. Think about it: This nearly half-century-old car didn’t move an inch during our brief courtship.

But I enjoyed the flirtation: It gave me an exhilarating, if short-lived, tour of fantasies I didn’t know I had.

Sure, I can sit behind my pickup’s steering wheel – which Enrico Nardi had nothing to do with – and think, “I’ve made it.”   

But even if I roll down the window and proffer a jar of Grey Poupon to a guy in a fully tricked-out Silverado, nobody will believe it.

(Unless I changed my mind, or someone else beats me to the punch, Owens’ Silver Shadow is still for sale. But, because he’s already restored the car’s vinyl top and will have it running “in just days,” the price has risen to $10,000. To start your own romance, call him at 209-532-6831.)

Chris Bateman, 66, is a longtime journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun. Contact him at chris@seniorfan.com.  

Copyright 2013, Friends and Neighbors Magazine

You might call it the TV Room. Or maybe, as the folks at Panasonic, Toshiba or Sony might prefer, The Home Theater.  Or, given the room’s new hypnotic, mind-numbing abilities, The Brain Drain.

That’s because there’s a 55-incher in there. A huge 3D TV, from which – if you put on a pair of those goofy glasses – running backs, computer-generated pterodactyls and gesticulating weather forecasters might suddenly explode into your formerly private space.

The Super Bowl, featuring the hometown 49ers and a halftime show that again might  include wardrobe malfunctions, is just hours away. I should be buying a keg, ordering up enough pizza and chips to feed Soulsbyville and inviting, as Hank Williams Jr. might say, “all my rowdy friends” over for the overblown, over-hyped Sunday afternoon extravaganza.

Trouble is, my rowdy friends aren’t that rowdy anymore and I don’t have that many of them. Then there’s that huge TV.

My wife and kids gave it to me for Christmas. They hauled it up from Costco and lugged it into the soon-to-be-ex-family room in a huge box. Then my son Ben set it up and it was, well, huge. Almost embarrassingly huge. Nevertheless, I watched it.

In the weeks followed I watched bowl games, Christmas Day NBA games, Fiscal Cliff hand-wringing, two rounds of NFL playoffs, Lance’s contrived, self-serving confession,  the inauguration, pundits’ endless dissections of the inauguration, replays of and feigned outrage over Beyonce’s lip-synched inaugural National Anthem,  Manti Te’o trying to explaining away an imaginary girlfriend, and hours of pre-Super Bowl hype – including shots of Coach Jim Harbaugh scowling and his marginally more mellow brother, Coach John Harbaugh, flirting with a scowl.

And to think I could have read a book. Or a dozen of them.

Don’t get me wrong. I wanted this TV, I asked for this TV and I’m the guy that turns this TV on 95 percent of the time. Still, I feel mildly uncomfortable owning a flat-screen that just a few short years ago would have cost a fortune and been the centerpiece of many fair-sized sports bars.

When it comes to televisions, I’m not one of those how-big-is-yours guys. Instead I look for ways to explain away or rationalize such possessions. But with a 55-incher, it’s tough.

I start by pointing out that this TV would have cost thousands a few years ago, and now it’s hundreds. And that one out of every four sets sold these days is 50 inches or larger.  And that there are a whole lot of flat-screens out there that are much bigger and much more expensive than mine.  Sony, for instance, sells an Ultra HD 110-incher for $25,000.

None of which explains why I need a TV that’s nearly five-feet across.

What do I say? “Oh, I got it for PBS and BBC”? “It’s only for classic movies”? “I’m waiting for the next Ken Burns documentary”?

Get real:  That’s like saying you buy Playboy for the stories.

But I have learned a few things watching this much-larger-than-life TV. I have learned that not everyone looks good in high def.  Jowly, bloviating politicians, for example. And a lot of ordinary people who look just fine on the street, but aren’t made up, carefully coiffed and accustomed to being on the air. As much as we all crave our 15 minutes of fame – or, more likely these days, 30 seconds of  fame  – on the local news, these huge new TVs bring us up too close and way too personal.

Likewise, guys my age and beyond should hide when an HD camera gets within 100 yards. There are certain things, like nose hair and skin folds, that should not be highly defined – particularly on a face that’s magnified to nearly three times its normal size in your former family room.

This situation won’t improve in coming years. I’ve read that Ultra-HD technology will shortly magnify even minor facial blemishes to asteroid-size, sharply focused craters, and that otherwise skilled actors will be all but disqualified from appearing on what was once called the small screen.

Still, I’m not going to return my 55-incher, throw a sheet over it, or restrict myself to 15 minutes a day of astute news analysis.  My big-screen angst is hereby over. Twenty years hence, when interactive, holographic wall-size TVs are the norm and musty turn-of-the-21^st Century flat-screens are relegated to video museums, the teeth-gnashing above will seem outdated and irrelevant.

But what these new sets do need is fewer jowly, bloviating politicians and more NFL action. Which brings me back to the Super Bowl:

Of course I’m going to tune in the 49ers and Ravens. Flush with speed, grace, strength, machismo and violence, pro football is no doubt the perfect sport for America’s millions of mega-TVs. Add pageantry, hoopla, hucksterism (at the rate of $4 million for a 30-second spot) , sex (yes, it’s all over the ads and the halftime spectacle),  and hundreds of millions of dollars in legal and illegal wagers, and you have an irresistible proposition.

If some sinister foreign power wants to catch us with our collective guard down, 3:30 p.m. Sunday would be the time to do it. But if those scheming terrorists choose to make their first strike at my satellite-dish-connected outpost in the Central Sierra foothills, at least I’ll go happy.

At least I will if the Niners are up by a touchdown or better when Armageddon arrives.

Chris Bateman, 66, is a journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun.  Assuming Armageddon does not arrive, watch this spot for his post-game analysis  next week.

 Copyright © 2013 Friends and Neighbors Magazine

But Cash has brought out the best in Renee Clopton, a 34-year-old Sonora-area woman who cuts hair at the Envy Salon in Columbia. Cash, her lost Australian shepherd, that is.

Renee’s unwavering, unyielding three-week search for the 55-pound companion not only betrays a love and loyalty that movies and novels can’t touch, but has engaged an entire community.

Renee with poster of her missing Australian shepherd

For her eight years in Tuolumne County, Renee has been like most of us – living a quiet life among a small circle of friends and customers. That all changed on Jan. 4, when Cash disappeared.

Renee’s nonstop efforts to recover her lost dog have since put her on the Mother Lode’s radar: Cash’s photo and Renee’s phone number are on 2,000 flyers tacked and taped up in three counties. She has knocked on doors and driven hundreds of miles from Sonora to the outskirts of Stockton. She has pursued dozens of leads, so far without avail. This weekend she’ll stand in front of Sonora’s Wal-Mart store with a huge Lost Dog  banner bearing Cash’s far-larger-than-life photo.

“I desperately want him back,” said Renee. “Outside of work, looking for Cash is all we do.  Every evening and weekend we’re on the phone or driving around. Even during a haircut, if I get a call from someone who says they saw a dog like Cash, I’ll drop everything and hit the road. My customers understand.”

It’s a team effort, involving her daughters Savanna, 10, and Shyanne, 11, as well as Renee’s boyfriend, Dave Scheller.

Most of us dog owners would like to think we’d do the same for our own pets, but precious few would have the dedication, energy and, yes, love to put the rest of our lives on hold for weeks on end. Renee’s  efforts make Richard Kimball, the falsely accused TV fugitive who spent years searching for the man who really killed his wife, look like a slacker.

The circumstances of Cash’s disappearance add urgency to Renee’s quest.

Dave gave her the Australian shepherd nearly a year ago. “I had always wanted one, and I fell in love with Cash right away,” she remembers. That her new dog was born missing half his tail and that one of his eyes is half brown and half blue doesn’t matter. Renee wanted a friend, not an AKC winner, and Cash fills the bill.

“He sits, shakes hands, loves the kids, sleeps on our bed, comes when I call, practices herding the neighborhood cows, and never runs away,” said Renee.

At least he didn’t until late in the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 4, when some of Renee’s Fraguero Road neighbors later told her they heard gunfire in the area. “Cash hates that sound, so we think he and our Chihuahua, Doc, freaked out and crawled under the fence to get away from the noise.”

Renee and her daughters arrived home at 7 p.m. to find both dogs gone. After a few calls, they began a search that didn’t end until 2 a.m.  Doc wandered home at 9 a.m. the next day, but Renee didn’t get a hint at what had happened to Cash until she knocked on a neighbor’s door the next morning.

It was a woman who around  6 p.m. the previous evening had seen a dog that looked like Cash on Highway F49 near Portagee Lane, about a mile from the Clopton home.

“She said a pickup truck pulled over and the driver, a woman, jumped out and grabbed the dog,” recounted Renee. “Then she handed it to a guy in the truck. He put the dog in the camper shell, then they drove north.”

Four more witnesses later told her the same story, describing a brown truck, a couple and a teenage boy in the cab, and a two-tone camper shell over the back.

“They all said these people looked like they were saving a dog who was running in and out of traffic,” Renee said. “I really appreciate what they did, but now I want my dog back.”

And it would be easy for anyone who finds Cash to do so: He’s wearing a green 4-H collar with tags that include Renee’s phone number. “My heart still jumps every time my phone rings,” she said, but so far the long-awaited call has not come.

Many others have: Renee and Dave have fielded more than 60 calls in the two weeks since their Lost Dog flyers went up. Most are Australian shepherd sightings, and none is dismissed.

“At each one, we jump in the car and head out,” said Renee, who has knocked on dozens of doors on along Rawhide Road, in the Chicken Ranch area, throughout Angels Camp and Mountain Ranch, along many miles of Highway 49,  and even at the end of ranch roads outside the minuscule valley town of Farmington. She’s seen a lot of Australian shepherds, but not even Calaveras County’s Dogtown Road yielded Cash.

The good news?  “We’ve met some of the nicest people in the world,” said Renee. “Even ranchers living at the end of roads marked by signs like ‘Protected by Smith & Wesson’ or ‘We Shoot First’ bend over backward to help us.”

In this, there’s cause for optimism: With each day, as flyers posted, drives down hidden roads, and knocks on doors multiply, more and more people learn about Cash and his devoted owner. In time, those who have seen Cash’s photo on flyers, banners and posters, in newspapers, and online may outnumber those who haven’t.

And if Renee’s beloved Australian shepherd is out there, one member of a multi-county search party that’s already grown into the thousands will see him and will make the call she has been waiting for. So if those folks in the pickup truck still have Cash, giving him back to Renee before someone else fingers you might be a darn good idea.

And if that call were to come today ~ Jan. 23 ~ which just happens to be Cash’s first birthday? Well, what a great ending to this story that would make.

THE MISSING CASH: Year-old, 55-pound Australian shepherd, blue and white. One eye is blue, the other half blue and half brown. Cash has a half tail, is neutered, and was wearing a green collar. Call (209) 247-0784 or (209) 728-5997 with any information.

Chris Bateman, 66, is a longtime journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun. Contact him at chris@seniorfan.com. Better yet, comment below.     

Copyright 2013, Friends and Neighbors Magazine 

Murphy senses trouble

“Some assembly required.”

The words get my blood running cold. Add that an Allen wrench, a screwdriver, and a pair of pliers are necessary to transform dozens of parts into a useful appliance or piece of furniture, and I’m tempted to send the darn thing back.

If I’m in a store, I’ll take a beat-up floor model over a brand-new, boxed-up, assembly-required product every time. Or I’ll pay a shameful sum to have someone else put it together.

A few years ago I bought an exercise bike for my wife. To my great dismay, the Christmas present showed up in a box that was only two feet tall.  Inside was the Life Fitness company’s idea of a practical joke: a mélange of bars, struts, bolts, screws, handles, columns and stabilizers, along with a fold-out, tablecloth-sized instruction pamphlet that may as well have said “good luck.”

I hauled the mess over to my brother-in-law Mark, who once built a car from scratch. He put the bike together, I think, in about 20 minutes and was very gracious about helping me out.

Now, however, Mark rarely lets a visit go by without asking me if I need any help screwing in a few light bulbs. But I do have some pride left, so I don’t answer him – and wait until later to ask my wife for help with the bulbs.

My most recent challenge arrived more than a month ago. It was a drafting table that my daughter Hallie, a professional illustrator, wanted for Christmas. It came in a long, flat box that weighed about 300 pounds. I suspected there were about 1,000 parts inside and thus treated the carton like it was radioactive. So did my wife, who normally doesn’t shy from assembly challenges.

“I looked at the instructions online,” she explained as Christmas approached. “We don’t have time.”

So we plastered the box with wrapping paper and tape and propped it up next to the tree.  “I love it,” said Hallie as we opened presents. “But there’s no way I can put it together.”

Hallie returned to her Bay Area job after Christmas, amid our vague promises to put the thing together and then drive it to her studio. Then one year left us and another arrived. Congress flirted with, but ultimately dodged, the fiscal cliff. I took down the tree and lights, then watched two weeks of college bowl games.

Meanwhile, the box sat untouched in a corner. My bluff finally called by this inanimate, obstinate object, I gritted my teeth and, on a mid-January Saturday, sliced it open.

The good news was that there were only 53 parts. The bad news: These included tubes, frames, braces, brackets, levelers, knobs, supports, nuts, small screws, short screws, medium screws, long screws and sheet metal screws.

It appeared I was screwed.

My eyes glazed as I scanned the diagram, a maze of lines, letters, numbers and arrows. Each step was in three languages. “Alignez une marque avec le dessus du collier, puis inheres le bouton,” read the French version of Step 6, which even in English was Greek to me.

I nevertheless set off on Step 1, “apretar las tuercas” – tighten the nuts.  But I reversed the support tubes those nuts were supposed to go into, and had to loosen them, change them around and tighten them again. My ETC (estimated time of completion) was about seven hours. On the plus side, I could watch two entire NFL playoff games during the process.

Then, amazingly, I hit stride and, after an hour, something vaguely resembling a table began rising from the floor.

A desk at long last

Still, I worried that on completion several screws would remain unused and I’d have to go back five steps to put them in (translation, three hours of disassembly). Or, that a crucial piece of hardware would be missing when I came to the final step and, without it, the table’s wooden surface would wobble crazily with even the stroke of a pencil.  Or, worst of all, that I’d have to admit failure and call Mark for help.

But I soldiered on and somehow finished the job before halftime of the Niner-Packer game.  Its legs are firm, its surface tilts as advertised and even the pencil ledge is where it should be. Because I firmly believe Hallie will accomplish great things on this table, I’m happy to have at least temporarily overcome  my phobias to put it together.

But when it comes to those light bulbs, I may still need some help.  

Chris Bateman, 66, is a longtime journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun. Contact him at chris@seniorfan.com

Copyright ©2013, Friends and Neighbors Magazine

We like cowboy hats and parades

It has come to my attention that a few readers of this blog may live in the netherworld beyond the Tuolumne and Calaveras county lines, and thus have no context in which to put the tales that unfold here.

Which is like reading stories of orcs, ents, trolls and hobbits without knowing anything of the culture and geography of Tolkein’s Middle Earth. And what would more than a dozen Faulkner novels and stories of the Deep South be without Mississippi’s Yoknapatawpha County?

Yes, Middle Earth and Yoknapatawpha  – which is even harder to spell than Tuolumne – are fictional, but we here in the Mother Lode come close.

Tuolumne and Calaveras counties are part of Republican California, a little-known neck of the political woods that is about as likely as Democratic Utah, which I’m not sure exists.

The California known to the rest of the nation outlaws plastic bags, funds sex-change operations for inmates, mandates earth-tone houses in upscale neighborhoods, drools over electric cars and sends Governor Moonbeam to Sacramento.

We in the Sierra foothills drink ditch water, drive pickup trucks, hang laundry on lines, buy guns, let our dogs run free and elect a congressman who voted to plunge off the Fiscal Cliff rather than compromise with the dreaded Dems. Our lawns go unmowed, and rusting cars clutter our yards. We want to get out of not only the UN, but – when plans to split the state occasionally emerge – California. You can buy ammo, while it lasts, at a few of our bars.

Some of us are ornery, rude and just to the right of Attila. Others believe in Big Foot, UFOs and the Democratic Party. We have a lot of bars, a lot of churches, many true believers at each, and some at both.

Backwoods cannons can be found here

But we aren’t some outtake from “Deliverance” or “The Heat of the Night.”  Folks are friendly here. If the guy down the street stubs his toe, we’ll organize a benefit dinner. In fact, we throw so many fund-raising feeds that an enterprising diner with a tolerance for spaghetti and rubber chicken could survive years eating for charity.

We have theaters, poetry readings and writers’ workshops. The local junior college’s debate team has a better record than its hoops squad. Our high schools send kids to Cal, Stanford and, once in a while, the Ivy League. But, yeah, a few grads wind up in jail.

At Christmas, we gather in downtown Sonora to sing carols and eat beans cooked up by a beloved, bandana-wearing character named Mut. Visitors are welcome to join us and often do: Hundreds of thousands migrate here each year, spending hundreds of millions while getting lost on our dirt roads and wondering where their Internet and cell service went.

We love movie stars like Railtown’s No. 3

Ranching, logging and mining were once cornerstones of our economy.  Fortune-seekers still dip pans into our creeks when the economy takes a particularly bad turn and logging rasps back to life when it takes a particularly good one. Yes, we do dress up like cowboys for May’s Mother Lode Roundup Parade in Sonora, but – as the song goes – most of us just found the hats.

The retail and service industries (read Wal-Mart, McDonalds and their strip-mall ilk) now power foothill communities founded by rough-and-tumble prospectors in the Days of ’49.

Speaking of the Days of ’49, we in the foothills are all about that age or older. I’m 66, right in the middle of our new retirement community demographic.  For you readers from afar, we graying hill folk could be a fountain of perceived youth: Come up here to Geezerville and you’ll at least feel much younger.

The Mother Lode periodically makes the national news, but it’s usually for forest fires or sensational murders. But occasionally it’s for something stupid – like when a sheriff’s lieutenant shoots himself in the foot while showing a reporter one of the department’s new sidearms. Or when the local narcs bust a Columbia couple for, yep, snorting toad slime.

We’ve also made the movies, scores of them. “High Noon” was filmed here, as was “Back to the Future 3.” We were also Hooterville (or at least Hooterville’s train station) for TV’s “Petticoat Junction.”

A few locals take exception to any comparison to the 1960s show, reckoning that we’re now far more sophisticated than Billie Jo, Betty Jo, Bobbie Jo, Uncle Joe and the rest of Hooterville’s good-natured yokels.

But I’ll let you readers decide that one.

Chris Bateman, 66, is a longtime journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun. Contact him at chris@seniorfan.com. Better yet, comment below.