Longhairs frolicking naked, splashing in pools, emerging soaked to the bone, eating anything available and continuing, relentlessly, to enjoy all the pleasures life threw at them.

Remarkably, doing so in apparent peace and harmony. Benghazi, the IRS scandal and confiscated AP phone records never came up. The cops, if there were any, turned the other way – even when revelers repeatedly relieved themselves in public.

Murphy romps in the pool

Like Woodstock, we got in for free. In fact, I was admitted only on a flimsy promise to be “well-mannered.”

Actually, I never said I’d be well- mannered. I pledged only that my buddy Murph would be well-mannered.

Murph is an ever-cheerful three-year-old golden retriever, and our answer to Woodstock last Sunday was Twain Harte’s Golden Retriever Playday. Although without acid, pot or even a lone guitar player, this mid-May bash at Eproson Park annually attracts more than 150 goldens and raises funds for Norcal Golden Retriever Rescue (this year’s take from donations and auctions: $3,000).

But I came to Eproson Park on a different mission – to find a nasty, snarling, attitudinal, attack dog among this coterie of congenial canines. Lacking that, I’d look for dog breath, excess shedding, fleas, flatulence or failure to sit on command.
Have you noticed? Goldens have become the default dog of choice for TV commercials. Peddlers of everything from insurance to beer and from dog food to convertibles to arthritis cures figure that adding a retriever translates into millions more in sales. Coming soon: goldens hawking Viagra.

This is because the handsome breed has been cast as the perfect suburban accessory for the 21st Century. The breed’s new, heavily burnished image, I reckoned, needed some humanizing. Or would that be caninizing?

Jack, 9, imagines future tasty treats

In any case, I went in search of confessions.

“Jack gravitates to anyone with food,” Sonoran Gerry Dahlin said of his nine-year-old golden. “He’s not above stealing a snack right out of a kid’s hands.”

“She moves our shoes around,” said Dave Mortensen of Rose, his third retriever. “And one of our earlier goldens ate through the drywall.”

Now we were getting somewhere, although Murph’s chewing through 10 Dish Network remote controls in his misspent and still-continuing youth seemed at least as egregious.

Then came chatter from a few retriever owners in attendance: An unidentified golden had resolutely walked clear across the Eproson Field turf, stepped into one of several plastic wading pools Playday organizers had put out, and lifted his leg.
Which his splashing breedmates, unlike a few owners, didn’t mind a bit.

Next I approached Playday founder Jill Morgan, who owns four goldens herself and is now looking for homes for orphaned retrievers from, among other places, Taiwan. There, she says, some 500,000 stray dogs – including more than a few goldens – prowl the streets.

So far, 72 retrievers have been flown here, adopted out, and thus spared not only a marginal life but, perhaps, an appearance on a Taiwanese dinner plate.

Finding good homes for goldens, Morgan admitted, is like dealing drugs to addicts. “I don’t have enough dogs from local pounds, Taiwan or anywhere else to meet the demand,” admitted the Lodi woman. “People love them. We have a saying, ‘Once you go golden, you never go back.’”

So I learned, talking to owners now on their fifth (like us), sixth or seventh golden. One retriever junkie, Sherl Johnson of Twain Harte, named her latest – a prohibitively cute three-month-old puppy – E. Ross Johnson II.

Sherl Johnson with young Ross

“It’s after my dad,” explains Johnson. “We just call him Ross.”

Goldens, according to numerous online sources, are kind, friendly, confident, loyal, athletic, smart and popular (third nationwide behind Labs and German shepherds). They rescue disaster victims, sniff drugs and bombs, hunt birds, guide the blind and win obedience trials.

The downside? Retrievers are so trusting that they absolutely suck as guard dogs – unless intruders can be licked into submission.

So the answer, of course, is no: I never did find that psychotic Cujo of a golden retriever at the Playday. In fact, said Morgan, only two “snarls,” both easily quelled, were reported Sunday. That’s with 155 dogs for nearly three hours.

Think about it: What other breed could even pull off such a playday?

Chihuahuas? A marathon yapfest, with several dogs swallowed up by gopher holes. Or by gophers.

Beagles? Coulterville’s coyote howl could barely match the caterwauling of 150 mini-hounds.

Irish setters? More than 100 together might breed, further ratcheting down the strain’s flickering intellect.

Jack Russell terriers? This breed is so smart and so hyper that it would be less a play day than a Mensa meeting on meth.

And what about an annual Pit Bull Playday? Forget counting the snarls, and get ready for a canine version of “Hunger Games,” with the last dog standing presiding at next year’s “playday.”

But as hard as goldens play and as agreeable as they are, they have one terrible, often fatal flaw.

Nearly two-thirds of them, said Morgan, fall prey to cancer. Veterinary researchers are looking into the problem, but as it is golden retrievers often die within a decade.

Sunday’s playday proved, however, that they live their sometimes short lives to the fullest.

Which is what keeps us serial golden owners coming back for more.

Want to adopt a rescue dog or make a contribution? Call Norcal Golden Retriever Rescue at (650) 615-6810 or go online to ngrr.org.

Chris Bateman, 67, is a journalist based in Sonora, California, where over the past 40 years he has covered everything under the Sierra Nevada sun (and almost all of it more controversial than goldens).

Copyright 2013, Friends and Neighbors Magazine

We’re throwing a party this weekend, and most of our guests will be “of a certain age.” That would be my age, 67, and maybe a decade on either side.

This means a couple of things:

First, the party will begin winding down at 9 or so, and by 10 p.m. all but the hardest-core rowdies – those who might have pushed the envelope by sipping their way through maybe three light beers – will be gone. We’ll shame these remaining inebriates into helping us clean up, and by 10:30 we’ll have the place to ourselves.

Yes, I said 10:30, when real parties – at least as I remember them – would just start to pick up steam.

Second, our party conversation will sound like chatter from a hospital cafeteria.

We former wild-eyed, wild-haired Deadheads, revolutionaries and freaks don’t talk about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll anymore. Instead we talk about blood pressure, cholesterol, colonoscopies, biopsies, platelet counts, EKGs, irritable bowel syndrome and other things we couldn’t imagine devoting as much as a word to 20 years ago.

Come to think of it, we Boomers do still talk about drugs, but rather than weed, peyote, or ‘shrooms, it’s Flomax, Spiriva, Lipitor, Beta Prostate and, maybe halfway through that third light beer, Viagra.

Back in the old days, the only time discussion would wander into the medical realm would be when one of the more rash among us would OD on acid or break a leg, arm or face by jumping from a bridge, crashing a motorcycle or losing a fight to some guy whose ancestry he never should have questioned.

But at our advancing age, the impulsive and stupid no longer have a corner on medical problems. In fact, what a friend of mine calls “the organ recital” has become a key part of any 21^st Century senior gathering.

We update friends on our existing conditions, brief them on new ones and, over an evening, the heart, liver, pancreas, intestines, lungs, bladder, kidneys and gallbladder all come into play.

I had coffee with two old friends a couple of years ago, but we might as well have called it a cancer klatch: I had prostate cancer, Russell had colon cancer and Ron had bladder cancer. We worked up an appetite talking about our problems, and ordered huge cheese-and-sausage omelets that could only hasten our demise.

There is a degree of one-upmanship in this organ recital business, and I’m ready to compete, with the aforementioned prostate cancer, atrial fibrillation, a twice-replaced hip, and a somewhat unusual ailment called hemochromatosis.

“That’s when iron infests your organs and, if unchecked, it can kill you,” I hold forth to guests. “The only treatment is blood-letting, and if I can’t find enough leeches down on Five Mile Creek, I go to the blood bank, and they take a unit.”

My Medic Alert bracelet details this and other conditions in microscopic print, which has led my brother to ask this question: Wouldn’t it be easier to list the diseases you don’t have?

It leads me to propose a new party game for future boomer-geezer gatherings: Have everyone throw their Medic Alert bracelets in a hat at the door, then after dinner the gathered partiers would try to match the diseases with the actual sufferers. The winner would get a $25 gift certificate, good for a single Tylenol tablet, at a local hospital.

As it is, we’ll spin our medical yarns with as much humor as possible, knowing full well that one of the ailments we joke about today could come back and kill us tomorrow. But as many a pundit has said, it’s better to go out laughing.

So on Saturday our guests will again bring out their best stories.

Anyone who gets to ride a Medevac helicopter, is saved by emergency surgery at Stanford, or finds an 11^th-hour bone marrow match will have an edge. Anyone whose indigestion was misdiagnosed as a crippling stroke is also looking good. And any party guest who has won a million-dollar settlement after finding that his heart surgeons left a lemon zester in his thoracic cavity will probably take this year’s honors.

Bottom line: You play the best cards you were dealt.

Last year, wary that repeating my hemochromatosis-leech bit again would give rise to rolling eyes and stifled yawns, I went with a longshot. I pulled out color prints of my last colonoscopy.

Blissed out on Propofol, I remember nothing of the Roto-Rooter-like procedure, but my doctor told me all about the photos he took with that six-foot-long fiber-optic snake.

“Check these out,” I said, throwing my intestinal photos down between the guacamole and mixed nuts as if they were a full house in a cutthroat poker game at the Long Branch Saloon. “See that one there? That’s one of three polyps they snipped out. And over there? That’s how clean the upper reaches of my colon are. Looks a freshly plowed interstate, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not with all those purple veins and that white stuff on the edges.”

I looked up, and my guests were turning white, grabbing their coats and heading for the door. The clock had yet to strike 9 and we hadn’t even served dessert. But, really, nobody seemed that hungry.

A disappointing end to the evening?

Maybe, but I’ll tell you this: When one of my many ailments rears up to knock me off, I hope to go as quickly and as quietly as that party ended.

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

Because now I can’t take advantage of a great deal at Jamestown’s Old Town Barber Shop:  free beer with a haircut.

You read that right: At the Old Town — right across from Barendregt’s grocery store on Jimtown’s Main Street – you not only get a trim for the bargain price of $10, but an icy-cold Budweiser to go with it at no charge. Sure, you can get water or coffee if you want, but who’d want?

“I’d say about half our customers opt for the beer,” says veteran barber Bill Romiti, whose son Giovanni started the business nearly two years ago.

As a former serious drinker – well, actually I wasn’t that serious, but I was addicted – I would have embraced the deal.

Back then I was not happy that I couldn’t drink at work, during doctor’s appointments, while grocery shopping, at the gas station, in movie theaters or when waiting in line at the DMV.

So being able to quaff a beer at the barber shop, which in my blurry book would have amounted to multitasking, would have been a good deal. Such a good deal that I would have likely gone in for more haircuts – at least once a week – and thus would have looked, if not performed, better at work.

Or maybe I would have asked for a shave to go with that haircut, hoping to parlay it into a second beer. Or I might have repeatedly asked Bill to “take a little more off on the sides,”  “trim up the top” and “make it a little closer in back”  until I was nearly bald – and nearly gassed, depending on how many Buds I could con him out of.

Bill frowned.

“We don’t serve alcoholics,” he says. “If someone comes in here intoxicated, they’re not getting a beer.”

Also, there’s a one-brew limit: Even if Bill takes an hour to craft your mullet or level your flattop, 12 ounces of golden goodness is all you get. And he serves no non-alcoholic beers, foreign beers, boutique beers, micro-brews or beers that taste like strawberry, mango or some other exotic fruit. At Old Town, it’s no-nonsense haircuts and no nonsense beer.

Finally, any high school kids who may be drooling by now should know this: Bill cards, and if you’re not of age, you’ll get a glass of water.

So don’t ask Mom for $10 to “get a haircut,” because all you’ll get is a haircut – which in Jimtown has been hard to find in recent decades.

“I don’t think there’s been a barbershop in Jamestown for a long, long time,” says Bill, who lives in Oakdale.  “But a couple of years ago my son and I came up here and saw this vacant storefront. So we found the owner, signed a lease and went to work.”

Barber Bill Romiti

Bill, a barber for more than 40 years and, he estimates, nearly a quarter-million haircuts, handles the scissors and clippers. Giovanni keeps the finances trim.

What was earlier “some sort of boutique-type business” is now a neat, handsome shop with mirrors, three comfortable barber chairs, vintage photos and posters on the wall, three barbers (Bill, Mary Ann and Valerie) on duty,  and a fridge full of Bud and Bud Light in the back.

“It’s all about our customers,” says Bill. “We already give them a good deal on the haircut, and the beer is just something extra to let them know they’re appreciated.”

The answer to a question many have asked is yes: Even in our heavily regulated nanny society it is legal to give beer away with haircuts. “As long as you’re not selling it, the ABC doesn’t get involved,” explains Bill.

What might as well not be legal, he swears, is putting up a barber pole – an accessory he understandably feels would help attract business.

Because Jamestown’s Main Street is an historic district and because the barbershop building is more than 150 years old, Bill says, the red tape and engineering necessary to attach the old-style wooden pole he envisions would be prohibitively expensive.

“Could put us out of business,” he says.

I’ve heard such nightmarish governmental meddling stories myself, so I called a member of what some call “the commission from hell.”

“I don’t think we’d require any permit for a barber pole,” says Shelly Davis-King, who serves on the well-intentioned but oft-maligned Tuolumne County Historic Preservation Review Commission. “In fact, normally that’s the type of thing we’d encourage.”

But she suggested Bill contact a county staff member before moving forward. A staff member, preferably, willing to discuss the issue over a haircut and a beer.

Chris Bateman, 67, 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

Trucking away illegal dumper’s trash

The evidence is in: a crimson 36C bra, Lily of France perfume, a few Kessler whiskey bottles (empty), a lone Earth Spirit sandal, an LA museum’s anthropology magazine, a “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” DVD, an Old Homestead carving knife, and a prescription for Vicodin.

The ingredients for a particularly kinky party?  Choice items from a garage sale? Stuff from Mom’s will, soon to be fought over by the kids?

Not close: These items were instead part of a massive illegal dump. I picked them out of what looked to be about two pickup loads of trash strewn over Bald Mountain Road North, a little-traveled dirt track skirting the side of Telegraph Hill above Columbia. It’s part of a bike ride I do two or three times a week.

This particular stretch comes near the end of a long climb up from Sawmill Flat, and I normally enjoy its spectacular views and chance to catch a breath. This time I gagged, then cursed the idiots who had defiled this particularly beautiful and quiet part of our county.

What if these miscreants had dumped their trash on the first tee at Augusta, at home plate in Wrigley Field or on Centre Court at Wimbledon? Well, on a far more modest standard, that’s what it was like for me when I saw my favorite ride trashed.

The isolation that makes Bald Mountain North so spectacular by day, sadly, makes it irresistible to dumpers by night.

Whoever did this – the March 2013 prescription I found was written out to a guy living in Jamestown – not only offloaded the items listed in my first paragraph, but hundreds of pounds of scrap metal, cardboard, rotting groceries, soiled diapers, bottles, cans of paint, broken glass, cigarette butts, shattered TVs, burnt-out space heaters, scratched-up CDs and much, much more.

The culprits saved $50 by dumping their crap in my neighborhood rather than taking it to the transfer station in Mono Village. I know this because I cleaned up the mess myself, and paid $28 and $22 to dump two pickup loads.

In the process, I collected more evidence: a computer disc with a Don Pedro woman’s name on it, a torn scrap of paper bearing all but one digit of a Sonora-area phone number, and two email addresses, all of which led me nowhere.

Particularly disheartening was a well-worn green-and-yellow biking jersey reading “Sonora Mountain Riders.” Had another cyclist pulled this stunt?  I refused to believe it.

I also dredged from the muck a phone number attributed to “Aunt Sandy,” and when I called, she answered.

Sandy lives in Winton, in Merced County, and was astounded that her number had turned up in a reeking mountain of trash above Columbia. Sandy said she knew none of the names I had found in the mess and wasn’t exactly sure where Sonora was. Her closest nephews and nieces, she added, live in Lancaster.

She was sufficiently surprised and taken aback that I believed her. But even if she had admitted to being the midnight dumper, Aunt Sandy would likely skate.

Sure, put the FBI and Boston Police in charge, give them an unlimited budget and season the case with nationwide outrage, and they’d have arrested and perp-walked these drive-by defilers by now.

But in our hidden neck of the woods, this is a two-bit crime that ranks somewhere beneath shoplifting and mailbox bashing in terms of urgency. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office, I was told, simply doesn’t have the manpower for mess patrol.

36C’s owner is nowhere in sight

That duty falls to Dan Hambrick, the county’s solid waste compliance officer and a guy who’s used to raking through mounds of roadside trash for evidence. When he finds two IDs for the same person, he sends the suspected dumper an “Opportunity to Correct” letter. But in four years on the job he’s so far convinced only four to clean up their messes. That’s out of between 30 and 40 illegal dumps reported annually.

“Unless these people are caught in the act, convictions are virtually impossible to get,” Hambrick  admitted.

Typically, confronted dumpers claim they hired someone else to take their trash to the transfer station. And, of course, they’ve forgotten who they paid to do their dirty work. End of case.

On the plus side, Hambrick is mapping the county’s most notorious illegal dump sites and looking for money to clean them up. There’s also some county cash to cover dumping fees for Samaritans who clean up other people’s messes – as my Big Hill neighbor Jim Grossman has been doing free of charge for decades.  But you have to ask before you haul – which I didn’t.

Hambrick is also working with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to mount cameras on trees overlooking a few of our more isolated and inviting ravines, roads and hollows.

Sure, this is yet another incursion into what little privacy we Americans have left. But at 3 a.m. in the middle of nowhere? I’m all in favor of no privacy at all for any cretin who is out with a pickup full of trash at that hour. In fact I urge that any incriminating footage be repeatedly aired on Cable 8 and sent to the dumpers’ kindly grandparents.

Meanwhile, my case remains unsolved.

Yes, the fairy-tale prince found his Cinderella with a glass slipper. But this is real life in the backwoods, and I doubt I’ll find her evil, trash-dumping stepsister with a crimson 36C bra.

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

Here Rests a Good Car

Jan. 17, 2005-March 20, 2013

Age:  187,470 miles

We’ve never been much on naming cars, so I guess 2HKYF18565H535397 will have to do.

That’s the VIN number for our late, well-traveled 2005 Honda Pilot, probably the best car we’ve ever owned. It put in more than 187,000 often hard, sometimes abusive miles in more than eight years with us.  Averaging nearly 63 a day, 2HKY never complained about the heavy loads, rutted roads, rowdy kids,  hitch-hiking dogs or even the curly fries I dropped on its floor mats.

If the Pilot took exception when we gave its keys to our teenage son Ben for a 2006 road trip with friends to a Tennessee music festival, it whispered not a knock or a ping. If it doubted our daughter’s wisdom when she ran its engine in our driveway for an hour to charge a video camera, it uttered not a wheeze. If it was tempted to backfire in protest when our beagle vomited kibble on its leather upholstery, it resisted the urge. Our SUV endured a variety of fender benders, rear-enders, side-swipes and tailgate bashes, and just kept on running.

We didn’t want to get rid of 2HKY, figuring it had at least 50,000 good miles left. But last month a drunk driver slammed into our Honda, ending its driving career. Its last act was giving its life to save my wife, the Pilot’s pilot for 90 percent of its miles.

Its quickly deploying air bag, solid construction, and ability to handle and stay upright in extreme conditions allowed Suzy to escape the Jackson-area crash with relatively minor injuries. But with severe left-side and front-end damage, 2HKY itself was declared a total loss by the insurance company and now awaits parts-pulling buzzards and, ultimately, the crusher at a Sacramento salvage yard.

Its demise marks the end of an era:  The Pilot saw our kids graduate from high school and college. It saw me retire and it helped Suzy start Friends and Neighbors Magazine, hauling and delivering more than 250,000 copies. In fact, it was ending a long day of work when that careening BMW forced its retirement.

So, yes, it was a family member, business partner and tireless workhorse. If 2HKY suffered or rejoiced, it was in silence. But, being a car guy, I have a pretty good idea what our Pilot was thinking. So below are its thoughts on key points in an admirable automotive career.

Jan. 17, 2005, on its purchase from Tracy Honda: “Three kids and all their friends? Three dogs? How many cats? And up in snow country? Shouldn’t these folks be over at the ark dealership? Or talking to Admiral Peary about a sled dog team?  And does this mean I’ll actually have to work? Really, I was hoping for a retired couple from Danville.”

Hallie’s self-portrait from Pilot’s  passenger seat

2006, on being pulled over by the Wyoming State Police on Ben’s road trip to Tennessee: “What? Now you’re going to search me for drugs?? Listen, I have heated seats and cruise control. I think you got me confused with a Microbus, a DayGlo laundry truck or The Who’s Magic Bus.  I am not Furthur, and if you insist on combing my floorboards for seeds and stems, I’ll call my lawyer – who just happens to be a Bentley.”

2007, on burning more than two gallons of gas to charge daughter Hallie’s video camera. “So if I’m to be a household appliance, at least let me park in the living room and watch a few Knight Rider reruns. Or, if you’re really gonna make a movie with that thing, let me be a star. Maybe you can paint some flames on my fenders and let me chase down a ’Vette.”

2007, on fleeing Yankee Hill’s Italian Fire laden with children, dogs and cats: “I guess I could complain, but this is pretty exciting. Was that a dozer we just swerved around?? And, look out, is that other pilot up there about to drop retardant? You have any idea what that’ll do to my finish?”

2008, on first being loaded with 25 boxes of magazines for delivery: “Now what? I’m a mule?? Did you check my suspension? My tire pressure? Don’t you need some sort of DMV permit to do  this? And who’s that chiropractor you go to? I think I might need a driveshaft adjustment.”

2008, on carrying Ben and several college friends back from Oregon in time for Christmas amid a snowstorm that canceled all plane, train and bus service out of Portland: “Now this is what I was built for, this is my mission in life. So when you tell your friends about this, get my make, model and VIN right. And tell ‘em that, no, I didn’t even need chains to get over the Siskiyous.”

2009, after being backed into a wire fence on the way down our driveway: “I said paint flames on my fenders, not scratch them into me. Listen, why don’t we keep this quiet. We both have reputations at stake here.”

2010, after being rear-ended by an elderly woman driving a Silverado pickup truck at the Sacramento Airport: “Who does that old biddy think she is, Daisy from Dukes of Hazzard? And ramming me with a winch? The only thing she’ll need a winch for now is pulling her free of a 300 percent insurance rate increase. Me? All I want is new paint, a new tailgate and a detail job to get those fries off my floorboards.”

End of the rainbow: Pilot was broadsided by BMW at right, whose driver was arrested

March 20, 2013, after that drunk driver sent the Pilot careening into Highway 88 traffic:  “OK, Suze, we’re in this together now. You grab the wheel and I’ll do my best to keep you safe. But if anything happens to me, I want you to know one thing: I’m really glad I didn’t end up in Danville.”

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

Bateman in earlier, faster years at Columbia’s Old Mill Run

Running was my religion 30 years ago, and I went to church a lot.

Once I put in 150 days without missing a run. At my obsession’s peak, I’d log 70 miles a week, pounding pavement in rain, wind and searing heat. I was a regular at Columbia’s 10,000-meter Old Mill Run, whose starting gun will sound for the 34^th time on April 20.

I read our cult’s bible, Jim Fixx’s “Complete Book of Running,” from cover to cover and over and over. Confronted by nonbelievers, I’d pull out my dog-eared CBR, and cite chapter and verse that proved running indeed was the one true faith.

But I made a key mistake: Being born 30 years too soon.

My best Old Mill time, 37:01, in 1980 earned me a third-place medal in the 30-39 division. It was the only hardware I ever collected.

Had I been born in 1976 instead of 30 years earlier, medals, ribbons, trophies and plaques would cover the walls of our family room. My 37:01 would have won six out of the past 10 Old Mills. Last year, it would have brought me to the finish line nearly five minutes ahead of winner Brian Forbes.

Keep in mind that I was but an also-runner in the 1970s and 1980s. I’d see Old Mill winners like Don Moses, Bradley Brown and Ken Danz for a minute or two, then lose sight of them well before the one-mile mark.

So what of their stratospheric times?

Well, some records were made to broken, but apparently not the Old Mill’s.

Moses’ 32:12 men’s mark, set in 1984, is now 29 years old. And Laurie Crisp’s 35:16 women’s record, posted two years later, is 27.  Both record holders were out-of-towners who ran in the Old Mill once and never returned.

As the two champions advanced through middle age (Moses, of LA, is now 55 and Crisp, a San Diegan, is 52), some 8,000 Old Mill Runners have taken a crack at their marks. Only a handful have come within two minutes, and in the past decade none have orbited within the same competitive solar system.

Anyone who wins the Old Mill deserves plenty of credit, but the truth is this:  The runners who show up in Columbia every April are slower than they used to be. Much slower.

Consider this: Forbes’ winning  2012 time of 41:47 would have put him at fiftieth – behind 45 men and four women – in the 1988 Old Mill. Last year’s women’s winner Brianna Willis (49:19), would have  finished behind 26 female competitors in ’88, and trailed first-place finisher Patti Scott-Baier by more than 11 minutes. That’s enough time for a latte and a reasonably intimate chat at Starbucks.

So what’s going on here? Are we turning in to a nation of slugs, grafted to iPhones, tablets, recliners, memory-foam mattresses and drive-up windows?

Or are we smarter, saving our knees, hips and hamstrings for upper middle age and beyond? Maybe the 20-something athletes of today have seen too many of us Running Boom veterans sidelined by pulled muscles and worn joints.

Or perhaps community and camaraderie, always hallmarks of the Old Mill, have replaced the desire to kick some rival’s ass in the 10K’s home stretch.

Community and camaraderie, indeed, will be plentiful at Old Mill XXXIV, which also includes a two-miler and a pair of kids’ races (check theschedule.com to register, or do so on race day).  Runners of all ages will again gather on Columbia’s Main Street on April 20, renewing old acquaintances, making new ones, and again testing themselves against the scenic 6.2-mile course.

But testing themselves against Don Moses or Laurie Crisp? Not gonna happen.

First off, young bucks physically capable of busting those hoary records just aren’t showing. Of 68 runners in last year’s 10K, only eight were in the 19-29 division. More than half (37), in contrast, were over 40.

Secondly, turnouts are far lower today than they were in the ‘80s, when more than 400 runners would routinely line up for the 10K.

Yes, the Running Boom is over. Jim Fixx’s gospel – that running alone could overcome all manner of dietary, health, and perhaps even moral shortcomings – was torpedoed by the heart attack that killed him during a 1984 training run.

Yes, our guru’s death brought glee to couch potatoes nationwide. But it also sounded the Boom’s death knell, and within years Kenyans were winning top marathons and disaffected American runners were turning to cycling, swimming, walking or Twilight Zone TV marathons.

So how can the Old Mill again be competitive?

The answer may be crass, but it’s clear: cash. Offer five grand to anyone who breaks the records, and I guarantee that Moses’ and Crisp’s marks would go on immediate life support.

Want larger Old Mill turnouts? Offer Benjamins to age-division winners and hold a cash drawing that any finisher can win, and Columbia would have to widen Main Street to accommodate the throngs.  Lured by a heady blend of greed and glory, runners from throughout Northern California would answer the call.

Until that happens, however, the medals-only, run-for-the-fun-of-it, old-fashioned Old Mill is as good as it gets. And if you want to feel virtuous as well as healthy, know that race proceeds help fund Tuolumne County’s annual Community Christmas Eve Dinner.

But what of that big-money plan to lure California’s best young runners back to Columbia?

“Maybe we’ll do it next year, to celebrate the 35^th Old Mill,” said race organizer Cathie Peacock,
waxing wistfully.   

All she needs is a sugar daddy willing to pony up about $10,000.

Want to donate 10 grand to a good cause? Contact Peacock at (209) 586-4802. Want to just walk, run or race through scenic Columbia on a glorious Saturday morning? Register online at theschedule.com (search for event by the keywords Old Mill), or register on race day in downtown Columbia.

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

But instead it’s Sonora High that’s moving – to the Mother Lode League, where in 2014 it will likely join six neighboring Sierra foothill schools in more than a dozen sports. The pending switch has spurred a downright phobic reaction from MLL members. And the most vehement opposition has come from the Wildcats’ most natural rival: the cross-county Summerville Bears.

The reason? Fear of losing.

“When you throw us into the same league, you take away our kids being able to win,” said Summerville District Superintendent John Keiter, pointing out that Sonora High has several hundred more students than his school and other campuses in the small-school league. “You’d have winners in this part of the community and losers in that part of the community, and I think that’s atrocious.”

Keiter’s March protest, ironically, came just as Summerville’s basketball team was winning the Sac-Joaquin Section Division 5 championship.  And Sonora?  Its squad didn’t even make the division playoffs and lost twice to the Bears during the regular season.

On the other hand, according to Summerville Athletic Director Debbie Mager, a survey of all sports indicates that Sonora has whipped MLL schools in about 70 percent of the non-league games they have played.

The proposal for Sonora to leave the eight-team Valley Oak League came as the school’s own dropping enrollment (now about 1,000, down from a peak of 1,700) made it the smallest member of the circuit. The VOL is now populated by San Joaquin Valley campuses with from 1,300 to 1,700 students.

The all but formalized league switch will make Sonora the MLL’s second largest school, behind Calaveras. On the low end are Summerville, Bret Harte and Linden, which have enrollments closer to 600 and are leading the Block-Sonora charge. Their opposition is so vehement that there has been talk of the three schools simply refusing to play the Wildcats in football, a sport that’s become a flash point in this debate.

“I’d certainly think about it,” said Keiter of a grid boycott.

“If our kids could get hurt, I’d consider it,” added Mager.

Bear football and hoops coach Ben Watson, a 1976 Sonora High grad who over the past five years has led his Summerville squads to playoff glory, is also dead-set against Sonora’s league switch.

But have his gridders forfeit to the Wildcats and not even take the field? “I’m not going there,” laughed Watson, who knows that any coach making such a decision would have his name taken in vain at watering holes across the county.

Think about it: What if “Hoosiers” coach Norman Dale told Hickory High squad not to take the court against South Bend for the Indiana state championship? What kind of movie would that have been?

“Hoosiers,” of course, was based on Milan High School’s improbable, inspirational 1954 championship win over Muncie Central, a school with more than 10 times the 161 enrollment of its underdog foe. Such Cinderella stories highlight the sports landscape and Summerville has one of its own: In 1978 the Bears’ girls track team shocked schools five times its size by winning the section championship.

But over at Summerville, Cinderella may never make it to the ball, let alone try on the glass slipper. The sweetness of an upset football win over Sonora – labeled a “bully on the block” by MLL Commissioner and longtime Bret Harte coach Rich Cathcart – may be taken from Bear, BH Bullfrog and Linden Lion football players if their schools go the forfeit route.

In the interests of avoiding that predicament, I have a few rule book-bending compromise solutions:

• Based on enrollment differentials, make Sonora start MLL games with fewer players. For instance, Wildcats might begin games with seven or eight to the Bears’ 11. If the underdog somehow took a lead into the second half, Sonora could add a player or two.
• As some MLL critics have said their players could get hurt against bigger, stronger Sonora counterparts, set a one-ton total team weight limit. That’s about 180 pounds per player, so if the Wildcats played three 260-pound linemen, its other eight players on the field would have to average a far less intimidating 150.
• Boost Sonora’s MLL opponents by allowing them four points for each field goal and five downs per possession. Allow their O-lines to hold with impunity. As a last resort, force Sonora pass rushers to advance on opposing quarterbacks only by hopping in potato sacks.

Alas, section officials won’t buy into any of this. So the MLL should look at the bright side: The pressure’s all on Sonora, which will enter the league in a lose-lose situation. It will be expected to easily win every football game, and each loss will be an inspirational upset for the winner and an unforgivable failure for the Wildcats.

Also, winning is overrated. It’s losing that builds the character, resilience and sense of humor necessary to weather life’s setbacks.  But as good as it is, losing is also temporary. Enrollments and talent levels change, and every underdog – except, perhaps, the Chicago Cubs – has his day.

On the local front, Sonora High will save thousands in travel expenses by not busing teams to Tracy and Manteca for VOL games, and even Summerville will save a buck or two by trading a few trips to Jackson for 20-minute jaunts to Sonora.  Both Tuolumne County schools will benefit from huge gate receipts, not only from their annual football clash but from matches, games and meets in a variety of sports.

Finally, Keiter, Watson and others fear the realignment will prompt eighth-grade football players and their parents to forsake the Bears and seek inter-district transfers to Sonora. Perhaps, but here’s the good news: The league realignment will have absolutely no effect on how the schools involved educate their students. Nothing Sonora does will affect Summerville’s rising API test scores or its invariably stellar Academic Decathlon performances.   

This might sound naive, but aren’t these things what eighth-graders and their parents should be looking for in a school?

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 – high school football included.

Illustration by Hallie Bateman, halliebateman.com.

Copyright 2013, Friends and Neighbors Magazine

We’re talking about the seniors caught by the cops having sex in the back seat of a Ford Taurus parked at a Sonora barbecue joint last month. And doing it in broad daylight, in plain view of customers going in and out of the restaurant.

In an incident that brought us national attention, the woman, 72, and man, 62, were cited for indecent exposure. The Sonora Police Department has referred the case to the Tuolumne County District Attorney for possible prosecution.

For more details, along with generous helpings of conjecture and speculation, check out my Feb. 21 blog post. It runs 1,000 words and covers everything from the effectiveness of barbecued chicken and ditch water as aphrodisiacs to the economic benefits randy seniors might bring to our neck of the woods.

What it does not include: the names of the two lovers. Those names by law are public record, and by the police chief’s choice made it onto the Sonora Police Department’s Facebook Page. But just because the cops released the names doesn’t obligate newspapers, radio stations and online outlets to make them a thousand times more public.

To name or not to name?  In this case, answers varied: The Union Democrat, the Modesto Bee and this blog did not. The Sacramento Bee, Channel 13, The Copper Gazette, the Digital Journal, MSN Now and the Huffington Post did.

That the story was picked up nationwide and drew hundreds, if not thousands of online comments shows that it was of very wide and likely very prurient interest. But was including the names of the offenders – or of the libidinous heroes, as many readers characterized them – necessary, instructive or at all useful?

Of course not.

One online comment put the question in perspective: “Too bad you couldn’t have left out their names. Now, when their grandchildren Google them, this story will pop up. Nowadays, it’s not enough to get a ticket; your mistakes follow you for life.”

The Digital Journal began its story with this almost apologetic lead: “Occasionally we get far more information than we need.”  Then, after graphically recounting the tale of carnal backseat knowledge, it gives that unneeded information: the seniors’ names.

Most news outlets routinely use the names of felons in crime reports. The public, goes the reasoning, deserves to know the names of accused murderers, robbers, drug dealers, embezzlers, swindlers, con artists, crooked politicians and anyone else who might pose a serious danger to life, limbs or wallets.

But typically the names of those arrested on misdemeanor charges are spared exposure. Burglars, vandals, shoplifters and the like, particularly first-time offenders, are often given the benefit of the doubt. They might, it can be argued, learn from their mistakes and grow up to be responsible citizens.

The Union Democrat makes an exception for drunk drivers. First off, the drivers’ behavior, although by law a misdemeanor, is clearly life threatening. Secondly, the mere threat of public humiliation in Monday’s newspaper may compel a Friday-night drinker to call a cab, take a walk or, in very rare cases, switch to sarsaparilla before blowing by the dreaded .08 blood-alcohol level.

None of the above logic, however, applies to the Case of the Torrid Taurus. I suppose a grade-schooler or two trailing Mom and Dad into the Stockton Road grill for a cheeseburger might have experienced a moment of shock. But since today’s fifth-graders know more about sex than I did before turning 30, I doubt the Afternoon Delight inflicted any permanent psychological damage.

Instead, it gave both underage and over-age witnesses juicy fodder for recess and coffee breaks the next day.

Clearly, the steamed-up seniors are more victims than criminals. Indeed, for these two, the personal consequences may be far-reaching. On her own Facebook page, the woman involved in the incident apologized for “the irresponsible act that i committed on that day… I appreciate your responses by not judging me to harshley (sic)  … please accept my apology to all the family involved in such a stupid mistake.”

That their almost comic lack of discretion led to a citation is bad enough.

That their names then hit papers, radio waves, news at 10 and Internet sites viewed by millions is far worse. Which is one more reason the DA should not pursue this case. Why compound a foolish public mistake with wasted public resources?

The real shame is this: The efforts of the few media outlets which had the responsibility, common sense and compassion to spare these trysters further humiliation are for naught. A few deftly delivered keystrokes can in seconds expose their names to millions and undermine the noblest of intentions. Such is life in the 21^st Century.  

If this tale benefits anyone, it’s other seniors who may even for a minute consider surrendering to their passions in a public place. They know now that it’s best to get a room — and make  sure their names go no further than a guest register.

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.

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