Wisecracking Across America - 7. Chapter 7

Wednesday, May 19, 1999

This morning we doubled back again. To see Ferndale. Honest. Flaunted on billboards as both The Victorian Village and The Westernmost City in the Continental U.S. (They must've been really pissed when Alaska joined the Union---no one wants an asterisk in their Book of World Records.) We'd also heard about them in Mendocino---as the only other California town entirely landmarked.

I figured we'd have an English breakfast---tea and something chalky---in some overly fussy cafe, get that out of our system, and continue north. (Though we'd have to stop reversing ourselves each morning, or we'd never see the U.S.A). Still, after we parked in the little pastel village, and I asked for a good place to eat---Tom was walking the dog---all I got was stares.

"Well, there is the Greek's," a woman in the supermarket finally offered.

It didn't sound Victorian, and she didn't say if it was any good.

"And Curly's," her bagger added. "But they only serve breakfast on weekends."

It was Wednesday.

"There's the Inn," a customer suggested.

"Did that open?" asked the bagger.

That started a conversation that ended with all three women staring across the street through the plate glass window. Towards a heavily-decorated building that could've been there since Prince Albert was in kilts.

At that point another woman joined them. "I just heard it opened myself," she put in. "This morning."

"It opened this morning?"

"No, I heard it this morning. It opened Sunday."

"It's supposed to be good," the first woman told me. Though I wondered how she knew, since moments earlier, she couldn't remember the place existed.

But as that seemed like the best recommendation we were gonna get, Tom and I soon found ourselves sitting in what clearly once had been a bar. Now, it was freshly neutered for family dining, though its high ceiling retained an eccentric, chain-driven palm fan. Remnant, no doubt, of those happy days when Californians could still smoke.

I asked our waitress about the contraption, figuring it historic. "I'll have to find out," she replied. "Everything's so new we're still getting use to the menus."

A minute later one of the co-owners came by. "Nothing's original," she laughed. "Not even the bar." (Tall, mahogany, with proper brass fittings.) "It was all remodeled twenty years ago---to look older."

The Cheers mentality.

"What are those domes in the ceiling?" I asked. Semi-circular, white plastic eggs: they looked alien against the pressed tin. Tom had guessed air conditioning vents. I thought spy cams.

"Disco speakers," the woman grinned. "We have to get rid of them. But first we need customers."

There were only a few other people, mainly older, in a room that might seat forty. But tourist season hadn't yet begun.

Breakfast was cute, maybe more whimsical on paper than on our plates. Afterwards, though we didn't need to, we walked it off on the three-block main street, first springing the dog from her backseat prison. She made straight for a sidewalk tree, claiming it as her own.

The shops were a mixture of practical---for people who lived in town---and loony---for us passing through. Most stores welcomed the mutt, not even letting Tom tie her outside. Except the tiny post office, sporting a huge sign, NO DOGS.

"Someone got bit," Tom mumbled.

The most interesting gallery was Hobart Brown's, founder of The Annual World Famous Kinetic Sculpture Race---which I'd never heard of.

"It's over twenty years old," the manager back-filled. "Got started accidentally, at the Fourth of July parade. With three, kind of haphazard vehicle/sculptures, driven by human power."

He pronounced the "slash."

We saw some of them later, in the town museum. We could even have met Hobart Brown, his studio being over the gallery and the manager assuring us, "He loves interruptions." But I have friends who are artists, and know how they can talk. And I wanted to get out of Ferndale before the next parade.

Still, we almost got lost in The Golden Gate Mercantile. Like the Inn, the general store looked like it had always been there. But the owner said, "No, only twenty-seven years. Why? You interested in buying?"

"Could you really sell the place?" I asked. "It seems like great fun."

She laughed, groaning. "Some days. Others, I never sit down. And there are weeks I wonder why I even bothered opening that morning. Right now, we're thinking of taking it all online."

"Steadier business?"

"We hope. We had a catalogue a few years ago. Got three mentions in the L.A. Times, and grossed forty-five thousand dollars that month. That's a lot for a small store. We were up till two AM every morning wrapping parcels. Post Office claimed they'd have to put on extra help."

"It must've been great."

"No, my husband and I were both business people. We opened this place to get away from all that." She laughed again.

They already had some long-distance customers. "When the Hollywood people were here," ---Dustin Hoffman's Outbreak was filmed in town---"they bought everything we had. And we still get late-night phone calls from the Ralph Lauren folks. They say, 'Ship everything connected with old soap,' then use it in store displays."

More typically, Main Street was small shops like the local art supply. The woman who ran it was originally from L.A.---no one seemed actually born in Ferndale. "But since I was twelve, I've always wanted to live in an old house out in the country. And drive a fifty-seven convertible."

The restored Belvedere was parked out front.

We also stopped at the cemetery, not that I needed to see dead people. But the graves seemed oddly cantilevered on the hill. The Hanging Mortuary of Ferndale.

Eureka, as we zipped back through, also had a refurbished downtown, perhaps a regional commodity. With some neat murals hiding some ugly walls.

Late in the afternoon, lured by The Trees of Mystery, we stopped. It was just a twelve-foot circle of redwoods, all sharing the same root. Not even a lurking druid. Far better was a towering concrete Paul Bunyan, partnered by a thirty-five foot, anatomically-correct, Babe-the Blue Ox.

"What's that, Mommy?" I could hear little kids asking.

"Have some more popcorn, sweetie."

Paul and Babe fronted a souvenir shop selling foot-long, glow-in-the-dark ants. (Nuclear waste anyone?) And postcards showcasing 'The Banana Slug---friend to man in the Pacific Northwest.' (They speed up decomposition.) Maybe we hadn't missed The Lost Coast.

Finally, the Welcome To Oregon sign. For days Tom had been asking, "Are we really gonna leave California?"

"It's a big state," I'd explained. "Look at the map."

"By now, I thought we'd be in Canada."

Though exiting California had made him grin, goofily. Even the dog glanced toward the camera as we photo-opped Oregon. Still, Tom seemed slightly disappointed, and it turned out he'd expected a more radical change in landscape.

"The trees do seem greener," he insisted, gazing about. "Rounder. Something."

Sure.

270 miles