Tying it All Together (First in a Series)

SYNOPSIS (in case you’re in a hurry)
I’m old and looking back on a lifetime of events, some of which are worth a few comments in public. More than anything else, this series is about, “Friends in High Places.” No matter where the comments may go, they will always be tied with a long tether to home – as in “Homestead.” This initial episode briefly concerns California history, some of it early background history, some of it fairly recent history, not all of it pleasant, known only to the privileged few who lived it. End of Synopsis. (Reading time for the rest: less than 3 minutes, if you have the time.)
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Rather than, “Celebrate the Fourth of July,” I, “Contemplate the Fourth of July,” because two Fourths of July nearly thirty years apart have worked to change my mind radically about the image of the United States of America as it was taught to me in school. Only one of them, though, the Fourth of July, 1976, will be enough to give you a good case of the hives, so for the time being we will just ignore the other one. Its time will come, in due course.

The Fourth of July 4, 1976, (our nation’s bicentennial holiday, recall?), is the date an old woman packed up and left a dilapidated shanty she had called home, because in the name of the People of the United States of America I had served her a “3 Day Notice to Pay or Quit.” She was in arrears in her rental payments (of $60 per month) and my boss had given me instructions – firm and unequivocal in the quaint vernacular of our profession, to “Kick her out!” He meant it, and I did it.

This was “Mainstream America.” Our business was business, and business is business. Only this time, an unexpected glitch entered the scene, sort of like your computer crashing without warning.

It was not just, “business as usual.” For me, at least. The old woman was an Indian (a “Native American,” in correct-speak) and I lost an impassioned battle on her behalf for money that was duly hers, a relocation payment of several thousand dollars, which was denied her because, in the words of Mainstream America, she was “a goddamn Indian,” and for no other reason. (I beg your pardon. I retract that. It was also because, “It was the white man who came along to develop this country, not the goddamned Indians, and don’t you forget it!” My job was on the line and Mainstream America had me by the you know whats.

But – (breathing deeply, now) – my conscience eventually got the better of me, and thirteen years later, and thanks to Saint Patrick – (more of that later) – she received the several thousand dollars she was entitled to, plus interest, which more than tripled the original sum. If ever you drive up US highway 101 through Sonoma County, your tires will hum happily right over the spot where it all began.

And if you read on a little further you’ll learn how the Marin County Board of Supervisors are tied to the whole shebang, and perhaps you, too, will begin to wonder whether – or perhaps even how – Marin Horizon School managed to creep uninvited into our living room while we were outside watering the garden, then plop itself onto our best sofa, put its feet up on the coffee table and start complaining about the room service.

As unlikely as it may seem, there is no beginning to this tale. Except perhaps the Big Bang. So we must plunge into it somewhere, and I have chosen the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, by which Mexico ceded much of its territory, including California, to the United States after a war. Two years later California was admitted to statehood. Of particular note here is the historic fact that upon achieving statehood in 1850 California became heir to private land grants made by preceding governments, namely by Spain and Mexico.

When I came onto the scene in 1976 with my “3 Day Notice to Pay or Quit” I was dealing with a tenant on a piece of property which when Columbus discovered America was the homeland of the Pomo Indians, a peaceable tribe that occupied an area extending roughly from Santa Rosa in Sonoma County to Ukiah in Mendocino County, and from the Pacific Ocean to Clear Lake. The ancestors of the woman whom I was about to serve with a “3 Day Notice to Pay or Quit” were here, happily conducting their affairs when an interloper from overseas “discovered” them. Knock, knock. “Get the hell out, lady, you’re on State property now, and you ain’t paying the rent fast enough.” I was standing in the middle of an Indian reservation, from which the State of California had acquired a couple acres for a freeway. And freeways, as we all know are fundamental to our commerce. And as we all know from our history books, and as Mainstream America had just reminded me, the goddamn Indians are in the way of it.

Here the plot thickens, as I must now introduce another inescapable historic fact: this particular Indian reservation was in Cloverdale, a small city on US 101 in northern Sonoma County, and it – the Indian reservation (the Cloverdale Rancheria) – and most of the city of Cloverdale are on one of the Mexican land grants that California inherited in 1850, the “Rincon de Musulacon.” A friend who speaks Spanish well enough to know, informed me that ‘Rincon de Musulacon’ translates roughly to “Musulacon’s Corners.” History informs us that Musulacon was an important early nineteenth century Pomo Chief. So here stands Ray Cook at the front door of a descendant of Musulacon, who herself is the sister of the tribe’s current chief, whose house is right next door, and Ray Cook is telling her to get the hell out!

To be continued. (click here for part 2)