Weird Town

it’s great to have a place you love to go, and go there.

In the bright arid valley where I live there’s often fog, blown in at night from the ocean fifteen miles west. It’s dense, white, oppressive. It eventually burns off, and it’s startling to see the blue of the sky behind it. Was that there all along? I’m glad to see it back, anyway.

In a small coastal town north of us there’s another kind of fog. It doesn’t burn off so much as get blown around. Blue sky above it too, but only appearing in spots. It’s a strange place, this northerly town. Fronting a harsh coastline and backed by redwood forests, it’s its own little microclimate, neither cold nor hot, covered in eucalyptus and nasturtium, banana and plumeria. Feels almost tropical. It’s weird.

The town is a secret. Everybody knows it. There’s only one road in and the inhabitants keep taking down the sign. I’ve wanted to live there since I first visited as a little kid. I still plan to, only I have to get rich first. For now it’s great just to go there.

I took Jesse for the first time last week. We were there for the world’s most subversive Fourth of July parade. Almost every float was denouncing Trump and ICE and war. Upside down flags. I tried to explain it all to Jesse. “But which ones are for Trump and war?” he asked. “I love war, it’s so fun!”

After the parade there was a town-wide party. They closed the road leading out of town so no one else could come in, and we couldn’t get out either. We walked everywhere, ate all kinds of street food. Dogs ran free all over the place. There was a pie making contest with free pie. “I’d have slayed if I could’ve entered,” I said, “these people don’t know what they’re missing.”

On the walk back to our hotel we passed a gopher hole. A gopher was poking its head out. Jesse stopped. “Mama!” He bent down to pluck a nearby nasturtium.

“Jesse! Don’t pick the flowers, they don’t belong to us!”

“Ok,” he said, “but watch.”

He put the nasturtium at the mouth of the hole and waited. Sure enough, the gopher came back out, sniffed it, and then, quick as a flash, they were both gone.

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At night the old hotel played music off big speakers set up on its balcony. I sat downstairs in front of the saloon and watched as Jesse, fresh from music camp, conducted—using his water blaster as a baton. The hotel played only ska—The Specials, The Skatalites, Operation Ivy. “Is this for real?” I kept asking James. “I’m in fucking heaven!”

“I know you are,” he said.

In the morning we walked down to a small dock where someone had set up a record player. There was a stack of records too. I put on some cheesy ‘70s music—salsa, heavy on the brass. We leaned over the side of the dock, looking down, listening. A harbor seal swam over, her little round face emerging from the water to check us out. “MAMA!” shouted Jesse.

We went back a few times, trying different records to bring her up again, but it didn’t work.

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The town ends at a rocky grey beach where the water of the estuary comes in. Across the bay there’s another town. That town isn’t secret. It has a wide white sand beach and lots of sun. It’s way swankier—which made it easy for us to cheer for our side during the annual ‘cross-the-water tug o’ war between the two towns. In the early morning, hundreds of people gathered on each side of the bay. A small boat dragged a huge rope from one side to the other, then dropped anchor in the middle. The two sides began to pull. Jesse and I turned away to write the numbers six and seven in the sand with rocks. We finished just in time to cheer when our side won.

At dusk we drove out on the mesa. The road came to an end at an empty parking lot. Someone had put a big pile of shells on the ground. We walked down along a ravine to the ocean. Not very calm. Not the kind of ocean that seemed like it could ever be calm. Crashing waves and black rocks. There was a skeleton on one of them—just the spine and skull—of a sea lion. “What kind of animal is that?” asked Jesse. I didn’t want to tell him.

“What kind?” he said again.

“A sea lion.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow… that’s really sad, but also amazing!”

I was surprised.

“It sure is!”

On our way back to the car he asked if he could take a shell from the pile.

“Sure,” I said, “that’s what they’re there for.”