Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
It was time for a little get-away. Home is fine, with new garden sprouts and all, but RedY needs some exercise.
Before we left, we checked on neighbor Clay's tree-trimming project. This giant Monterey Pine looms over his house and our yard and it was good to see that he had contracted to trim the beast and assess it's health. (Seeing the tree-trimmer way up high gives an idea of just how large this pine is.)
Our goal for today's 150-mile trip was Rio Vista, a small community in the middle of the Sacramento River Delta. The town dates from the 1850s and 60s, making it ancient by California standards. After three narrow bridge crossings, we found ourselves in a downtown like many other small Delta and Central Valley towns, perhaps on the prosperous end of the scale. All the store fronts were occupied and parking spaces were mostly full.
We came to Rio Vista to visit friends. Marianne's friend Gale (aka: "Goldie") lives at Trilogy, a 55+ community just north of town. They go back to time as college roommates, more years ago than we all care to count, but "the girls" have not met in person in decades, and we had never met her husband Wallace. It was time to catch up and learn something new.
Gale and Marianne chatted about the olden days, and events since. Gale is a regular reader of these diaries, so I suppose not everything Marianne said was "news".
Meanwhile, Wallace and I did what 80-year old men do when first meeting: tell stories. I can normally keep up my half of these conversations, but I have to admit he had some stories that I could not top. As a supervisor in the LA County government, he had first-hand experience at murder scenes (Sharon Tate and the OJ murders) and talked about other famous folks he had run across professionally.
But the most unusual story was of when 13-year-old Wallace McCabe was seriously burned in the 1957 Pacoima airplane crash. He spent months in the hospital recovering, with considerable media attention including autographs from Hollywood stars and even Walt Disney himself.
Nope, I can not top these.
Before heading off to lunch at the local golf club, Wallace gave Marianne a magnum of fine olive oil, something he is particularly expert at and fond of. I'm not sure we will follow his recommendation to drink olive oil directly, but as a minimum, it can further elevate Marianne's cooking.
Lunch done, we had our final hugs, promising to stay in touch (beyond just these diaries) and headed to Oakley, another old Delta town, bigger than Rio Vista and near newer communities that serve as long-distance commuter suburbs for the Bay Area. I'm not sure we will explore the town before we head over to Sacramento, but maybe.
Stay tuned,
John and Marianne