Four years ago this
summer, I was standing in the Shield's Cemetery at the graveside services
for Mickey Bloyd. It wasn't necessary for me to think back to my high
school years in Boonville -- they were all around me.
Mickey was
the youngest and largest of the Bloyd brothers. Mickey had died of natural
causes in San Quentin. He had been on death row for a domestic murder
and happened to be in the first group of prisoners to transfer off the
row when the Supreme Court ruled against the death penalty in the 1970's.
The
Bloyds were known as fighters. Some local wag once said that since there
was so little to do in Navarro, where they lived, the Bloyds would just
go out into a field and fight. You didn't want to fight with Mickey. His
older brother Skippy was notorious for cleaning out a barroom full of
loggers up at Happy Camp one time, and Skippy was just a shrimp compared
to Mickey.
|
"Like
all Valley delinquents, we looked up to the myths of the delinquents
who had come before us." |
While all
the guys used the high school barbells, our teacher and coach, Dan Gaffney,
had to build a special set for Mickey. The regular ones just weren't big
enough. Taking two huge buckets and filling them with cement, Mr. Gaffney
created a home-made barbell that was Mickey-size. It may still be out
behind the high school gym somewhere. There's probably nobody around anymore
that can lift it.
Mickey and
all the Bloyds were pretty much Deependers. They came to Boonville to
go to school, frequent the Midway Cafe and that was about it. The Valley
was very isolating for a teenager without a car then, as it is today I
suppose. He was also a year or two younger than I was and that made a
big difference in who you hung out with.
I had visited
the Bloyd ranch quite often as a sort of unwelcome guest of my cousin
who was a family friend to Mickey's next oldest brother, David, who everyone
called Deede. The Bloyds were an old Valley family like the Rawles, but
without the money. They were working class, but respectable because they
owned land. Unlike the Rawles, the Bloyds had exploits. This was still
a time when Valley mischief was seen as more colorful than criminal.
There were
only two places in the Valley where we could buy beer: The Oaks in Yorkville
and a tavern in Comptche. Neither of these places were able to tell if
the tallest of us was of age or not and they both had long ago decided
to err on the side of the sale.
Mickey, on
the other hand, was adept at liberating cases of beer from the then Floodgate
Store and no doubt other establishments in or near Navarro with less than
adequate security systems. Those of us with hot-rod cars welcomed the
opening of this additional supply line. We certainly weren't about to
question its heritage, since it would have been hypocritical to decline
stolen beer when its intended purpose was to fuel our drunken drag races
up and down the Valley.
Like all Valley
delinquents, we looked up to the myths of the delinquents who had come
before us. We were still marveling at the legend of a young man by the
name of Kinnie McKinney who held the nighttime record from Boonville to
Cloverdale on the wrong side of the road with his lights off. He had made
it in 28 minutes in something called "The Blue Goose". Now
that
was something to look up to.
The best we
had ever been able to accomplish was for David Bloyd, myself and my cousin
Mike, to turn Gary Robertson's '55 Chevy completely upside down in the
middle of Highway 128, right at Farrers' turn. All the beer we had stored
on the floorboards came crashing down on us as the car rolled over.
| "Officer
Troxler actually had our undying respect, based on the fact that
his Highway Patrol car could actually lay rubber..." |
|
Trapped in
an upside-down car on a blind turn where logging trucks were known to
barrel along, we somehow managed to extricate ourselves from the car and
immediately began to ditch the remaining contraband beer. Fortunately,
we didn't have to worry about the empties, as we had spent the evening
tossing them out the windows as we sped up and down the Valley in our
usual search for amusement.
Carefully,
but regretfully, we tossed the remaining unopened cans as far as we could
into the dark. Unfortunately, we were throwing in the wrong direction
and the cans were only traveling about three feet in the air before hitting
the bank-side of the road, and immediately and incriminatingly falling
to our feet. Once we had successfully corrected our launch coordinates,
and ditched the beer, our worst fears were realized with the arrival of
the Valley's only professional law enforcement officer, Russel Troxler,
CHP. The Valley Sheriff, Carl Passmore, we knew to be safely home in bed...
or so we imagined.
Officer Troxler
actually had our undying respect, based on the fact that his Highway Patrol
car could actually lay rubber (squeal tires) when it shifted from second
to third gear with...get this, a slush box (automatic transmission). It
was a continuous wonder to us that this was even possible. However, we
had witnessed this phenomena several times as he would apparently receive
a radio call and blast out of downtown Boonville leaving verifiable screech
marks on the pavement.
But this night,
as luck would have it, Officer Troxler was on an emergency call now, something
about, "Hell's Angels in Cloverdale", he shouted as he merely tossed us
flares and roared off. Truly, fortune shined on us. It was not yet midnight
and no one was dead or even arrested. Gary was terribly worried though.
"My father's gonna kill me", he kept saying. This issue was of considerable
concern to us all because parents, unlike police, still held some small
vestiges of authority over us.
Years later
I always remembered Gary's father with the nickname, "Fuckin Ukiah". This
was because of the fact that he couldn't use a sentence in the English
language without saying "fuckin". This made for some rather amusing sentence
construction, when nearly every noun was proceeded by the word "fuckin".
And it wasn't Ukiah, he said, but "YOU-ki-ah". "Fuckin YOU-ki-ah".
| |
". . .everything seemed pretty normal except for
our having to sit all scrunched down in the seats, due to the fact
that the top was crushed down to about where our shoulders would
normally be." |
Now this is
not to criticize. Gary's father was from Arkansas, like just about half
of the working families in the Valley in those days. Their use of language
fascinated me, and years later I came to miss their mangled syntax with
all of its colorful, "I ain't got no ..." and "Where's he at?" double
negative speak. It's almost as interesting as Ebonics and both have the
same Southern regional characteristics. After all, its what adds character
and keeps our language fresh, even if part of me also reacts with the
fingernails on the blackboard response, when I hear it.
As for the
profanity, my aunt always used to say that my Uncle Avon, whose every
other word was the somewhat more acceptable, "goddamn", wasn't really
aware of what his language meant to others. It was as natural to him as
his bib overalls, which I never saw him out of except when he went to
San Francisco to buy a new car -- Buicks and Oldsmobiles for him and Pink
Lincolns for my aunt. Or when they went to Europe and he scratched his
name on the wall of the Roman Coliseum with his car keys, "Avon Ray, Philo."
No, I can't
fault any of them. In fact, I still hear one old timer at the drive-in
whose use of "goddamn" rivals my uncle's. Except he uses a lot more emphasis.
As in, "I closed the GODDAMN gate and walked up to the GODDAMN house"
etc. He's a master, just as natural as breathing to him. (Hell, Mark Twain
had a swearing room built into his Tiffany decorated mansion in Hartford,
Connecticut. I'm not about to argue with the guy who wrote "Huck Finn").
Anyway, Gary
was worried, so we somehow managed to roll the car over and get in. To
our surprise it started right up and everything seemed pretty normal except
for our having to sit all scrunched down in the seats, due to the fact
that the top was crushed down to about where our shoulders would normally
be. About this time, someone had the idea to use our feet to try and push
the top back up. This actually seemed to work wonderfully, except for
the fact that the next morning we could see the real result, which was
a crushed roof with a bunch of lumps in it where we had pushed up our
feet.
I can't remember
what happened to that car, although I know Gary's father didn't kill him.
And my Aunt said what she always said, which was, "If I ever catch the
guy who's selling you kids that beer I'm gonna kill him."
Well, she
never did find out and the fact is we pretty much got it ourselves, with
a little help from Mickey.
