OBVIOUSLY HAMMERED

SMALL TOWN STORIES, A Day in the Life of Point Reyes, California

    On Tuesday, at 12:07 a.m. it was reported that a man left his rental apartment “obviously hammered”.  At 4:27 a.m. a woman called to report that her husband was holding down an intruder who acted like he was high. By the time the police arrived the stranger was calm and sitting at a desk. At 10:16 a.m. a woman called to say her house  "smelled strange".
    At 1:35 p.m. a woman was reported living in a BMW, on a golf course, with her dog. At 3:42 a camper complained about loud talking. An hour later, a man trapped a skunk in his garage. He threatened to shoot it. Someone noted a Ford Fiesta had been parked by a road for a long time. At 6:56 p.m. a man was seen carrying green cylinders.  Two hours later a woman called the police to complain about he ex’s dog.  It had wandered over to her house looking for food.
     Just after 10 p.m. screams were heard from a nearby gated house. A young girl had experienced a bad dream. At 11:02 p.m., a man wearing a back pack kept talking about “the illumination” in in front of a bar in Point Reyes Station.  Just before midnight an Uber driver called to say he was lost, scared, and running low on gas.



 
   The incidents noted above above were in a  phone call log made by local police. They were reported in a small town newspaper, the “Point Reyes Light”.

It's popular rag for the rural communities listed above on the Point Reyes Peninsula, 40 miles north of San Francisco. The paper reminds us that things do happen in small towns and, in truth, I left out the sad ones about “lost child in grocery store” and “dead body discovered while hiking”.

    Miami is too big and its newspapers, too understaffed to report the small events and many of the big ones. There could be a home invasion in my Coconut Grove neighborhood no one but the cops and victims would know about it. We're not that connected in South Florida.  How many of your Miami neighbors do you know?

  Photo from a story on Judy San, self-taught taxidermist

     For a few days we're in a community where everyone seem to know each other. They depend on and enjoy these communal relationships.
   And I enjoy reading their local police blotter as we wind up our summer sojourn.  
We're visiting relatives who live in Point Reye's rugged coastal wilderness.  

My cousin Terry and her husband, David,  live the town of Inverness. Their simple house was built in 1907.

Francesca's sister and her husband  (Carmen & Doug) built their house 110 years later in a meadow nearby. They moved in last January.
    
In the mornings we help them pull weeds from their "green roof".






In the afternoons we hike.


 

  At the end of the day we sip ginger tea as deer munch apples nearby. 

This won't last long.

     In a few hours we'll be back in Miami shooing rats from fallen papayas.  While the Miami Herald screams about the rise of local road rage incidents the Point Reyes Light reminds us that there are places where people still wave "hello" and drive courteously.  They share their lives, their stories in places where honking car horns are seldom heard. 
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