MENDOCINO

     In June for several years running Rod and I accompanied family on trips to Fort Bragg on the north California coast camping and fishing and abalone diving.  The first couple of years we came up from our South San Francisco home where we lived under the marine layer of clouds and fog and wind and were used to it but our relatives from the north Sacramento Valley came to the coast from temperatures in the hundreds and this was a great relief to them.

 We towed our twenty foot Grady White the John Frederick with us and took it out salmon fishing and had great fun taking our grandson and nephews out on the ocean.  I handled the wheel while Rod manned the downriggers and helped the boys.  If someone yelled "fish on!" you had to get out of the boy's way as they rushed the poles.  Rod would get the biggest kick out of this.  We used to take our Grandson with us all the time and he was a great sailor and never got seasick Rod says probably because young people don't know they're supposed to.  I used to love fishing the Mendocino coast because you only had to go out two miles to be in deep water.

ROD AND ROBBIE TAKING THE GIRLS OUT FOR A DIVE

 While we were salmon fishing others of our group were diving for abalone a sea mollusk that is absolutely delicious. They went out about a quarter of a mile and dove in about 10 to 15 feet of 48 degree water on a low tide over the rocks where the abalone grew wearing wet suits and flippers and snorkel gear and a weight belt to help them not be so buoyant.  An abalone knife for prying them loose from the rocks and a sack to put them in completed the rig.  Every time you see a picture of a sea otter lying on it's back opening a shell this is what they are feeding on.  When our nephew Robbie was young he used to swim out with an inner tube with a net strung over it  and he'd swim back and forth and dive with each of his kids.  The one thing you really had to be careful of is Great White Sharks as this is their domain.

BARBARA, BOBBI, AND ME WAITING ON THE BEACH

     After a couple of years we left the Grady White home and took the Zodiac a seventeen foot rubber boat that was Rod's first boat.  It could hold all the divers, their gear, and the catch at water level and was easy to dive from.  One time Rod decided to dive, too, as he did when he was a young man and went over the side after setting the anchor wearing the weight belt he used for gold dredging in the Feather River (which is another tale for another time) and the weight belt was too heavy and not adjusted for the ocean.  He started to go down and he would have never come up.  They would have found him drowned had not Robbie, a big strapping handsome boy not grabbed him and unbuckled the belt which promptly sank to the bottom.  Robbie helped Rod back in the boat and retrieved the weight belt for him and still got his limit of abalone.   All this while Bobbi, his wife and I are sunning ourselves on the beach and picking up shells and completely unaware of the drama.

THE BOYS BACK AT CAMP WITH THEIR CATCH

     Back at camp with their catch the guys all set to cleaning the abalone and taking mallets and pounding them till they are thin and tender for cooking.  You coat the steaks in egg and roll then in crushed cracker crumbs and salt and pepper and fry them up in olive oil about three minutes to a side.  With all the other things we've brought with us from gardens and our home kitchens we have a wonderful feast.  To let you know just how special abalone is Rod and I were a Duarte's in Pescadero and they had it on their menu.  Abalone Sandwich $45.00.

In the evening we sit around the campfire in warm jackets and talk and laugh and tell stories.  When the kids were real young they'd run around the campsite playing but as the years passed and they became teenagers and young adults they had their own great fire to sit around.  Mendocino and Fort Bragg have wonderful antique/novelty shops and restaurants for other distractions on a long weekend.  Halcyon Days.