At The Corner of Quincy and West by Bob Kaufman

The camera of my mind captured many fond memories near the corner of Quincy and West streets during the days and nights of my boyhood in the 1950’s and 60’s. The Kodak Brownie Camera mom and dad gave me for Christmas, not so many. Gordon Hardgrave’s house sat back from the intersection and slightly uphill, tucked in next to the alley to the north, and Roy and Teen Wright’s log-cabin-like house to the east. Across the street – on the west side of West Street – lived the Bedient family. Billy Bedient and I played together a lot during those days. It seems I might have worn out my welcome just a bit because Billy's parents, Bill and Emma, soon gave me the nickname “Nuisance”, by which I am still called by the surviving Bedients to this day … but that’s another story.

Gordon Hardgrave at Home, circa 1958.

I remember nights when we played under the cone-shaped glow of the streetlight. Sometimes, the splintery, wooden light pole was home base for hide and seek or kick the can. Those games were fun, but often, a little more consistent with our boyishness, we would collect small rocks from the gutter, toss them into the dark void above the streetlight and wait for the bats to come darting after them. Anyway, I think that is what we were up to. Unless … I suppose there is a slight possibility we were trying to see who could hit the light with a rock …. Nah! We would never do that!

“Why is there air?”

That question first wended its way into my mind one summer night, likely just after we had abandoned our bat escapade because those flying rodents were getting a little agitated. The Hardgrave’s four-car garage sat closest to the corner. Due to the sloping hill, the back side of the garage roof was easily accessible. The gentle slope of the roof provided a place to lie and gaze at the stars. A large pine tree stood on the corner, shading us from the streetlight. It might have been some other evergreen species, but to me, every tree that had needles was a pine tree. Had I remained at home in my adulthood, I might have become educated on such matters. Nevertheless, in the fifties, our view of the heavens from the garage roof was unobstructed on those dark nights of the new moon, notwithstanding that pine trees were everywhere around our town. Indeed, we lived in the woods.

The Hardgrave Home, 1962.
Photo owned by Dave Hardgrave.
The garage was behind the photographer.

The Hardgrave lawn was terraced, given to the gentle upward slope of the hill away from the intersection. Several concrete steps led from the front yard up to the house at the highest level of their property. The front lawn a dozen feet or so right of the sidewalk sloped about twice the gradient of the garage roof. At the top of the slope was their fenced garden. One end of the fenced area was a pen for Daisy, the Hardgrave’s Muscove duck. The fencing was to keep Daisy from consuming all their fresh homegrown produce. That garden provided me with my first taste of raw peas.

According to Dave Hardgrave, Gordon’s older brother, they won a duck at the Plumas County Fair one year and decided, with an obvious absence of originality, to name it Donald. Then one day, Donald laid an egg, and thenceforth was dubbed "Daisy". Many years after Daisy's demise, Dave once quipped: "Daisy lived quite a long time, I guess, for a duck."

I do not recall having yet learned the concept of relative humidity, but in our little corner of northeastern California, separated from the Nevada high desert by just two or three more mountain ridges, the humidity was often lower than I had imagined. The cold, wet winters with frequent heavy snow, along with what seemed to be regular summer thunderstorms, misled my young mind into believing we lived in a wet climate. It was not so. The sloping grass was cool on those summer nights, and if it was not an allotted day to run sprinklers, the grass would be dry. When we would lie down, if we felt something damp, it was likely to be liquid duck “droppings.” Daisy was good at leaving her marks on the lawn. We had to be careful about that.

Gordon Hargrave at
the Portola Picnic Ground,
circa 1958.

Often, we would roll down the sloped lawn like logs and get dizzy. We could get dizzy by standing and spinning around with our arms extended, but rolling logs was more fun. Once the sky stopped spinning and the dizziness passed, we would just lie there and gaze at the stars. Have you ever lain on the grass on a cool summer evening, gazing into the heavens unobstructed by the moon or city lights? Truly it is a mind-expanding experience.

 

“Why is there air?”

“For that matter, why is there anything at all?”

 

Such was the beginning of my wondering. Surely, it was on one of those summer nights, lying on Gordon’s garage roof or on his lawn, near the corner of Quincy and West, that the Questions of the Soul first began to formulate in my mind and heart as we gazed with wonder and amazement into the heavens.

To be continued….