Weed Like to Welcome You!
Friday, January 2nd, 2009
We got bright ice this morning, but it’s melting fast. Big icy clumps sound like they’re doing some real damage to the upstairs deck, but I’m not getting up to look.
Speaking of which, last night was plenty noisy. I had to get up and change bedrooms. Gusts of 50mph ice hit our house for eight hours straight—a lifetime if you ask me, plus there was a steady supply firing in at 27mph.
Welcome to Weed, where wind would rule if rulers were wise.
Speaking of rulers, legend has it that Abner Weed, the friendly neighborhood lumber mogul for whom the town was named, knew what he was doing when he built a mill here. By the 1940’s Weed had the world’s largest sawmill. You hear what I’m saying, don’t ya…the largest sawmill in the whole freakin’ world!
Now, for all you unenlightened humans out there, it’s like this: Logs need to dry before you can cut them up for building or burning purposes, but wind dries them lickety-split.
Mr. Weed figured something out: He could use nature, as in wind, to assist in the drying of his many green logs, thereby cutting the whole harvesting thing down to nothing. Humongous old growth was hauled in, dried and processed (as in poisoned with chemicals) faster and faster.
As a result of these wood treatment chemicals and residues from the glue used in the door factory, the historic industrial area at the north-east corner of Weed has been plagued with environmental concerns and clean-up efforts.
Though Abner is often touted as a smart feller, it was a no-brainer for a money grubber to put a mill here, ’cause all we had was wind, wind and more wind! OK, not exactly. Back then we did have plenty of trees, too. Sad to say, the timber has long departed. Speaking of departed, if dear Abner had had a brain he would have replanted.
view of Black Butte while you're traveling North on I-5
Back to wind. According to our weather friends, air currents ascending over the famous parasitic satellite cone of Mount Shasta known as Black Butte descend with a rush.
Allow me to testify to this rush. It happens four or five miles to the north of Mount Shasta, or, exactly where we live. The currents swirl around our house with plenty of ‘g’ force. They once blew a railroad car over a couple miles from here.
I don’t see why we can’t have wind driven electricity, but we don’t—at least not yet. Maybe the Obama stimulus package will change all that.
In the meantime, let’s hear it for Abner Weed! It really is too bad the dude scalped everything, ’cause he left all the hills and land around the town looking butt ugly.
Weed like to welcome you!
~especially if you're a high roller or a hoe~
That’s what all the signs say coming in to Weed. How do you like our apostrophe free pun? Nothing like a little misspelling to make a person feel down home.
Though you surely wouldn’t know it, our tacky town used to be wild wild super wild! Weed just loved to welcome a fancy gunslinger, gambler or Indian fighter, not to mention a high roller or a ‘hoe‘. Always room for one moe ‘hoe’ should have been the motto.
The Redding California Free Press once described Weed as the “Sodom and Gomorrah of Siskiyou County.” (Ooooo, burn.)
Thankfully, crime statistics are pretty tame these days: The number of violent crimes recorded by the FBI in 2003 was 25. The number of murders and homicides was 0. The violent crime rate was 8.5 per 1,000 people. Weed has a little under 3000 folks, not including ‘greater Weed’ where Chris and I live.
The truth is, though, people used to get wounded and/or shot dead in Weed, and that gave it a bad reputation. Hard to imagine by looking at our sleepy town now, but the bad rep kind of hangs with us even to this day.
Speaking of olden days, My friend, Donna, used to live in the old Weed Mortuary. She not only ate and slept there with her mate, she ran a sprout-growing business. The embalming room came in right handy for washing and growing those little green thingies. I used to get the shivers just passing through that concrete chamber complete with its metal sinks, long counters and floor drains. I swear the whole place was haunted, but some parts more than others.
Once, when Chris and I were eating spaghetti dinner at the kitchen table with Donna and her ex- boyfriend, I flipped a noodle above my head without thinking—like I was trying to feed something alive that was hovering above.
So here’s what I think: I was so accustomed to having my two dogs begging for dinner tidbits that the energy of beggin’ spirits must have felt similar and familiar. Therefore, I flipped ‘em a treat. All I really know for sure, though, is that this was the only time in my whole life I threw noodles up in the air to feed invisible things. So you decide.
Donna will probably kill me if she reads this, but she and her ex found a bunch of human bones under their mortuary when they were working on the foundation. Amongst the pile were spinal column chunks. I saw them with my own eyes. Chris, like a fearless fool, even handled them.
Yessiree folks, Weed was so wild that the city undertakers didn’t always bother with a coffin. They just threw the bones under the building.
Rest in Pieces!