VL-IV Chapters 3/14 Vineland/Redway

[Robin Landseadel]

	. . ." 'Cause I'm an old push-button lefty, ideology before family,
	well let him think so, gives us that much more room to breathe. . .
	VL, pg. 305

Yes, I've been jumping ahead, yes I know this means spoilers, but it's  
been 19 years [date of issue] since I first picked up the same copy of  
Vineland I've been reading ever since. Most of you out there in the  
WASTEland have already passed through these parts more than once.

Right from the first reading I knew where Pynchon was pointing, just  
didn't figure out till this reading how exactly his territory matched  
my map:

	"  . . Listen, what about this?" And she told him about Vineland,
	how they all used to visit in the summers when Frenesi was little
	and how she'd loved to explore, must have followed every
	creek on that whole piece of coast as far up into Vineland each
	time as she could get, disappearing for days on end with a
	canteen of KoolAid and a backpack full of peanut-butter-and-
	marshmallow sandwiches. . .

Shelter Cove is about 15 miles as the crow flies from Redway and a  
whole lot further in anything involving 4 wheels, the favored nearby  
beach 'round the Green Triangle: its "nearest faraway place."

	. . . "Seems a lot of folks heading that way lately," Zoyd nodded.
	"Well, once a year we still all get together up there, cook out,
	play poker, carry on, all the Traverses and Beckers, my parents
	and their relatives. . .

Since the time of the Traverse/Becker family picnics, Reggae on the  
River became a major local tourist draw.

	. . .It used to be the high point of Frenesi's year,
	but she stopped coming after high school. You know, there'd be
	worse places for you and the ol"' bundle to live, have a home,
	beautiful country, only a short spin up or down 101 from
	everything, from the Two Street honky-tonks to the eateries of
	Arcata to the surfing at Shelter Cove, and you'd have a social
	life, 'cause lately this mass migration of freaks you spoke of,
	nothing personal, from L.A. north is spilling over into Vineland,
	so you'd have free baby-sitting too, dope connections, an
	inexhaustible guitar-player pool?"
	Vl pg. 305

I always visualized Vineland as my Mother's old neighborhood of  
Garberville and Redway—partially 'cause Mom was CAMPed for obvious  
political reasons—experiencing a variation on "death from above" in  
the form of a helicopter full of machine-gun totin' Dea agents busting  
her for growing Gopher Purge. The case was thrown out, but this is the  
sort of thing that happens all the time in the good old USA if you  
happen to have developed a certain notoriety as a political activist.

	"Let me guess—2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]."
	"Try 20,000 Years in Sing Sing [1933]."
	VL, pg. 294

If you look up Redway California in Google maps and move back far  
enough to to see Arcata you'll notice Shelter Cove to the west and a  
little south on the coast. Arcata & Eureka were the most popular  
destinations to the immediate north of Garberville.  I remember Bea &  
Greg [my hippie mom & her "old man"] taking little excursions out of  
town, to get away from their usual haunts in Redway and Garberville.  
Destinations usually included either Shelter Cove or Arcata/Eureka.  
There is a Two Street in Eureka.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&q=two%20street%20california&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

Bea & Greg's favorite spot near Redway was the Benbow Inn in Benbow,  
one of those buildings:

	. . .dating back to the high tide of the logging business in these
	parts, when the big houses framed all in redwood had gone up
	and legendary carpenters had appeared descending from rain-
	slick stagecoaches, geniuses with wood who could build you
	anything from a bowling alley to a Carpenter Gothic outhouse.
	Vl, pg. 26

The Benbow Inn is no outhouse, but "Carpenter Gothic" is a fair enough  
description of its style. Great place for Sunday Brunch, btw.

http://www.benbowinn.com/dining.htm
http://www.benbowinn.com/

Mendocino is just about as far south of Redway as Arcata is north of  
of it but was just a little bit too pricy to be a regular destination  
for those two.

Not to slag she who brought me into this world, but that :

	". . .old push-button lefty, ideology before family. . ."

line has a certain resonance for me.