So I’m playing tourist,
mooching off my galpal Corinne’s retired Redwood City, CA dream life.
Boy, has she ever set herself up well in her hometown, recently
redeveloped into a vacation paradise ideal for a freeloader
like me. Not only is her late
parents’ house, in which she grew up, replete with a view of verdant
hillsides and well-tended homes – and a
large garden full of a festival of fruits in rotating seasons of
ripeness – she’s got
the sensuous cuddle cat and the darling ditzy dog, and the
friendly, easy kind of community about which we all fantasize when
things start
to sloooow down.
Redwood City has Zydeco dancing for free with a great Cajun group in the renovated town square on Friday nights all summer, in a great contrast of stately buildings and Southern hoedown hick apparel. It features screenings and dance classes at the local community center every week all year long. People actually picnic in its parks. It’s got great walking areas, fine dining, funky shops with great one-of a-kind finds, a train station, and, holy shades of civilization, all the familiar franchises plus a Whole Foods with slightly different fare from local farms than the Los Angeles local branch.
They sell ostrich eggs.
On the way back to the car after some lunchtime phở, we stepped into a bird store to say a quick what’s up to the caged canaries and parrots. In the middle of the store, I sneezed and my temporary front tooth flew onto the floor. I picked up the tooth, shrugged at the puzzled proprietors and parrots, and drove to my dentist to have it reattached.
My mother had a lot of them. If a knife drops, it means trouble’s coming. If a spoon drops, it means company’s coming... Lila’s mother, by contrast, believed if a knife dropped it meant a man was coming. If a spoon dropped, it meant a woman was coming... Double egg yolks were good luck. And never pass a salt shaker to anyone without setting it down on the table in front of them and having them pick it up from the table – don’t ask me why.
The only one I ever heard was that if someone gave you knives as a gift you had to pay them a dollar. Apparently that was supposed to protect you from cutting yourself. I never did find out why, but "the charm" worked for at least five years. My husband's co-workers were horrified he gave me the knives, but I am pretty sure it wasn't my safety they were concerned about…
This past January, something hot and sexy began creeping its way through the chilly winter snows in Idyllwild, California. Locals were struck with the highly contagious Caseymania, which is like Beatlemania but without the screaming hysterical teenage girls. Well, not in Idyllwild, at least. But to inhabitants of this tiny mountain town, it was close to the same thing.
“He gets to tour, bound to make upwards of a hundred-fifty thou,” you hear an old-timer say with the cantankerous certainty of a gold prospector. Poor Casey never stood a chance. He had three big strikes against him in the TV-blurred minds of the American Idol voters (them being tweenage girls).