In the back of the hall, a group of women sat chattering in the kitchen. “We’ve got food if you’re hungry!” a woman with a clean white apron yelled out. I came over and looked at a sign written in magic marker listing hot dogs, chili dogs and a dozen kinds of pie. For $2 I took a piece of hot apple crisp and a scoop of the best ice cream I’d ever tasted, fitting for a town nicknamed Cream City. Sitting on the cement stoop out front, everyone passing inquired as to where I got it and if there was any more. Kids in soccer uniforms dug through their pockets and pulled their change, and old men teased while passing like they do in small towns. “My goodness, is that for me?” I would smile obligingly, but really I just wanted a moment alone to eat that pie before the cream turned the crust to mush and all the flavors would be lost to a paper plate suffused in a lake of melted vanilla and cinnamon.
By 4 p.m. the pie was gone, the sales were winding down, and we found ourselves increasingly alone as other visitors got in their cars and drove away. What wasn’t sold at most places was gathered up and left in boxes marked “free” along the sidewalk, and so it was that we ended up hauling around all sorts of things we never would have bought- a well-worn encyclopedia of mammals, a greasy one-egg ceramic pan, an old dress too small to fit any of us, and a whole wicker basket full of warped polka records and outdated National Geographics.
Ferndale, as we soon discovered, was far more than bargain lovers’ paradise. To the West lay the great expansion of the Lost Coast with Centerville Beach, and to the East were the pastures and what’s left of Ferndale’s creamery business, the 62 dairy-farm cooperative known as Humboldt Creamery. To the North lay the Humboldt County Fairgrounds and the only horseracing track within a hundred mile radius, but we chose to stay South, wandering downtown and looking at the old Victorian homes- what the locals call Buttermilk Palaces. In a quiet side street we stood in awe of an old Victorian house with four stories of bright orange paint and wooden eves as delicate and elaborate as spider webs. The alley alongside was gravel-lined with wood stacks and climbing roses, and at the far end you could just see the back of a tall white church. I stopped to peer up at the steeple. The building was narrow and towered straight into the clouds, and the paint was as white as if God himself had slapped it on that morning. The window trim was a blue that seemed a natural extension of the sky- like heaven had touched down just there in the Methodist churchyard. The stained glass was painted with images of Christ, who looked as gentle and generous as if he too had been an American small-town boy.
Further down the way, I caught up with my companions who’d stopped at a plum tree and were busy pulling off handfuls of sun-ripe fruit. Tristan turned to me and, purple juice running down his chin from cheeks stuffed full, said, “You know, each one of ‘em tastes different,” which was true. None of them were outright bitter, but some were sweeter than others and some had sat sweetening so long that by the time we got to them they were simply bland. We made for the car leaving a trail of pits sucked clean behind us as we went.
Seat belts on, we looked with wonder at the odds and ends piled high on each our laps. Rusty tins, old family photos, wooden figurines holding wooden bottles of Scotch. It was junk, all of it, but it was the junk of a town with so much honest middle-American charm I couldn’t help but love it. While I’d arrived in pursuit of deals, I left with something priceless: a re-awakening for simplicity and faith in a life where the best days are little more than a slice of apple pie eaten on the front stoop.
Page 1 - 2
Next Story: Hawaii