Last Summer at the Ranch and the River

Herding caterpillars; raiding a neighbor’s tall peach tree by means of stilts; constructing a fake “Loch Ness Monster” with canvas and a derelict canoe; machinations in a Pawn Shop to obtain the fur coat of a ‘genuine’ Eskimo Princess: or even adding paddling (with a real paddle) as the initiation fee for the prestigious San Francisco based Paddle and Canoe Club are hardly crimes. To the participant they rate more properly as just boyish exuberance.

In such affairs as these Johnny was the brain, Chuck the muscle and the author as youngest and smallest, was the unfortunate shuttle cock sent aloft to the winds of chance in walking, swimming or producing any chicanery necessary, to complete the plan.

And as for an author age eighty, like Adam, memories can expand or recoil like a worn out accordion or a “Slinky” going down stairs, it is no problem for him to combine the actual happenings of eight summers spent in a cabin in the tourist town of Monte Rio on the Russian River in Northern California into one summer’s adventure.

Add the first burgeoning forth of a very shy, very tentative romance and you have this story.

Locale, circumstances and incidents are true. It has been colored in part for reader interest.