Time warp yard sale on South Petaluma continues today- read and see how old American/Fort Bragg values could save us from the mess we are in

On the way Saturday to photograph a political protest and then attend a presentation by Tatiana Cantrell, the missing and murdered indigenous people director for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, I found a news story that I couldn’t resist..

 No disrespect to the other events, but this one contains the answers to global warming, endless garbage, the trade deficit with China and the death of our rural communities.

This is how we can fix those seemingly intractable problems.  It’s old-fashioned conservatism. There are ZERO conservatives in either major political party right now. Conservative has become a bad word because culture war haters who are actual anti-conservative, anti-American radicals have taken a dump on the word. 

I found my story at two roadside fruit stands and a time warp garage sale held by the king and queen of local yard sales, Clarence and Ronalie Silveria. It’s ending today, so you have another chance. The Nye Ranch fruit and vegetable stand is open all the time. Then there was the Valley Peaches juicy fresh fruit stand! A fruit stand next to Century 21 on Main Street offered by a couple from Orland, who has been coming to Fort Bragg with their trailer full of delicious fruit made where it grows best, for more than twenty years.

My hard hitting interview with one of Fort Bragg’s two favorite Orland farmers. Click to watch

The yard sale comes at the end of decades of use of the South Petaluma property by an old Fort Bragg family. There are the once ubiquitous and now fleeting rambling sheds and shops, created with boards from the old lumber mill and the likes of contractor leftovers.

It’s like Fort Bragg itself, more solid than showy, innovatively utilitarian and most of all, showing what made America great before the times of two globalist parties and a now entirely global Wall Street fooling Main Street America with propaganda.  No the billionaires and global power brokers are NOT your friends! I’m not using the name of the family who lived there. I didn’t want to stamp my vision and now vanishing memories of the great, powerful, local small town America on any one person or family. Its a story we all lived at one time. I can see the evidence they had a lot of common sense (which used to be common, but not so anymore). I although I never knew them, I doubt they would have believed the hogwash and conspiracies that pass as truth in this age.

There weren’t any exciting consumer products to buy at this sale. The guy who lived here fixed everything. When something broke, he fixed it at home or made something new out of two broken items. He didn’t have to run to the hardware or parts store, he had everything right in his shop. To say this was infinitely better than buying everything on Amazon, throwing it in the trash in a few months and buying something else is understating the word infinity.

The walls of one of his many shops and barns are lined with glass and plastic jars filled with every size screw, nut, bolt, spring, kotter key and everything else you would need to rebuild a vacuum cleaner, compressor or create your own contraption. And all the tools to do the job.

This was my dad’s America and his dad and back to the horse and buggy days. Something purchased new was treasured and fixed for generations. Waste is a sin for true conservatives. Wise use is more important. than quick profits. Hence, pretty much every politician and corporate honcho who call themselves conservative today most certainly are not.

Then came globalism and the throw away and buy more economy. Instead of products being made in America, made well, and made so whatever it is can be fixed, the opposite happened. 

Everything became made overseas, especially in China and made intentionally unfixable.

All those jars and tools won’t fix the cheap stuff we get now. It can’t be fixed! That hurts the soul of many of us. My parents had a toaster that lasted from 1947 to 1997 and still worked when we threw it away and got a new one. That one lasted 6 months. The stuff was a little cheaper. And for that we sacrificed the factories and industries that gave rural America robust economies and local businesses. Like a lightning bolt, the mom and pops were gone, replaced by the Walmarts and Amazons with stuff not as good as the trash this guy threw out. 

McDonalds and Taco Bell gave us quick and convenient and maybe cheaper poison food that made many Americans diabetic. 

High school graduates who wanted to stay home had far fewer choices. People scattered across the nation. Many of those who stayed home to work in dead end jobs run by the globalists turned to drugs and alcohol. 

People lost touch with working with their hands, which was part of humanity for millenia. 

The goal in life ceased being to make a good living in a way that benefited your friends and neighbors.  

Billions were made by those willing to set aside all values but immediate profit for them alone. 

The fruit stand people are of the conservative, old fashioned bent from what is truly the world’s oldest profession.. They get pleasure by bringing forth good food from the land and sharing with others. We had some purple cauliflower from Nye Ranch that was so good we ate it all before we cooked it. Those freestone and cling peaches sold by Dale and Judy Rash of Orland will soak your shirt if you bite one while driving the car. Don’t ask me how I know.

And yes, there is ONE cause of global warming, environmental destruction and the loss of American rural autonomy. 

It’s not the GOP or the Dems. Its globalism and free trade, or put in one word, consumerism. If you want to do one thing to reverse this, bank local.

Second thing to do, learn to do with less, fix stuff and teach sons and daughters the tremendous empowerment this man’s shop likely gave him.

Resilient local economies that don’t waste and don’t spend trillions on rubbish from China are the answer to building back our small towns. 

It will likely take generations to undue the destruction to human civilization wrought since the fatal Bretton Woods conference, where both political parties basically decided to sell out their country’s future for quick and easy prosperity. Bretton Woods Conference 1944 explained

The guy with the shop on South Petaluma Avenue in Fort Bragg would have known that didn’t make sense.

At the yard sale, a lady named Mary wanted to buy gigantic elk antlers which the previous owner had attached above the garage. There were also moose antlers and other silly animal trophies here. 

Nobody could reach the antlers and Mary really wanted them. I love to be the only one able to accomplish something and being 6’-8 “ I could reach without a ladder. (Plus I don’t do old ladders). Clarence tried to warn me I was probably getting in deeper than I thought taking down antlers that had been up 50 years. I got one of the old guys wrenches and some wd-40 and went to work. Ten minutes later I was still spinning the century old 6 inch long bolt with two rusty nuts on the end when another guy came along and saved me by climbing up into the garage and still, the job took another 10 minutes. But Mary was happy and it turns out she is the operator of Fort Bragg’s new safari park, at the old Fuchsiarama house right across from the Nye Ranch fruit and vegetable stand.  Don’t try to check out their big game from the road!  Instead, come from the north, stop at the Nye Ranch stand, buy some food and be amazed. A tiger and 12 foot crocodile are on the way next, they just need to be put out. I presume the antler haul will top another megafauna critter too.

There was nothing brand new at this yard sale and most everything there was well worn from use or had been used to fix or create something else. There were hundreds of baby food, glass mayonnaise jars.  We did drive by the protest and I compelled my nephew, Joel Hartzell, to take some photos out the window while we were on an errand from home deemed needing immediate action by the two of us. And the presentation by Cantrell will be online in a few days and I’ll attach a link here when it is.

And I love it that AI and spell check tell me there is no such word as Kotter Key, Cotter Pin or Fuchsiarama. 

 Maybe there is still hope for us to escape them!

Oh and Bretton Woods and letting the wealthy rule instead of working class patriots was supposed to stave off the return of facism.  Nope! Wrong! And we sacrificed everything for that false promise.