Barbara Kay

I always felt that Fort Bragg was one of those places on the map where, if I could have taken the whole of the United States and tipped it on its side and shook it and had all the round pegs of our square pegged culture end up in one place, that would have been the place where they all would have all landed. And yes, I had to include myself in that bunch of round pegs in search of a hole to land in because I landed there, too.

I arrived in Fort Bragg the weekend following the 4^th of July, 2012. I went there in search of something, to this day I am not sure what, but what I came away three years later was far more than I ever expected. But before I could lay claim to the riches that the coast was to bring me I had to find my heart and soul again and that was the place to do it.

Fort Bragg started out in the 1850's as a military garrison in charge of an Indian reservation. After the Civil War it opened up to wider settlement and went on to be a very important mill town, one of many on the coast that helped supply lumber to rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake of 1906. It was still a mill town when I rolled through on my way to Eureka in 1988 and by the time I reversed that journey in the spring of 2012 it was grasping at straws at what to do with itself. It is a California Historical landmark, a government and service center, a hub for coastal tourism and the home of many local artists, where there are plenty of galleries about to show off all that quality work.

I was happy to call Fort Bragg and the Mendocino coast my home for three years. It was cool and foggy in the summer, wet and cool in the winter, graced with a magnificent coast to walk on and plenty of interesting folks to get to know. Glass Beach was a big tourist draw, the craggy headlands a natural location for film and television series, the artist town of Mendocino with all its charms a short drive away and some of the best beer on the coast, North Coast Brewery, was available at a tap room right on the main drag.

Sitting in that brew house I met many folks from all around the state and nation who came to visit and dreamed of moving there someday. The biggest draw was the quaintness, I am sure, but to live there was to face a different sort of reality. Good paying, steady jobs were scarce, broadband was practically non-existent, roads tended to be blocked, flooded or washed out during winter storms and the local population tended to ignore or patronize you until you proved your worth or readiness to endure and handle the quirkiness of living in a frontier zone.

I managed a library so meeting folks from all walks of life was my specialty. I got to meet townies, local and upright citizens, I got to know all the homeless who called my branch their home, got to work with many talented people who knew and understood the land and who helped me better acclimate to my surroundings. I volunteered around the region just so I could meet folks, show the locals that I believed that a good library had doors that swung both ways but more, so I could get to indulge in plenty of free food and wine drinking, both of which were an art and a mainstay there on the coast.

Cannabis was and still is king on the coast. I found out from my first day there in Mendocino County how important weed was to the economy but more how it greased the local social, culinary and art scene. It was easy enough, if you were patient, to get to know growers, farmers, middlemen and dispensary owners, just as easy as it was to get to know certified public accountants, lawmen, fisher folk and artists of all stripes. I had lived on the outskirts of cannabis for a long time and I found that so long as I didn’t look too hard or too desperate weed would find its way to my door.

Getting to know folks from town was easy as the local library was the nerve center for the community. It was there that I got to know one of my favorite coastal people, Barbara Kay Olsen. She was a naïve artist who handled many different mediums including sea grass, watercolor and collage, had art in galleries and museums from New Mexico to the coast, had many unusual friends and acquaintances and due to her kindness, gentleness and fierce independence, kept folks both close and at a distance. We got to know each other through film, rather, through recommendations there in the video section of my library. Through her I got to know about the local art scene, had a better understanding of the how the town worked from the impoverished artist side of things and was given a sideways kind of tutorial on contemporary coastal art work through the purchases I made at thrift shops and flea markets in the area.

Barbara and I got together once a week to pour over my findings, to drink wine, to eat homemade pizza, to watch film and, best of all, to smoke local weed. It was one thing to find baggies of dope on the sidewalk coming or going to work, it was another to be gifted large garbage bags filled with trim and nuggets of wonder from a local who knew the ground where the weed came from and the farmers who grew it. We enjoyed each other’s company, both of us outsiders of sorts, but her nature, a mix of fierce, unpredictable and soft, was too hard for me to understand and too challenging to embrace. It was good enough to be weekly friends, to occasionally share drink, to talk art, to smoke the kind herb. I was happy to have a connection to the Mendocino coast but it was a connection with limitations and I was good with that.

In January of 2013 Barbara passed away suddenly, too suddenly for those who knew her and who appreciated her friendship. At her memorial I got to know her children, many of her local friends and much of the community that got to know her over the years. When her house was being packed up I was gifted a number of smaller works and a large collage piece that I kept around my home till I left the coast. It was one thing to be given art and her stash jar and baggies of cannabis that had been gifted to her from all her grower companions, but it was another thing entirely to be gifted all the friends that surrounded her during her time on the coast. Through them I continued my journey there in Fort Bragg, where I got to know painters, film exhibitors, tattoo artists and growers of all stripes.

Thanks, Barbara, for reaching out, for being a friend and for showing me the way in Mendocino. It was pleasure to know you, to tip a glass with you and to fire up that strange Japanese water pipe with you, the one that never, ever worked properly. Thanks for the homemade postcards, the strange second hand finds and for passing along that basket you wove that was much, much too big for my wandering kind of life. May you rest in peace, kiddo.

Salud!