LETTERS FROM HOME: LIFE, DEATH, LUST, GREED AND CONFUSION

Feb. 17, 1994

Dear Ken,

If the dream of every newspaper is to be indispensable to its community, I have encountered the nightmare.

Not that the two weekly newspapers that cover Garberville are bad. Just superfluous.

Most of the 1,350 souls in town heard it days before -- across their back fence or over breakfast at the Eel River Cafe or in the produce section of the Sentry market.

Never having lived in a truly small town before, the accuracy of the cliches surprises me. A hand-lettered sign taped to a store window announces a birth; the fate of a beloved resident who suddenly lost his fight with cancer is passed along in check-out lines and church pews.

Everybody knows one of the town leaders is having an affair. The debate is over the relative merits of his wife and mistress. (The consensus is he'll regain his senses any day now.)

Life and death and lust, essential ingredients of most newspapers, are already handled.

As you might guess, the reason it takes two newspapers to cover such a small town is both financial and parochial.

A few years back the venerable hometown paper was sold to an out-of-state chain that decided Garberville really needed a regional newspaper. In no time, circulation nose-dived.

As the editor/publisher who started the town's second newspaper tells it, Garberville advertisers wanted their targeted market back. And readers didn't really care much about the news elsewhere. Why do you think they live so dang far from everybody in the first place?

So even though the original newspaper has been resold to a publisher who at least lives in the same county, and its news coverage has refocused on Garberville, the second newspaper survives and is number one in most people's hearts.

I'm writing a story for number one, about a woman's crusade to save a small old-growth redwood grove that shelter's a crypt containing the remains of one of the area's pioneers. A logger wants to buy the three acres from the pioneer's willing family. It'll take $150,000 to prevent that from happening. Redwood trees are gold, especially the old ones.

Here behind the fraying Redwood Curtain, people come down strongly on both sides of tree-cutting. Not a simple story of good versus evil, especially since the logger is a minister who uses proceeds from some of his enterprises for good works. The crusader has an ax of her own: The redwoods to be logged are next door to the scenic resort motel she owns. I guess they have conflicting dreams.

The logger is to turn the grove into a parking lot for Confusion Hill, the tourist attraction he owns just across Highway 101. It's so named because the trees on the hill grow at such strange angles that being there supposedly is a disorienting experience. Or it was until the logger bought the hill and began cutting down the trees.

The attraction is closed for the winter, but a recent guest says Confusion Hill ain't what it used to be.

Did I mention greed?

Be assured, the papers from the distant metropolises of San Francisco and Santa Rosa (pop. 125,000) and Eureka (pop. 30,000) are sold on the street in Garberville. I read them when I get the itch for a bigger picture. But the view from Confusion Hill appears to be much the same.

Sam