By Karl Lisovsky, aka Kai Landauer | Summer 2025
California
I was a 21-year-old counter-culture enthusiast in 1976, having dropped out of college after my sophomore year at U of M in Ann Arbor, wanting instead to turn my back on my rarified intellectual existence.
“I want to drop out of society,” I said to my childhood hometown friend Margie.
“I know the perfect place,” Margie said: “the Argonaut Inn and Art Center, in Jackson, California. The lady who runs it is Kay Sinclair.”
Ann Arbor, admittedly a hub of the 70’s counter-culture, with its serious anti-establishmentarianism, offered me little emotional comfort. Go west, young man, a voice seemed to be whispering to me. And besides, Char had just moved to the Bay Area.
In those days, California was, for me, the holy grail of life changes, where important things happened, where I could really be who I wanted to be. Where I could, in fact, drop out of society. I packed my belongings in my Toyota Corolla, closed my savings account of $400 and hit the road.
My breakout song “California”, written years later, began:
I was a young man back in 1975
There was something I had to find
So, I took a chance and came out west
And when she called then I said yes
Out of the cold and into the blue sky
Say goodbye, so long, to loneliness
I’m on my way to California
And it’s all right.
Kay Sinclair
Kay Sinclair had in her own way already stood up to social constraints and prevailed. And she had heart. She understood the zeitgeist of the 1970s, where young folks (from white middle class families) were looking for ways to break out of the system, to define themselves. I was one of those kids.
Kay herself had an enormously privileged background, such that when her husband died, she could afford to take her kids to Italy for a couple of years just for the enriching experience. She enjoyed gourmet cooking, and had always wanted to open a restaurant, because, as she said, “I’ve always loved feeding people.” Upon her return (with five kids) from Italy, she found out that the headquarters to the old Argonaut gold mine, the premier gold mine of the 19th C. California Gold Rush, was for sale. Jackson, CA: foothills of the Sierras. She bought it.
She had a soft spot for the young, the dispossessed, the gay. Artists, sculptors, musicians: those were the people she had in mind. Me, I was just a lonesome songwriter far away from home, having left a comfortable middle-class life of the Midwest, and happy to be in the California foothills.
Kay had mixed feelings about her own background of privilege. At times, she rather bragged about her family’s prestige, her father the dean of the School of Humanities at Penn State, and the riding club that the family belonged to. One day, a very upper-crust east coast lady, clearly from money, with an accent to match, came into the restaurant and found her way, very graciously to the kitchen to speak with Kay about the herbs in a dish that she had enjoyed. Kay mentioned the basil (pronouncing it bay-zil) that she had used. The lady echoed that, yes, maybe it was the bah-zil (in a tomato/tomahto kind of way), a pronunciation that must have taken Kay back to her own upper-crust, east coast, pre-California life. And the next time she mentioned the herb, she pronounced it bah-zil, like the rich lady. We in the kitchen noticed the switch, had a laugh about it privately, but couldn’t bring ourselves to tease Kay about it, as we sensed that doing so would touch her in a deeper way than we wanted to, wound her, even.
And yet, she was proud of her Depression era ways, the hard work and frugality that it took to live pre-WWII. One day in the kitchen I used the last of a carton of milk. Before discarding the carton, I ran a tiny bit of water into the container and poured that milk-plus-water mixture into my glass, to extend the milk a tiny bit.
“Now THAT is thrift,” Kay intoned. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“From my mother, I guess,” I said. “’Waste not, want not’ was her way.” From Kay, a broad approving smile made its way to me.
The Argonaut Inn was Kay Sinclair’s brain child, an enterprise like none other. She owned the large building that had housed the Argonaut gold mine offices back in Gold Rush days; it became the restaurant itself. Kay’s brilliant business model: college students would take a gap semester and come and work at her restaurant, paid with room and board plus tips.
We “employees” were quite satisfied with the arrangement. We worked in the kitchen during the day preparing the evening meal, and then served the evening meal. Accommodations were modest and rustic, but sufficient. Doug and Debbie had come from Kalamazoo College; they lived in the Cottage; Judy was from Beloit College and also lived in the cottage. Jack, the lone working artist on staff at the time, lived in the Barn; I and Karen lived in the Basement. Deb, Kay’s daughter, had the Cabin to herself. We were a team, a happy team, chopping onions and boning chicken, tearing lettuce and baking cakes, all in a communal effort to put dinner on at six o’clock.
Imagine a large, expansive, rustic building, made entirely of wood and cedar shakes, on the side of the hill at the top of which sat some of the massive remains of the old Argonaut gold mine, long since abandoned. California State highway 49, known since the Gold Rush as the Forty-Niner Trail, wound its way east out of Sacramento outskirts through Sutter Creek, Jackson and on to Calaveras County, home of the famous Frog Jump contest. Vogan Toll Road veered off of Highway 49 through a horse pasture and squawking chickens to lead one to the Argonaut Inn and Art Center, perched on the eastern slope, looking east to the horses grazing nearby, to the town of Jackson below, and beyond toward Calaveras County; looking north, one could see Highway 88, which climbed the mountain toward Tahoe.
Guests were welcomed on the front porch with a blackboard displaying the evening’s menu, artfully hand lettered and illustrated by Jack. The restaurant itself was itself a work of art: antique tables and chairs, each with its own particular pattern of chinaware, and silver, and textile, where Table 8 had Blue Willow, different from Table 6 with Lancaster. Art from resident artists (the same people who helped prepare the meals) hung on the walls. A baby grand piano dominated the dining room. A natural stone fireplace invited waiting guests to the sofas before it.
Kay’s restaurant was a realization of her dream to make beautiful gourmet food and serve it to appreciative clients. People traveled from the Bay Area, from Sacramento, from Modesto to come and eat at the Argonaut, after shopping for antiques in cute little stores in Sutter Creek, then stayed at a bed and breakfast in Mokelumne Hill. She was able to fill a niche in the market using her own skills—and family money—to make a dream of hers a reality.
I left the Midwest in 1976 with little more than an inclination and a goal: to drop out of society and make my way. Kay did not drop out of society, but she did make her way–in her own way. She offered me a roadmap, a model to model my own life around. Which I did, and now I am a better man for it.
Judy: first love
I arrived in Jackson CA on a sunny late summer day in 1976, and soon realized that dreams do come true. At least for me they did, and I had the Argonaut Inn to prove it. I did, in fact, drop out of society. Room and board provided, all I had to do was squeeze the lemon juice and strain the beef broth and slice the tomatoes and shell the walnuts in the daytime, and then show up to wait tables at dinnertime.
It didn’t take long for me and Judy to find each other. Judy was adventurous by nature and I was on the adventure of my life. We were single and unattached, with college behind us but no plans to be like our parents and get a “real” job. Not yet, anyway. This was the 1970s, after all, where we were hanging on to the sixties’ mantra to drop out, tune in, and turn on. Judy and I clicked.
One day we decided to hitchhike up Highway 88 toward Tahoe and go to a little place called Volcano CA, where there was a special park called Indian Grinding Rocks. On this day, there was to be a Native American celebration, honoring the culture whose people used those rocks to grind acorns into acorn soup, a life staple of the cultures of yore.
A very nice conservative Christian couple had picked us up and dropped us off at the top of the hill, where the road diverged toward the park. As we walked down that country road, we had a moment. A moment. If there is a moment when we fell in love, that was it. She took my hand and smiled up at me, and for that one instant my life came together in perfect union.
The festival was fun and raucous, and the music resonated in the valley and through the trees. In keeping with the location, a group of women were, indeed, grinding acorns into acorn soup and offering it in tiny paper cups to the public. Judy and I wanted so bad to enjoy this acorn soup, but alas! It tasted terrible! Neither of us could even swallow it.
Strangely, and out of nowhere, four horsemen appeared, dressed as you’d imagine Davy Crockett to be dressed, clearly white guys in a sea of Native Americana. I composed this song that evening having returned to the Argonaut, titled Indian Roses.
Its resolution:
Saddled high the mountain men
Smiled down at the ruin
They’d stolen Indian Roses from the moon
The sold the people Indian Roses
And rode away.
After that day, Judy and I were inseparable, were even asked by one crew member to please dial down the PDA. We were deliriously, foolishly in love, where nothing needed to make sense, and respectability didn’t matter. We existed in our own private space, our own treasured story.
Judy Muse
The baby grand piano in the dining room was my home away from Judy in the evenings. We served dinner until ten o’clock or so, cleaned up in the kitchen and set up the dining room for the next day, and then were free to do our thing. I quickly became a songwriter in that year.
And Judy was my muse. Maybe it was the novelty of the situation, the freedom of living a more enjoyable and satisfying life than I had even dreamed of. The songs flowed out of me like water from a spring, and Judy was the spring.
The song titles begin to tell the story: Cry on My Shoulder, when she got unwelcome news; You’re Gone Today, when she left for a week-end and I was lonesome and listless; Without You, later that same week-end when I really felt her absence; So Soon and I Love You So, as I realized that I was indeed hooked on this woman; Moonlight Love, after a walk with her down the hill from the Argonaut one night as I tried to channel Beethoven; On the Way Down, “we’ll fall in love again” the song’s tag line. Then there was Looking in My Eyes Again; also, Things That Lovers Do. You get the idea. Sentimental stuff, shamelessly romantic anyway.
In those days, all I needed was a sliver of a chance to express my love, and I would take it. Walking down the hill into town? Sure, “on the way down we’ll fall in love again.” A full moon tonight? Sure, Moonlight Love. One night when we did not sleep together? Without You. A song for her for no reason: You Tonight. A song for a friend: Bruce’s Song.
But Judy inspired much more in me. I wrote soulful and tortured songs: Dear Me; songs to recognize the pain of another: Old Man; songs about my spiritual experience: Inner, Inner Ear; songs of living life to the fullest: Carry Me Away; angry songs: I Don’t Appreciate the Misery; songs born out of the restaurant business: Dishwashing Blues.
Some of these songs endured; most remain on a page, typewritten on Kay’s Olivetti manual typewriter. You’ve got to write a lot in order to get something worth keeping. Some written and then abandoned titles: I Only Want to Talk to You, Get Inside the Rainbow, The Other Side. Some songs had some real merit: Bye-Bye Bluebird mourned the death of a bluejay that died almost at my feet, careening into the glass of the French door behind me as I sat at the piano. Sentimental Guy is the precursor to my first Apple iTunes album Sentimental Dreamer; Sherry Cherie recalled a short spell with a cute girl in high school, a relationship that never seemed to get off the ground and gain traction, and where I learned that some things in life just aren’t meant to be, and you never have a chance to figure out why before life grabs and takes hold of you and takes you somewhere else. Shady Lady was another clever, rhyming title, this song about a prostitute, a topic I knew nothing about but shamelessly felt empowered to write about.
A few songs actually endured, to be fully realized years later. Melancholy Lady tells the story of Linda, who just could not find a way into enjoyment; Blue Sky Blues expresses the amazement of a kid from the Great Lakes, who could not believe that there could be so many sunny days in a row as I discovered to be the case in the Golden State; AWOL was the first version of my breakout song, which eventually became California. Indian Roses was composed the day after our visit to Indian Grinding Rocks, and remains almost the same as the day it was written.
In all of this, Judy was my muse. I wrote these songs for myself, but oh so looked forward to playing them for her! She listened attentively and lovingly and critically, which inspired me to carry on and write more. In the dining room, at the grand piano, with a pencil and pad of paper, looking out over the grassy meadows where the neighbor’s horses roamed in the pasture in the daytime, but where at night I could see the home lights in the foreground, highway lights going up the mountain. One song began: “In the evening when the lights of the city look like stars shining from afar, I hear the voice of my heart…”
The Fire
It was August during the California drought of 1977. Judy and I routinely had breakfast on the deck looking out over the valley in the interminable sunshine. She originally from Cincinnati, I from Ann Arbor, Michigan, we both marveled at the number of clear-blue-sky days that continued uninterrupted week after week, something that would never happen in the Midwest.
I even wrote a song, Blue Sky Blues, which remarked on this fact, and wondered how such lack of rain could even exist. In part, the song laments:
I long for rainy days in California
Running water on my window
Awaken me oh chill of winter
I’ve got the Blue Sky Blues in California.
Blue Sky Blues
The Argonaut possessed a kiln, occasionally but rarely used by potters to fire their work, and located a good distance from the building in a fire-brick enclosure. We regularly smoked a pork roast or salmon to serve in the restaurant. In a smoker: an aluminum box about the size of a small cabinet, which sat in an enclosure just outside the backdoor. In the bottom we made an old-fashioned wood fire, and about 18” above that hung a rack on which the fish or meat was placed. This process cooked the food quite well, and our smoked pork was well known for its rich, pleasantly charred flavor. However, the smoker required frequent attention: turning the meat, minding the fire. After many, days of cooking pork at 350 degrees for several hours, the inside of the smoker would become coated with grease. We would occasionally scrape the inside walls of the smoker, but the task was unpleasant and only occasionally got done.
It was I who usually smoked the meat. In doing so, I observed how the grease caked inside the smoker would be bubbling after about an hour of cooking. One day some grease ignited as I opened the door and let in oxygen. That brief incident was sobering. Paul Anderman and I agreed that the smoker should not be near the wood frame, cedar-shake covered building that was the Argonaut. We moved the smoker to the kiln.
Kay didn’t like the idea of the smoker being a hundred feet from the kitchen door. Paul and I never quite understood why she was so adamant about this, as her reasoning made little sense, considering the danger of having the smoker right next to the building. But reluctantly, we moved it back from the kiln and next to the back porch.
I was to be the person smoking the meat one fine sunny day, a day that had some convection currents operating, which I only observe now in retrospect. The pork roast was about fourteen inches long, tied with string, and with a thick coat of fat gracing the top of it. The wood fire had come up to temperature by the time I opened the smoker door using its simple quarter-turn T-handled knob. I placed the roast on the rack inside, closed the door, and noted the temperature right at 325 degrees. Perfect.
Judy joined me in my basement digs, she reading, I playing my guitar, then discovering a cool harmonica riff. We promptly disrobed blaming the heat of the day and had a lovely lovemaking moment, and then lay peacefully, slumbering in the afternoon.
A crash startled us awake. I quickly threw on my khaki trousers and ran barefoot, out and up the steps, hearing another crash from the back door area. I was repelled by the heat I faced as I approached. The smoker was on fire, the flames reaching out and already engulfing the back porch of the building, yes, that building, the Argonaut Inn, which I loved so much, the place where I had found myself, my direction in life, the place that had opened the floodgates of songwriting for me.
When fire burns this hot it sizzles, it growls, it roars a throaty, cautionary, stay-away-as-far-as-you-can alarm that engulfs the moment, and paralyzes action. But paralysis was not an option; action was in order. Ah! A hose! Yes! I opened the valve in the hose-bib, knowing that with a blast of water, I could forestall catastrophe. Our water was pumped from the PGE “ditch” that ran through the property. The pump was run by electricity of course, and our electrical panel was on the very wall that was being consumed now by flames.
A pathetic little dribble of water fell limply on my foot as I pointed the hose hopefully, then sadly, toward the flames.
Not too many times in my life have I felt entirely and impossibly powerless, unable to address the present moment. But this was such a time. I heard the sirens in the distance, closer, closer. I saw Kay and Chrissie emerge from the building, carrying some documents, a strongbox but little else. Chrissie later reported: “We looked at each other and wondered, ‘what do we take, how to decide?’, and we just walked out and left it all behind.”
I walked away from the flames, touched my car in the parking lot which was too hot even to lay a hand on, and got down on my hands and knees and cried. And cried. No greater pain had I ever experienced, not even losing my father, was as piercing and present as was seeing those flames engulf my beloved Argonaut.
In my journal sometime later, I wrote: “I’ll never forget the sounds I heard, nor what I saw on August third.”
Some, but by all means not all, of the Argonaut was engulfed in flames when the California Division of Forestry firetrucks arrived. When they did, I was puzzled and enraged to see that they didn’t even look at the burning building. No. The firefighters quickly dispersed into the surrounding areas with water tanks on their backs, as they did what firefighters must do: Keep the fire contained. They realized what I could not comprehend then, but now understand having put in a season as a US Forest Service firefighter, that once a fire was burning like this, you let it do what it’s going to do, and save the rest of the planet.
But in that moment, I could neither understand nor agree; I could only weep.
A Walk in the Ashes
The remains of the Argonaut Inn, after the fire was finally put out, were gray and quiet: ashes and more ashes; the rock fireplace that stood bare and oddly vertical, the gray concrete foundation, and not even one black charred timber. Something I recognized: the steel harp from the baby grand piano that I had played almost nightly. A cremation of memories.
It took a while for me to make my way into the burned remains. To do so, I needed to descend the steps to the basement where I had lived, which now descended into the ashes. I could map the floor of the restaurant above me in my mind as it had been, as I moved about. Each step I took raised a small dusty cloud of ashes.
Right now, I’m in the foyer, where Deb would greet guests, clarify the menu that they’d just read in Jack’s artist’s hand on the little blackboard at the front door. Chicken Argonaut was on tap that night (anything “Argonaut” meant a sour cream and mushrooms sauce); Smoked Pork, a favorite; and Harvest Torte, the requisite vegetarian entrée. Deb would lead the guests to the living room and offer them a seat near the fireplace. Rarely but only rarely, a guest would be brave and sit at the piano and play, usually something jazzy., or else a standard like “Summertime” (“and the livin’ is easy…”).
Now, I’m moving into the dining room itself, and I can see Table 1, where Mr. and Mrs. Cedarstaff sat every Friday night at 6:00. They were a retired couple who lived on the other side of Pardee Dam, Morton, a straight-shooting guy, retired carpenter; Bettie, his wife who more than once affirmed, “I never drink before 5 o’clock”, was usually rather sloshed by six p.m. Table 5 was often occupied by Felix and Noyse, an aging gay couple who treated parties of six or more at the large table; they brought their own wine, corking fee be damned. One evening when I waited their table, I began collecting dishes as people were finishing, as waiters are trained to do.
“May I take your plate, sir?” I inquired.
Felix raised his chin politely and said evenly, “I’d prefer you wait until my companions have finished their meal.” Ouch.
Over at Table 9, on most Thursdays, Jack’s uncle Harry would dine alone—always alone—and drink lots of water with his meal. He was known for this, to the point where we simply left a pitcher of water on his table. Until one day he had a change of heart, thanks to a revelation from a health book he’d read, which said that it’s best not to drink water during a meal, as doing so keeps the food just “sloshing around in your stomach”.
Standing in the ashes, I can almost hear the two-way door leading from the “DR” (dining room) into the kitchen area as it would swing back and forth on its “mousetrap” hinges, so called because, well, if you ever tried to repair one, you’d know why they have that name. Ouch. First thing I encounter is the dishwashing area, where we waiters bring our dishes after busing a table. At Kay’s insistence, we scrape the leftover food into a #10 coffee can, which will be Fanny and Amos’ (the dogs) dinner after closing. At the Argonaut, each table had its own chinaware, glassware and silverware, each pattern having a name, and its own cubby.
On a busy night, purposeful and orderly chaos prevailed in the kitchen, as Kay and Bill, her sous chef, were busy taking down tickets, filling the orders and announcing, “Order up Table 3”. Waiters used pot holders to carry two plates at a time, only—no fancy French plate-stacking on the forearm. But we did serve salad after entrée, a la française, and then cake, choice of fudge cake or perhaps carrot cake. The slices were rather thin, yet once they’d had a piece, never did a customer ask for more, especially with the fudge cake.
A hallway off the kitchen housed various cases of wine, two refrigerators for the wine and champagne. We learned not to store champagne in the door of the fridge: every bottle we opened one night, overflowed rather violently; we realized that they’d been shaken up through the opening and closing of the fridge.
Kay’s Quarters constituted the remainder of the first floor. Kay had her bedroom at the back, and Deb’s daughter Elinor (Kay’s granddaughter) slept in an alcove. Elinor was in 2nd grade, just learning to spell. Her uncles (Kay’s sons) Pete and Stevie used to call each other “Blunder”, jokingly. Which Elinor parsed in her young mind as “Blender”, that being the only word that she could associate; yet she did wonder why her uncles referred to each other as a kitchen appliance.
Before the fire, my basement quarters were right below Kay’s living room, where her TV was. As I strolled through the ashes, I recalled evenings when I could hear the TV upstairs as some of the staff watched a show. A favorite was One Day at a Time, about a single mom and two daughters in an apartment building in New York City, and Schneider, the glib and over-confident super who visits for a refrigerator check or to share gossip. In these days before remote controls, Kay had gotten Stevie to equip her TV with a “blab-off”, precursor to the MUTE button. a hardware-store-grade lamp switch rigged to the volume control such that when a commercial came on, Kay would simply click the switch at the end of a wire, and OFF… silence, no commercial. The mute button 1.0.
My memory walk through the ashes ends at the door where Kay and Chrissie would, on the day of the Fire, leave the building with only Kay’s strongbox and a few necessary documents, leaving behind the dishes and the silver and the glassware and the antiques and the artwork and the wine and the champagne. And the harp from the piano, now so over-tempered as to be worthless and unworkable, standing as a single significant sign of some thing, some place, beautiful and strong and consequential, that made a difference in the lives of a few young lost souls like me.
Trattoria
Oddly enough, after the fire, things didn’t change much, if you could just ignore a devastated historical landmark in your front yard. We did what needed to be done to keep the Argonaut alive. The four of us became a tight group, a group of four who worked together, and worked well. Kay, the leader of course, the boss, I suppose, a very special kind of boss. We loved her, admired her, accepted her. Chrissie was sweet and maternal; a warm soul. Dean, her husband, was a strong presence, not always easy to be around. And me.
Otherwise, the Argonaut Inn compound remained the same. Chris and Dean were still living in the Barn, Kay got the Cabin, Judy and I moved into one of the rooms in the Cottage. The college students had to go home, as there was nothing there for them, and we the core staff–Kay, Chris & Dean, and I—would stay and plan the next step. Paul & Terry would move north to Kay’s other creative business venture: The Farm in Mendocino, where tourist customers would pay to visit and work on an actual working farm, milking cows, slopping pigs and the like, all supervised by Kay’s son Steve, and now Paul & Terry. Judy had already set her sights on San Francisco, and in a painful but necessary break-up, left the Argonaut. Our romance was mostly over, though much love endured. Kay chose not to go to the Farm, and decided instead to get some closure on her fallen phoenix, which as one reporter would put it, would rise from the ashes. She would stay, to initiate an Argonaut rebirth.
Frank Henriques was the Episcopal minister in Sutter Creek, CA, a nearby gold rush town down Highway 49. He was a friend of Kay’s, a wine expert and connoisseur, had even authored the Signet Encyclopedia of Wine. As a pastor, he had the perfect career for his tastes, as Christianity and wine fit together hand-in-glove, in both liturgy and tradition—not to mention The Last Supper. Like Kay, he had had a restaurant dream, and had opened a little shop in downtown Sutter Creek called Pane e Vino, where he could serve elegant breads and fancy wines in his friendly shop, adding a refined Christian vibe to the arcade on Main Street. Tourists could make their way from an antique store to a native American jewelry store, to the iconic Knight’s Foundry, where they could witness how a traditional foundry operated, see molten steel poured into molds to make kettles or fence plates. At some point, Frank reasoned, these tourists would want to stop and visit his wine and cheese shop. Many did, but not enough for the shop to thrive.
In a way, the timing was perfect: a silver lining lay in the cloud of the Argonaut fire for Frank, who had to watch his short-lived Pane e Vino dream-become-reality slip away. Enter Kay, who offered, and Frank accepted, that she would take over the shop, for an Argonaut Inn reprise. She would create an Italian style trattoria, and would name it The Argonaut Inn Annex. Kay’s sons Howard and Steve and Pete descended upon us to help with the effort, Pete just in from a fruitarian stint in Hawaii where he ate only mangos and papayas for a year; he slept in a one-point hammock hanging up in a tree near the burn site; Howard, the conventional one, got a motel room; and Steve, well, you never much saw Steve, always out on a run or a bike ride, or swimming laps. Or doing something really ambitious or useful. Like building something.
Like the twenty-foot-long redwood tables that Kay designed for her trattoria: very simple: 2 X 6 redwood boards sitting on sawhorses, one such assembly on each side of the long narrow storefront. Guests would eat family-style, sharing the table with other groups in one long community dining experience. Ever creative, Kay managed to produce Argonaut Inn-level dinners with no stove: she made do with crock pots and a microwave.
The trattoria was a moderate success, though people of course asked what would become of the “real” Argonaut Inn. Increasingly, it became obvious that Kay would eventually move to the Farm in Mendocino. However, we reached a kind of stasis for that winter. In the evenings, we lit a fire in the wood stove in the Cottage to take away the chill, and Kay and Chris and Dean and I played endless rubbers of bridge before retiring to bed. During the days, we would troop down to Sutter Creek, prep for the evening meal, then often go to the river, the luscious Mokulumne River, just up Highway 88, lie on the huge boulders and soak up that California sun, ease into the snow melt water for a refresher, then return to Sutter Creek to serve dinner.
Martha
Through all this, we got to be good friends with Frank and Alicia Henriques, who opened their house to us repeatedly. They liked to entertain, and they invited us to many of their get-togethers. One Christmas party had Frank delivering an anti-racism spoof on White Christmas called White Neighborhood: “… and may all your neighborhoods be… White.”
And this was a close neighborhood, where folks knew one another, and looked out for each other. One day, Alicia announced that their daughter Martha, a divorced twenty-something, living in Texas, would be visiting her mom and dad, who were about to leave for a Christian “Marriage Encounters” weekend; Martha would be house sitting.
“Let’s have a party!”, Alicia exclaimed, in perfect keeping with the spirit of our ongoing friendship. Out came the wine from Frank’s cellar, and the food, and the conversation, as we welcomed Martha to our clan. She fit in nicely, was literate and clever and soulful at times, but also fun-loving and cute.
The next day, Frank and Alicia left for their workshop, a liberal Christian affair, and Martha was to housesit for her parents. Chris and Dean and I invited Martha to go to the river with us the following day. The water was cool and refreshing, the rocks were warm and comforting, and having the next day off of work, we all looked forward to a free evening. We returned to the house, raided Frank’s wine cellar for a bottle of Cabernet, then a sweet sherry, listened to Kate Wolf and Harry Belafonte. At some point, Chris and Dean left.
And I ended up spending the night with the preacher’s daughter. Martha and I had a lovely day and evening together full of laughter and singing, poetry and wine. Martha shared with me a favorite poem of hers, titled Remember Darling, a serious and solemn love poem, which we quoted throughout the evening, at times pointedly, sometimes playfully.
After an evening of romance and lovemaking, we realized that this time we’d had together would be a brief but memorable affair. Martha’s parents, the quintessential church couple returning from a Christian event, would be home the next day. In this traditional suburban neighborhood, it was important for the sake of appearances that by morning I be somewhere else. The last thing Martha said to me as we fell asleep, alluding to the poem, “Remember, Darling, be gone by dawn.” Thus, the title of this song.
Song, videos: https://kailandauer.com/portfolio/remember-darling/
Mrs. Potter’s Piano
After the fire, I had exactly one pair of pants to my name, as I had dashed out of the basement when we heard the crash, only donning a pair of khaki trousers. Somebody suggested I go to The Red Cross outlet in town, where I could get a donation of some clothes. The lady who worked there somehow didn’t realize who I was, looked at me suspiciously when I identified myself. Then another lady emerged from the back room, did realize who I was, and the two of them fell all over each other apologizing and wanting to make amends, and find me some clothes.
Some weeks after the Fire, a testimonial dinner was organized, where people could express their condolences for what was lost, but more importantly, express gratitude for having had the Argonaut Inn in their life. Many stories about the restaurant along with anecdotes from Kay’s friends about friendship, life, and death.
I spoke briefly.
“I will miss the grand piano” that I played almost nightly, in the dining room, next to the velvet sofa, in front of the fireplace. I had the great fortune to spend many hours in that magical room, I said, “And when the spirit moved me—which it did often—I would find myself having written a brand-new song.”
At the end of the event, a small, petite elderly lady approached, introduced herself as Helen Potter. She had grey hair, stood tall in spite of her small size, had the mildly severe manner that proper grandmothers would have, much like my own grandmother. A no-nonsense, forthright person, comfortable in her own skin.
“I have a piano in my living room,” she said, “that you would be welcome to play. I live on Main Street in Sutter Creek, right at the bottom of the hill.” She smiled, as though to reassure me. “My house is quite large, and I spend most of my time in the back, so it would be no bother if you were to come and play the piano. I never lock the front door, so you could come in and play almost anytime you like.”
“Thank you,” I replied, smiling, almost in disbelief at such open generosity. I took a deep breath of gratitude; I was blessed one more time!
And very soon, I took Mrs. Potter up on her offer. Many times, I was able to continue in the afternoon at Helen Potter’s what I used to do around midnight at the Argonaut. Almost without exception my visits were solo and solemn; true to her word, Mrs. Potter left me alone with my music and my song.
Franny
One day, on one visit to Mrs. Potter’s piano, when I expected to be alone as usual, after I’d been playing for a while, a young woman about my age appeared out of the kitchen. Mrs. Potter’s granddaughter Frances was her name. She was petite like her grandmother, with an open smile, quizzical at finally seeing that she’d only been told about.
“Uh… hello.” I said, a bit uncomfortable. “Maybe you know about this? I’m the guy who Helen lets play her piano because I lost everything that I owned in the Argonaut fire, so when Mrs. Potter found out that I no longer have a piano to play, she offered me this,” I said, gesturing the beautiful instrument that was plainly there in front of us.
“Yeah, my grandma told me. I’m Frances.
Franny, as I came to call her, visited her grandma in Sutter Creek occasionally. She lived in Alameda, was going to college in “SLO-town”, San Luis Obispo, home of Cal Poly, where she was studying ornamental horticulture, something I knew nothing about, hadn’t even heard those two words put together before that moment. But she struck a chord for me in that moment, that took me away from the fire and the ashes and the sorrow and the pain of a break-up with Judy, and opened up a new, friendly, non-threatening chapter for me, something that could clear my mind, erase the recent past and reset my thinking.
Mrs. Potter filled me in on the details pertaining to Franny. She had had two children, and one was “profoundly deaf,” I recall her saying. Helen Potter made sure that things would be done right. She got her deaf child all the help and assistance possible, so that they could lead a fairly normal life.
I visited Franny in Alameda, at her parents’ classic San Francisco-style Victorian house and had the privilege of seeing her interact with her father. They used ASL primarily, hands motioning and fingers patterning. When she spoke with her father, a most intense eye contact prevailed. And Franny would sign her message and mouth-e the words for her dad to lip read along with. I learned that Franny’s parents, both deaf, had hearing children, but the oldest child had to be taught to speak, which Helen organized. Then, the other children (Franny one of them) learned from the eldest, and thus a deaf family became a hearing family, with an ASL bridge.
Franny and I saw each other occasionally when she visited her grandma in Sutter Creek, but that happened infrequently. One night, I knew she was at her grandmother’s, we had finished serving dinner at the Trattoria, it was about eleven o’clock at night. Mrs. Potter’s room was at the back of the house, but Franny stayed in the front room, second floor. Just as legend has it, I picked up some small pebbles from the driveway and tossed them against the window of Franny’s room. “Click…. Click…” I did not know if she heard the clicks, but couldn’t imagine her not. I waited on the front porch. Soon enough, having come down the back steps, Franny appeared smiling, a wide and open smile, her perfect teeth showing.
“Where do you want to go?” she inquired. I had not thought that far. I just wanted to see her. So we went to the place that I knew best. Franny and I spent one memorable night together at the Argonaut site. We walked to the old mine, saw the tailing ponds and the enormous mountains for tailings that still existed, after all the decades since the mine actually worked. We had one sweet night of conversation where, before sleeping together, she told me stories about growing up in the deaf community but hearing all.
She and her siblings had some moments where they learned that deaf parents were a reality. One time, she related, her dad was working on a mechanism that would make the fishbowl self-clean, and in the process make things easier around the house. He proudly demonstrated it to Franny and two of her siblings. It worked! It worked very well, at least for a deaf person, but the device made so much noise that the kids could hardly wait for him to turn it off. But, Franny said, “He was smiling so proudly, so happy with what he’d done, that we couldn’t bear to ruin his moment.”
Franny was a gift to me from the Universe, which I accepted for the brief time that I had with her. And the Argonaut Inn itself was a blessing offered me by the serendipity of life, initiated by a confluence of me visiting Kalamazoo College to visit a friend, and happening to be in someone’s dorm room where a few people just happened to be hanging out, and one of those people was a girl from my hometown with whom I knew well at one time but with whom I had lost almost all contact, but I just happened to mention that I was looking to drop out of society, and she understood and even had a suggestion of a particular place where I might go to do just that.
The Argonaut Inn allowed me to realize that dream, gave me the freedom to do exactly what I wanted to do at that life moment, which included falling in love and becoming a songwriter.
