I like beer

The Ink House

Pizzeria Tre Vigne

Grapevine at Charles Krug Winery

When you visit wine country, Napa Valley specifically, I think you are supposed to come away from there with memories of the taste of the wines you enjoyed and bottles of wine that you bought. You are supposed to rhapsodize about the oakiness or the lack of, or the bright tastes or the petulant aroma, or the musky flavors, aren't you? I guess we didn't do it right because our memories are going to be of three fellows we met or observed, not that much about the wine.

The first fellow was our host at the Ink House bed and breakfast that we chose over the internet. We chose the place because it was moderately priced and it had an interesting history and Trip Advisor commenters liked it. Our host wasn't there the first two nights--he was off installing his oldest daughter in her dorm for her first year of college. When he returned he was present during the "wine reception" that took place every late afternoon. While we munched on interesting cheeses, crackers and fruit and sipped or guzzled white and red wine, he answered our questions. And my question was, "Will you tell us the story of when Elvis Presley stayed in this house." His Elvis Slept Here story was long, detailed and scrumptious, better than the wine we'd been drinking. He had details nobody else would have had and you could tell he relished telling the story and had done research to make it better. He hadn't been present in 1961 when El and his co-stars Tuesday Weld and Hope Lang stayed in the house during the filming of Wild In The Country, but he might as well have been, he knew so much about it. He told us how the actors had started out staying in the town of Napa but that it had caused such a ruckus that they moved out to the more remote house in St. Helena in order to be able to control the crowds. The production company proclaimed that Elvis would sign autographs for 2 hours each afternoon, on the front porch of the house, and the girls lines up for miles hours before the signing began. He told us lots more, too much to relate here and he enjoyed every minute of his story. He also gave us great tips to get around the wine tasting fees that every winery but one assessed and he gave us glimpses into the history of the area. I'm sure he could have talked for hours, but we had dinners to go to and he had computer work to do.

Our second character sighting was at dinner at the Pizzeria Tre Vigne. While Michael and I sat on the patio, slurped up spaghetti marinara and heirloom tomato salad and we dunked french bread into olive oil with a puddle of balsamic vinegar in the bottom of it, we observed what we came to call The Affluent Family, sitting near us. There were two families, each with two children. The children ranged in age from about 3 years old to 6 years old. Without exception the children were out of control, but perhaps their parents saw them as free spirits. They were crawling under the table (not an unusual sight--I've seen this before), they were running back and forth among the tables and the 6 year old little girl was eating salt out of the salt shakers from empty tables. It make me very leery of using our salt, let me tell you. One of their parents would scowl occasionally and ask the children to stop doing whatever they were presently doing, but then turn away and resume their adult conversations while the children continued to do whatever they were presently doing. At one point, I heard one of the mothers say to one of the little boys, "If you do that again, it's over." Exactly what would be over we never found out because the little boy continued to do what he was doing and the threat was never executed. The fellow I will remember in connection to these wild children was a man who reminded me of Ted Danson, tall, lithe, white haired, nice hair cut, but young looking, white golf shirt with turned up collar, khaki shorts, loafers with no socks, expensive watch--he had the air of someone with quite a bit of money. They were regulars, the servers knew them and probably were very used to seeing the unruly children running about. I hope they were good tippers. After we got in our car and were leaving, we saw one of the little boys far away from the patio of the restaurant and we considered picking him up and depositing him down the street a couple of blocks to see if his parents noticed, but we decided against it.

Last, but certainly not least in our memories of Wine Country, will be The Wine Snob. I'm so glad we had one, because our stories of this trip wouldn't be nearly as good without him. He was staying at the Ink House, too. He made it very clear early on that he knew his wines. He would start a sentence with, "Do you like Pinots?" and then launch into directions as to where to find the best ones. He was a young fellow, younger than most wine snobs I've met, probably in his mid-forties. He had a very nice, regular wife who worked for the state in their native Michigan. I think it was his Detroit accent that made the snobby comments even better, because when he said things like Cabernet or Pinot it was said with that thing that Detroitians do to their vowels that is so distinctive and so NOT snobby sounding. At breakfast one morning we were all talking about where we'd been the day before, the photo gallery at Mumm's, looking at the art at Peju, the lunch at V. Sattui's picnic area--and he just had to say, "I'm here for the wines." As it turned out, he certainly was serious--he had been to the Ink House five times and each time he came he bought 5 or 6 cases of wine and had them shipped home. My favorite remark of his, the one that nearly put me under the breakfast table was, "And then we had to relax our palates...". I love accents and I would have loved to talk to him some more so that I could have really absorbed his Detroit accent and gotten some more snobby quotes from him. I am afraid I egged him on a little, just to hear more.

In addition to the characters we discovered, we also discovered that we are not really wine connoisseurs . We don't have the sophisticated palates required to know the subtle differences between one Pinot or Merlot and another. They either taste good or they don't. There was one wine that instantly made my nose itch--I knew I'd not want to drink that one again! We didn't taste that many, partly due to the fees charged at each winery for tastings, but also because we weren't that interested. Twice we had beer with our dinners rather than wine. We bought only one bottle, at a winery that offered free tasting. I find that I have a refined beer sensibility instead. I know the differences between a Hefaweisen and a Porter, and regular ale or a pale ale. I don't yet know much about "hoppiness" but I am dying to learn. Too bad we don't have more local breweries around, so that there could be "brewiery tours" like the wine tours. I'd be signing up.

We'll have good memories of Napa Valley but they won't be about the wine. I have to go relax my palate now.

Viewpoint

Cheryl DeGroot, Corky Sunkel, Linda Greaves and Janet Dore'

Janet Dore', Terry Scatena and Ralph Erickson

Terry Scatena, Dewene Buffett, Sandy Harkins with Wes Tonkins and his wife in the background

Today I am happy that I keep journals and that I have been writing in them for forty years. Yesterday I was reading in journals from 2000 to 2003 trying to find a mention of a medical test that I knew I'd had done in that timeframe. I did finally find some evidence that I needed for my current doctor, but in looking I also found entries about what my life was like 9 years ago. That's not very far back when you think about how old I am now--I can remember as far back as 60 years, so nine in virtually nothing, a blink in time.

I was reading about myself, about my husband, about my kids, about my brothers and my mother and my Dad, about my oldest friend. Funny thing is, if someone asked me today what I was thinking and feeling in the year 2000 I'd remember it differently than how it really was. I would have forgotten that my kids were emailing me lots more often then, I'd have no memory of a rift between me and my friend that mimics a problem we repeated recently. I would not have remembered what my brother had said about our Mom and his need for her gratitude, which is similar to some feelings I am having now. I wouldn't remember that my Mother's memory was shifty and that my present observation of her way of thinking is really not new at all. I did not forget the emails that my brother and I exchanged in the two years before he died. I had saved them and printed them all, including the ones in which we misread each other, got angry and then made up, aplogizing and professing our love for each other. I haven't forgotten that because it was so precious to me. It was the first time we'd ever tried to understand each other.

I spent hours reading the entries. It was as though someone else had written them and of course, if I admit that I am constantly changing, then it's understandable that I am less familiar with that Christine than with the one I'm living in right now. I have been reading a book called Crones Don't Whine by Jean Shinoda Bolen. She writes: "The thought that we are spiritual beings on a human path, rather than human beings who may or may not be on a spiritual path, has intrigued me since it first entered my mind". That thought intrigues me, too. That our spirits inhabit a body on a human path, something like Stephanie Meyers character in her book The Host, is a mind warping idea. This spiritual creature inside of this human body, changes so much that nine years later I barely recognize it. It is as though the body has stayed relatively the same, but the spirit has shifted. It has not necessarily shifted in a good or bad way, it has not necessarily learned to be better or turned toward a more negative way, it has changed. And in some ways it has not changed at all. The rift with the old friend has been repeated. The thoughts of my brother have become mine. My relationship with my husband has been affected by the events that have occurred and my reaction to them.

Isn't it that way with our perceptions of our school mates? We can see that their bodies have changed and we think we can remember what they were like and what our awareness of them was 47 years ago. But do we really remember with any accuracy? Don't we have to consider what time has done to our memories? Don't we have to imagine what the passage of those years and all of their experiences has done to the spirits inside of them? If we think about what time has done to ourselves, don't we have to consider the same for them?

In another book I am reading, (Astrid and Veronika, by Linda Olsson), Astrid, a Swedish woman of 80, waits for her despised husband of 60 years to die--when he finally does she realizes that he was not her misfortune, that her demons had begun long before he came into her life. Could it be that some of the things that bedeviled us in high school and that we may have attached to certain people, were anxieties that came from elsewhere, before we even met these people?

I have been told by some of my classmates that reunions are terrifying for them, that their high school years are a time they would like to forget. I was lucky to have had a good time in school, with good friends and, mostly, positive experiences. But I know there are others who were not as fortunate. I also know that some of my classmates have conquered their fears and come to the lunches we have been having. In some cases they have found that they have held misconceptions about old acquaintances and have not considered the spirits inside the bodies that they recognize. And they begin to see that what they know as their own changing has also been experienced by their classmate. Of course this is the case. How could anyone not change? But sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we cast people we once knew in a frozen state inside our memory. Like a fossil they are forever preserved in memory even though in reality they are different people.

Like the evolution of the Christine Who Writes in her Journals, consider your own and everyone else's evolutions. Have you changed? Of course. Have they changed? Of course. If you have not come to a lunch yet, please think about it. We want to see the changes to the spirit inside you.