The Mendocino Series

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Captain Fathom's Fables

In Captain Fathom's Fables everybody wins. Every fable ends up with everybody winning. And it's sort of like a modern-day spiritual non-violent Robin Hood character, who goes around with his "fearless friends of Captain Fathom" doing good, doing the Lord's work.

Hallelujah! And they are constantly battling with adversaries, Students for a Stalinist Society, the insane, authoritarian communistfascists. And the heat of various hues. And the capitalist class and other people of ill will. Captain Fathom and his fearless friends are champions, you know, of love, peace, healthy orgasms, ice cream and apple pie, brandy and coffee -- all of the good things. And so they go about these various places that Captain Fathom has lived, doing good. Doing the Lord's will. They're people much like you and me.

James Dean
in Mendocino

In 1975 I was given a scrapbook with photographs taken when Frenchmen's Creek, Johnny Belinda, and East of Eden were made on the Mendocino Coast, a collection now at Mendocino Historical Research (the Kelly House) in Mendocino. The 'snapshots' were taken by Laing Chambers, who taught school in Mendocino for 40 years.

In 1980 Addie Reis of Fort Bragg gave me the 11 minute, 8mm movie she had made of the making of East of Eden (she also filmed productions of Johnny Belinda and The Russians are Coming!).

Through the years I collected and was loaned other materials -- photographs, newspapers, magazine articles, personal memories of local residents -- and now, 40 years after Elia Kazan brought his troupe to the Mendocino Coast, these elements are combined into a book about my favorite movie and my favorite town.

Voices and Dreams

The native population of California before contact with the white flood of missionaries, miners, loggers, settlers and opportunists was over three hundred thousand. By 1890 it was sixteen thousand -- a ninety-five percent loss.

Pre-contact California encompassed several major cultural areas comprised of hundreds of villages loosely associated in smaller cultural areas. California was a polyglot of separate languages, language families, and dialects. The concentration of languages and cultures in the California geographic area was one of the most dense ever encountered historically, anywhere. Although there was a great deal of social exchange and economic trade and occasional combat between groups, there were no great politically organized multitribal nations in California.

We are honored that the men and women presented here were gracious in their sharing of their lives with us. We are privileged to share them further with you the reader.

These oral histories are stories of a living culture, memories of a shattered and scattered community, voices of the indigenous dwellers of the land that is now Mendocino County, dreams of a spirit that endures.