The 61st annual Western Weekend began this Saturday morning with a 4-H Fair at the Dance Palace.

Horses and cows were on display at the Giacomini Ranch field across Sixth Street. Here Sawyer Johnson of Inverness rides an enormous horse named Major, which is being led by Sawyer’s father Chip Johnson. The 18-hand Belgian (six feet high at the withers, i.e. shoulders) was purchased from Walt Disney Studios. Photo by Linda Petersen, West Marin Citizen

Western Weekend Queen Ashley Arndt shows off a Dorset sheep named Scarlet. The woolly sheep weighs about 200 pounds, she said.

Small animal judging: Judge Michele McClure examines a Mini-Rex. Showing her rabbit named Roo is Nicole Casartelli of Nicasio, a member of Tri-Valley 4-H Club.

This two-day old Holstein from the Nunes Ranch on Point Reyes was a hit of the fair. Holding the calf, which has been named Buster, is Nathan Hemelt, who lives on the ranch.

Fairgoers were treated to a demonstration of horse vaulting, which amounts to gymnastics on horseback. A lunger holding a lunge line keeps the horse moving in a circle while the rider performs. Photo by Linda Petersen, West Marin Citizen

Called voltage in some parts of Europe, horse vaulting has traditionally been a popular sport in France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. More recently, horse vaulting has been gaining fans in the US, Brazil, and Australia.

During the 1970s, West Marin had one of the best vaulting teams anywhere. The team coached by Anne Dick of Point Reyes Station won the nationwide C Championship one year, moved up a division and won the B Championship the next year and ultimately won the A Championship. In 1979, the all-girl team won the International B Championship.

A Western Weekend barn dance Saturday evening drew a good-sized crowd to Toby’s Feed Barn. Musicians included Ingrid Noyes, Tawnya Kovach, Paul Shelasky, and Sue Walters. The caller was Erik Hoffman.

The queen’s coronation. During a break in the barn dance, last year’s Western Weekend Queen Mindy Borello adjusts the queen’s sash on 1010 Western Weekend Queen Ashley Arndt before presenting her with a trophy and crown. The contestant who sells the most Western Weekend raffle tickets is named queen.

Ashley, 16, who describes herself as “a fourth-generation rancher,” lives in the Point Reyes National Seashore on a ranch started in 1939 by her grandfather. Her parents are Rob and Joyce Arndt, and she has two sisters, Jessie, 14, and Katie, 13.

First Princess Taley Romo (left) receives a trophy, sash, and crown for having sold the second most tickets.

Second Princess Yazmin Rico (left) receives her ribbon, trophy, and crown for having sold the third most tickets. The queen and her court will all ride in this Sunday’s parade.

Cut thistles in May,/ They’ll grow in a day;/ Cut them in June,/ That is too soon; Cut them in July,/ Then they will die. Mother Goose rhyme

Italian thistles in my field.

Mother Goose rhymes were, of course, originally penned 300 years ago in the more-northern latitudes of England and France, where the growing season starts later. Thistles in West Marin should probably be cut a month or two earlier. I know because I have spent much of the last week cutting thistles, as well as pulling and digging them up.

It has been an unpleasant task, and despite my wearing work gloves, my hands are now full of prickles. Yet I did manage to fill a green-waste container to overflowing, and I’ve already piled up more thistles for the next garbage pickup in two weeks.

There has to be an easier way to do this, I thought, so I did what everyone with an existential question does this days: I looked for the answer online. As it turns out, the Marin County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office has a helpful website, which I used to identify the type of thistle I was fighting: Italian thistles.

“Italian thistle, from the Mediterranean, was accidentally introduced to California in the 1930s,” the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office notes. “The flower heads are small, pink, with five to twenty heads per cluster.”

Having identified these prickly invaders, my next question was how to easily get rid of them. Looking around, I found a Livestock for Landscapes website that said, “Cows eat distaff and Italian thistle.” The site included a link to a YouTube video featuring Chileno Valley ranchers Mike and Sally Gale.

The ranchers had been interviewed four years ago just as they began experimenting with cattle to control distaff thistles. The tall, woody thistle is rapidly spreading throughout Chileno Valley, ruining pastures.

A distaff thistle. (Marin County Agricultural Commissioner’s photo)

“Distaff originated in the Mediterranean and is an aggressive rangeland pest, recognized by its spiny yellow flower heads,” the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office reports. “Their large, sharp spines can injure the eyes and mouths of livestock that are forced to graze within dense populations. Distaff causes lameness in animals whose hooves have been penetrated by its spines.”

Mike and Sally being old friends, I called them to find out how their experiment with using cattle to eliminate distaff thistles had gone. Not well, Mike told me. He and Sally had tried the Livestock for Landscape’s technique that began with cattle in a pen. The ranchers put cut thistles in a tub and poured molasses on them to get their livestock interested.

That part of the experiment worked, but when the cattle were put out to graze, they ignored thistles in their pasture, he said. So what was the solution? Mike said the Marin County Fire Department for the past two years has conducted controlled burns in the pasture, and that has greatly reduced the amount of distaff thistles.

My thistles, however, are Italian, and Mike said cattle will eat Italian thistles and even seek them out. That would seem to make my thistle problem easy to eliminate. All I would need to do is acquire a few cattle, as well as install a few fences and gates.

As for cutting thistles, Mike agreed with Mother Goose. If I cut them too early in the spring, they’ll grow back, but if I wait until they’re full grown, they won’t. The trick, I gather, is timing. Once thistles flower, they produce seeds that the winds disperse, even if the thistles have been cut down, so one needs to act fast if his thistles are starting to bloom. Which is why I’ve been cutting thistles in recent days and disposing of them in my green-waste container.

However, as I told Mike, even when I’m wearing work gloves, the thistle spikes manage to work their way through the back of the gloves and into my hands. The same thing had happened to Mike. The solution, he said, are gloves totally covered with tough leather: “They’re called welders’ gloves.”

“I think I have a pair,” I told him. “They’re from a World War II naval shipyard.” As it happens, my parents after the war had bought two pairs to use in gardening from an Army-Navy surplus store. And sure enough, when I looked in a basement cabinet, I found an old welder’s glove, but only one for the right hand.

After more digging around in the cabinet, however, I found a second glove. Unfortunately, when I went to put it on, it too was for the right hand. There was a bit of cursing, but then I resumed my search and eventually found a left-handed glove in a tangle of twine. More important, when I used these almost-70-year-old gloves in my next assault on thistles, I got through it unscathed.

So what’s the moral? It takes gear tough enough to defeat Prime Minister Hideki Tojo’s navy if one is to escape being wounded when attacking West Marin’s thistles.

A loaded milk truck belonging to Straus Family Creamery of Marshall overturned along Highway 1 just north of Nicks Cove today. The Highway Patrol reported the accident happened at 8:50 a.m.

The 270-degree rollover occurred when the long tanker-truck, which was southbound, encountered a northbound vehicle on a tight curve, members of the county fire department and Straus family told me. The truck came to a stop with a pair of its dual rear wheels off the pavement, the firefighter said.

The truck was still upright when the driver got out, but it then rolled over, the firefighter added. No one was hurt in the accident.

The property on which the truck landed is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and a small amount of milk spilled out of the tanker’s hatch.

In a serendipitous irony, however, the spilled milk didn’t go very far, let alone down to Tomales Bay a short distance below the curve.

Straus Creamery uses rice hulls for bedding in the cows’ stalls, and in 2003, a truck heading to the dairy ranch ran off the same curve and spilled a load of hulls. The decision at the time was to leave the hulls on the ground since they weren’t doing any harm.

When milk began leaking from the overturned tanker-truck today, it was immediately absorbed by the old rice hulls. Here a cleanup worker shovels more hulls under the leak.

Former Point Reyes Light reporter Ivan Gale married Annalene MacLew Sept. 5 in Johannasburg, South Africa, and he is now briefly back in West Marin introducing her to friends and relatives.

Family gathering (back row from left): Ivan Gale, Annalene Gale née MacLew, Mike Gale, Sally Gale, Amy Culver née Gale holding daughter Izzy, Rohan Gordon, Katie Gordon née Gale. Front row: Brent Culver and daughter Sarah Culver.

After he left my newsroom in 2004, Ivan earned two master’s degrees at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. When he finished his second year at Columbia, Ivan was hired by The Gulf News, an English-language newspaper in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

A year ago, Ivan was hired away by a new daily newspaper, The National, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

As it happens, Annalene works for Etihad Airways, which is based in Abu Dhabi.

The Gale ranch house in Chileno Valley.

Mike and Sally talk with Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey (right) during a party Saturday for Ivan and Annalene.

Ivan is the son of Chileno Valley ranchers Mike and Sally Gale, and on Saturday a throng of ranchers, artists, local officials, journalists, relatives, and other friends showed up at Gale Ranch to wish the newlyweds well.

Of course, not everything at Gale Ranch has been warm and cozy of late. Today Mike told me it was so cold in Chileno Valley during the night that the cattle had frost on them this morning.

By noon, however, the day was sunny and getting warmer. At least Annalene can now understand the old West Marin expression, “If you don’t like the weather here, just stick around a few minutes, and it’ll be different.”

As for the rest of you, happy holidays and try to stay warm.

“What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And you were there.” That was Walter Cronkite’s weekly signoff in the 1950s when he hosted TV docu-dramas, You Are There, which reenacted historic events.

Here in no particular order are some of the events that altered and illuminated the past week or so in West Marin. And now, thanks to the wonders of photography and the Internet, you were there.

The little possum which almost every night drops by for a visit is often a bit intimidated by the larger raccoons which also show up. Last Wednesday the possum was particularly chagrined when a raccoon walked overhead on the railing of my deck en route to the birdbath.

A joyful Linda Petersen, the advertising manager of The West Marin Citizen, came home to Point Reyes Station Saturday after two and a half months of hospitalization.

Linda suffered 11 broken ribs, two broken vertebrae, two broken ankles, a broken leg, a broken kneecap, a broken arm, and a punctured lung when she fell asleep at the wheel June 13 and hit a utility pole in Inverness.

Linda’s left leg is still in a cast, and she continues to need a wheelchair to get around. However, she no longer wears casts on her right leg and left arm or the steel-and-carbon halo that had immobilized her head and neck for seven weeks.

Today she spent a few minutes in The Citizen office and expects to now spend a few hours at her desk most weekdays. Friends and West Marin Senior Services are providing her with meals until she can cook again.

Redwood Empire Disposal, which is franchised to pick up garbage throughout West Marin, this week held its “summer community cleanup.” It was a chance for us customers to stack up to 14 bags, boxes, or cans of bulky waste at curbside to be carted off.

On Campolindo Way, our friendly garbageman Victor showed up today to haul away the neighborhood’s junk. I had just spent two days cleaning out the basement in preparation for his arrival. Every time the garbage company holds these infrequent events, I scramble to collect half-forgotten stuff I’m finally ready to get rid of.

Here Victor uses neighbors Skip and Renée Shannon’s recycling bin to hoist their junk into the garbage truck.

Like many West Marin residents, I spend several days each summer trimming trees and brush to make my property safer from wildfires, and here too my personal schedule is regulated by Redwood Empire Disposal’s schedule. The garbage company picks up yard waste only every other week. That invariably leads to a lot of limb lopping just before each pickup.

Mornings have been foggy most days recently in West Marin with the fog (seen here over Inverness Ridge and along Papermill Creek) typically burning off before noon.

The view from my deck reminded me of the wildfires that have been burning elsewhere in California. But it was merely the sun setting behind a fog bank. Gracias a Dios por eso.

Cookbook author Steven Raichlen a while back set out to determine who invented West Marin’s practice of barbecuing oysters. In BBQ USA: 425 Fiery Recipes From All Across America (Workman Publishing Company, 2003), Raichlen writes, “As I talked to folks in these parts, one name kept coming up: Anastacio Gonzalez.”

Anastacio, who lives in Point Reyes Station, told Raichlen that “the barbecued oyster was born after a shark-and-stingray fishing tournament in 1972.”

Anastacio Gonzalez, who in June retired as head of technical maintenance at West Marin School, on Tuesday spooned his “famous oyster sauce” into shucked oysters grilling on his barbecue.

I myself moved to Point Reyes Station in 1975, and I’ve watched Anastacio’s invention spread around the Tomales Bay area. Now it’s about to go statewide. Jars of Anastacio’s Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce have just gone on sale in Marshall, Point Reyes Station, and Inverness Park. Within the next few weeks, the sauce will be sold at the meat counters of 31 supermarkets stretching from Los Angeles to San Diego. Here’s the story.

The 2000 census found that more than a tenth of West Marin’s population is Latino. Many — but not all — are immigrants or their children from three neighboring small cities not far from Guadalajara: Jalostotitlán, San Miguel el Alto, and Valle de Guadalupe. Anastacio’s family is from Valle de Guadalupe, and before he arrived in West Marin, his brother Pedro had come up from Mexico and taken a job on Charles Garzoli’s ranch near Tomales. Anastacio visited Pedro in 1968 and “liked the area,” he told me Tuesday. So in January 1969 he emigrated to West Marin and went to work as a milker on Domingo Grossi’s ranch.

He later moved to Joe Mendoza Sr.’s ranch on Point Reyes. “By then I was legal [had been officially granted US residency], so I bought a car and drove to Mexico for three months.” Meanwhile, Pedro had moved to Anaheim, Orange County, where he was working for a company that made electrical wire. At Pedro’s urging, Anastacio reluctantly went to work for the company and stayed two years. “I started as a coiler and worked my way up to extruder operator. The day they gave me a raise [of only 10 cents per hour] I quit.”

In 1972, he came back to West Marin and began working for Point Reyes Station rancher Elmer Martinelli, who also owned the West Marin Sanitary Landfill. “I worked at the ranch parttime and at the dump parttime pushing garbage [with a bulldozer].”

Always amicable, as well as hardworking, Anastacio was invited to join the Tomales Bay Sportsmen’s Association, which held a two-day “Shark and Ray Derby” every year. “At the end of the second day, Sunday, we always went back to Nicks Cove,” he recalled. Then-owner Al Gibson provided association members with a deck where they could party and barbecue their catch.

In 1972, Anastacio was grilling shark and stingray fillets when Leroy Martinelli, Elmer’s son, showed up with 50 oysters and told him, “See what you can do with these.” With Al’s permission, Anastacio went into the restaurant’s kitchen to see what ingredients he could find. “I put together the sauce my mother used to use for shrimp,” he told me. “I customized it a little bit, and it turns into this [his now-famous sauce].” Part of the customizing would surprise many people. “In my town, the guy who used to make the best carnitas [shredded pork] used Coca Cola,” Anastacio noted, so he did too.

The Nicks Cove owner was as impressed as association members. “We can sell this,” Al told Anastacio and offered him a job barbecuing oysters. Anastacio was already working six days a week, but he finally agreed to do it. “We got oysters for six cents each and used to sell them barbecued three for a dollar.” Nowadays, the price is often $2 apiece.

“I was there for about three years. Then Tony’s Seafood offered me a better deal, a percent [of sales]. Nicks Cove used to pay me $20 per day. When I went to work for Tony’s, I doubled the money or better.” From Tony’s, Anastacio took his barbecuing technique to the Marshall Tavern, which was owned by Al Reis, then of Inverness. “I was barbecuing 4,500 oysters on a weekend. Sunset magazine interviewed me in 1980. That’s when everything went crazy.

Ad in The Point Reyes Light around 1980.

“After Sunset, I’d get people from Sacramento asking, ‘Are you the one?'” Jose de la Luz, better known as Luis, regularly assisted him. “We were working 12 hours a day to catch up,” Anastacio recalled.

Anastacio worked at the Marshall Tavern about four years “until the IRS closed it.” After that, he barbecued oysters at Barnaby’s by the Bay in Inverness for half a year or so and then moved to Mi Casa, which was located where the Station House Café is today. Each time Anastacio moved to a new restaurant, the one he’d left would continue to barbecue oysters, trying to duplicate his recipe. “Whenever I left,” he told me with a laugh, “I left my footprint.” All the same, he added, “the customers were following me wherever I went.”

And throughout all this time, Anastacio repeatedly volunteered his barbecuing for a variety of worthy causes: West Marin Lions Club (of which he is a former president), Nicasio Volunteer Fire Department, Sacred Heart Church, Western Weekend, and St. Mary’s in Nicasio (where one day’s barbecuing brought in $4,500 for the church’s building fund). During the Flood of ’82, Anastacio barbecued 6,500 oysters for the National Guard, who were staying at Marconi Conference Center.

Barbecuing oysters on Tuesday, Anastacio ladled melted butter on top of his sauce.

Now after 37 years of barbecuing oysters with his special sauce, Anastacio is ready to sell it. His stepson Matt Giacomini lives in Oregon where he has been working with a chemist at a bottling company to duplicate the recipe. Jars of Anastacio’s Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce are already in the Palace Market, Toby’s Feed Barn, Tomales Bay Oyster Company, the Marshall Store, and Perry’s Inverness Park Store. Drakes Bay Oyster Company will stock it as soon as another shipment arrives from Oregon.

The biggest outlets, however, could prove to be 31 Northgate Gonzalez supermarkets, which are owned by Anastacio’s cousins, who also own a bank. “One of the owners [Antonio] is married to my brother’s daughter,” he explained. These Southern California supermarkets plan to sell the sauce at the meat counter rather than just stock it on the shelves. “Antonio is in charge of the meat departments of all the stores,” Anastacio noted.

Even with the sauce, there is an art to barbecuing oysters. Anastacio ladles melted butter on top of his sauce while the oysters are on the grill. And he stresses that the oysters need to be shucked before barbecuing. Cooks sometimes try to skip the shucking by placing unopened oysters on the barbecue and letting the water inside the shells steam and pop them open. It may be less work, he said, but “you ruin your oyster.” It becomes overcooked and rubbery.

And while it’s called oyster sauce, Anastacio’s creation has other uses as well. I found it delicious on hamburgers, and as a bartender at Nicks Cove discovered when he ran out of V-8 juice, it’s also a great Bloody Mary mix. Just add lemon juice and Tobasco sauce.

For the moment, virtually all the oyster barbecuing anywhere is occurring around Tomales Bay, Anastacio said. However, with any luck at all, people throughout California will soon be giving it a try.

Sunday’s Western Weekend Parade packed the main street of Point Reyes Station, making it look like half the residents around Tomales Bay were either watching the parade or in it.

A Coast Guard color guard led the parade, followed by Marin County and Inverness fire engines. Several parade entries, including an inflatable boat from the Coast Guard base in Bodega Bay, had maritime themes.

The good ship Mary Kay’s Revenge from Marshall. The Point Reyes Light on Thursday reported, “The boat is constructed largely of recycled sail cloth, plywood and pallets” and had been sitting “on Peggy Bannan’s porch in Reynold’s Cove” while awaiting the parade.

Parade Marshal Maidee Moore of Inverness received a ride from Dennis Luftig of Point Reyes Station. Maidee has long been active in civic affairs and is perhaps best known for decades of leading a program, Tomales Bay Waterdogs, which teaches children living around Tomales Bay how to swim.

Western Weekend Queen Mindy Borello, 17, rode in a pickup-truck carriage during Sunday’s parade. Mindy won the queen contest by selling the most Western Weekend raffle tickets.

Western Weekend Princess Rocio Gomez  Together Rocio and Mindy sold more than $8,000 worth of raffle tickets.

The float was called “The Hula Hoopin’ Haley Grandkids,” and this grandkid was a pro.

Three quarters of a century  Inverness Garden Club’s entry each year includes numerous participants, a motorcycle with a sidecar, and a float festooned with flowers and greenery. This year the club is celebrating its 75th anniversary, hence the birthday cake. Among the club’s activities is maintaining flower beds in public places.

Several kids on mini-motorcycles took part in the parade. This young biker may be new to the parade circuit, but he has already learned its protocol. To get the attention of other kids along the parade route carry a bag of candies and toss out handfuls. Works every time.

Papermill Creek Children’s Corner (a preschool in Point Reyes Station) and Marin Head Start paraded together.

Planned Feralhood president Kathy Runnion of Nicasio, dressed as a cat and festooned with toy kittens, led her group’s parade entry. The group catches feral cats in Point Reyes Station and neuters or spays them.

Kathy finds homes for the kittens and as many of the adults as possible. A few adults cannot be domesticated and are returned to the street, but at least they are no longer reproducing. Not surprisingly, the number of feral kittens around town has dropped dramatically.

West Marin School students dance a Paso Durangeneze. The group includes Alejandro Chavarria, 3rd grade; Graciela Avalos, Sarahisabel Barajaz, Stepanie Gonzalez, William Gonzalez, Shelby Hunt, Normar Isais, Bianca Lima, and Phoebe Marshall, 4th graders; and Armando Gonzalez, 5th grade. Their teacher is Dolores Gonzalez.

The Nave Patrola annually spoofs the Italian Army in World War I although it also borrows an “Il Duce” chant from World War II.

In the early 1970s, an official from the Italian Consulate in San Francisco complained to parade organizers, the West Marin Lions Club, that the patrol disparaged Italians, what with its seemingly confused marchers colliding with each other and going off in all directions.

Defenders of the patrol, however, replied that many of the members are of Italian descent. In addition, most folks here find Benito Mussolini, “the Duce of Fascism,” as he called himself, fair game for satire.

Bikini-clad dancers on an entry from Very Nice Firewood of Point Reyes Station waved placards that said, “Joe’s Knows How to Keep It Hot,” along with “Keep Warm & Toasty” and “Got Wood?”

A highlight of every Western Weekend Parade is the impressive Concord Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, which participates in numerous parades each year. Based in Contra Costa County, the Blue Devils are a world-class drum corps, having won 12 Drum Corps International championships in the past 33 years.

The Western Weekend Livestock Show and Fair were held Saturday at the Dance Palace for the second year, having been held for more than half a century at the Red Barn (whose current owner has renamed it and repainted it green).

William Nunes’ four-year-old dry Holstein took first place in junior showmanship while Alyssa McClure’s heifer took second.

Thoroughly enjoying the livestock show were the dogs of Lisa Patsel, who owns Tree House bed-and-breakfast inn.

Because the number of ranches in West Marin has been steadily shrinking, the number of entries is now tiny compared with what it was back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Half a dozen cows were shown this year compared to 100 in 1962, but youths in the ranching families that still remain take the competition as seriously as ever.

4-H Club members recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the 4-H pledge at the beginning of Saturday’s livestock show.

Michelle McClure took first place in senior showmanship for Holstein cows, and Nathan Hemett took second.

Kelly Hinde of Sonoma County 4-H judges rabbits during the 4-H fair.

Freddie Genazzi’s red slider named Ozzie took first place in the turtle competition. Although his sister wasn’t present, her turtle, whom the judge dubbed Harriet, took second.

Judge Hinde inspects a pair of mice.

Judges Ellie Genazzi and Terry Gray compare notes during the Western Weekend Fair’s dog show.

Amelia McDonald’s dog Hamlet clears a hurdle in an obstacle course during the dog show.

While the obstacle course confused all the dogs that went on it, this Dumpster behind the Dance Palace confused virtually all the humans who went to use it.

Despite what was reported last week in the calendar sections of The West Marin Citizen and Point Reyes Light, the Western Weekend Parade will be held on Sunday this year, as always. Both papers were apparently led to believe the annual parade would be held a day early on Saturday, June 6; however, a check with the county firehouse in Point Reyes Station Monday confirmed it is making arrangements for a parade on Sunday.

A procession of antique tractors in last year’s parade.

The Western Weekend Livestock Show will likewise be held Saturday as always. However, it is no longer held at the Red Barn but at the Dance Palace.

The event, which is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., is a time for 4-H club members to exhibit crafts and animal projects they have been working on all year.

Sunday’s parade will march down Point Reyes Station’s three-block-long main street at noon. Because the route is short and the number of entries is sometimes small, it is not uncommon for several entries, after they finish the procession, to circle around via sidestreets in order to parade down the main street a second time.

The 34th annual Dance Palace Silent Auction will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday with live music by Moonlight Rodeo from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Oysters and drinks will be sold on the lawn, starting at 11 a.m.

Launching the forerunner of Western Weekend on Aug. 6, 1949, was a women’s sorority called Companions of the Forest. Their turreted former hall still stands across Mesa Road from the Marin Agricultural Land Trust office. That first celebration included a dance, a queen contest, a carnival, and a cakewalk, which together raised $440.65 for repairing the hall.

Western Weekend didn’t become a celebration of West Marin’s agricultural heritage until the following year when the women’s husbands, who belonged to the newly formed West Marin Lions Club, got involved. They added a parade, a chicken barbecue, and a livestock show at the Red Barn (now also called the Old Engine Barn).

In subsequent years, the event increasingly focused on 4-H and FFA (Future Farmers of America).

During the early 1950s, 4-H and FFA were the main youth groups on the coast, and in those days members had relatively few places to exhibit their animals and other projects.

Parade judges’ viewing stand last year.

By 1962, the West Marin Junior Livestock Show was attracting cows from throughout Marin County, and 100 head showed up that year. The Lions added a lean-to onto the Red Barn to house the overflow. (The “Junior” referred the competitors all being 4-H or FFA members.)

The women held fashion shows on Sunday afternoons, and the Lions brought in carnival rides. Eventually the Point Reyes Station chapter of Companions of the Forest merged with the Petaluma chapter, which continues to this day.

Throughout the 1970s, the parade grew every year. In 1980 and 1981, it drew about 150 entries. An ad hoc group calling itself the Tomales Bay Explorers Club annually entered elaborate floats: Nessie, the bay’s own underwater monster; King Tut’s Tomb, a large pyramid complete with the king’s court; and a hug replica of one Imelda Marcos’ open-toed shoes, out of which a tap-dance group periodically slid and then performed in the street.

The Wells Fargo stagecoach in last year’s parade.

By then, 10,000 or more people sometimes jammed the town’s sidewalks and store roofs to watch the parade.

Some merchants would later discover that drunken spectators, who had without permission used roofs for vantage points, had dropped empty beer cans down drainspouts.

With the first heavy rain each fall, several flat roofs would flood, and the stores below would have water dripping through their ceilings.

With so many people jamming Point Reyes Station for these monster parades, beer flowed in the gutter by the time the last floats disappeared each year, sometimes to be replaced by outlaw bikers doing wheelies down the main street.

The Lions too were finding it difficult to cope with the throng, so in 1982 and 1983, they eliminated the parade although the West Marin Junior Livestock Show was held as usual. When the parade was revived in 1984, it was much smaller with far fewer groups from outside West Marin.

Nowadays, a variety of groups ranging from the Lions Club to the 4-H Council to the Dance Palace to the Farm Bureau help put on Western Weekend. The gods too seem to help out. In 58 years, it’s never rained on our parade although high winds have occasionally blown floats apart.

Because the bottomlands of Drakes Estero are under the jurisdiction of the State of California, which by law must forever protect them for fishing, including aquaculture, they can never become part of a Wilderness Area of the National Park Service.

This legal fact may in the long run be the main obstacle to the Point Reyes National Seashore administration’s machinations to close Drakes Bay Oyster Company three years from now.

In an historical and legal analysis posted Wednesday on the Community Conversations page of the Marinwatch website, attorney Sandy Calhoun writes, “When the State of California transferred the submerged lands in Point Reyes National Seashore to the United States in 1965, the State Legislature… retained for the people of California fishing rights on and over submerged lands.”

Nor did the Legislature have the power to transfer those rights to the federal government, even if it had wanted to, although in the last couple of years, the acting director of the State Department of Fish and Game has acted as if he could cede “primary management authority” over the estero to the park. In fact, the acting director also lacks the legal ability to do so, attorney Calhoun writes.

“The California Constitution prohibits the State Legislature from transferring away the public ‘right to fish,’ which includes oyster cultivation,” Calhoun notes, and “what the California Legislature cannot do directly cannot be done indirectly by an administrative interpretation of an act of the State Legislature.

“In short, it would be unconstitutional for the California Department of Fish and Game to administratively cede jurisdiction over oyster cultivation in Drakes Estero [below] to the National Park Service.”

In 1974, when the Park Service wrote an environmental-impact statement for the proposal to designate 10,600 acres of the Point Reyes National Seashore as wilderness, the park noted that “control of the [oyster company] lease from the California Department of Fish and Game, with presumed renewal indefinitely, is within the rights reserved by the state on these submerged lands.”

When the Sierra Club broke with other environmental groups and complained about the bottomlands not being also designated as wilderness, the Park Service responded, “It has been the policy of the National Park Service not to propose wilderness for lands on which the United States does not own full interests.”

Nor is the state government’s interest in leasing bottomlands to the oyster company merely a matter of regulating operations and collecting fees.

The California Aquaculture Promotion Act of 1995 proclaims: “The Legislature finds and declares that while commercial aquaculture continues to provide considerable benefit to people of the state, the growth of the industry has been impaired in part by duplicate and costly regulations and illegal importation and trading in aquaculture products.

“The Legislature further finds and declares that commercial aquaculture shall be promoted through the clarification of respective government responsibilities and statutory requirements.”

As part of the state’s policy of promoting aquaculture, Drakes Bay Oyster Company is required to meet minimum production goals established by the California Fish and Game Commission. It can lose its lease to use the estero’s bottomlands if it doesn’t.

“These lease provisions, which confirm the state’s compelling interest in preserving and increasing the productivity of shellfish cultivation in Drakes Estero, demonstrate that oyster cultivation under state permits is not a commercial operation in the usual sense,” attorney Calhoun writes.

“Rather, in this context, ‘commercial’ is a shorthand term for private development of a state-retained, approved, and regulated use of a state resource, i.e. the bottomland in Drakes Estero.”

National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher would like to shut the oyster company down in 2012 when the use permit for its onshore facilities (at right) comes up for renewal, but the onshore facilities are also protected.

While the State of California doesn’t own any part of the oyster company’s onshore facilities, Section 16 of the federal Wilderness Act requires the Secretary of the Interior to provide “adequate access” to private or state-owned land within wilderness areas.

In 1997, before the Johnson family sold the oyster company to its present owners, the Lunny family, the park proposed the oyster company’s old buildings be replaced, and Supt. Neubacher himself signed a building permit application to add 3,500 square feet to the facilities.

In the environmental assessment prepared by Neubacher, the park superintendent argued that the new buildings were needed. “Because the aquaculture operation will be allowed to continue,” Neubacher wrote, “the proposed project will preserve aquaculture, specifically oyster processing and harvesting at Drakes Estero.”

Neubacher added that the “project will positively impact the local economy. Johnson Oyster Company accounts for 39 percent of the State of California’s commercial oyster harvest.”

But officialdom is always capricious. Less than a dozen years later, Neubacher and his bosses have changed their minds and now want to destroy the historic oyster company. In the past three years they’ve lined up a Bush-era lawyer for the Park Service, a faceless state bureaucrat, and a handful of environmental zealots to help rationalize the destruction.

Should all this end up in court some day, one key issue will be what Congress intended when it designated Drakes Estero “potential” wilderness back in 1976.

The field representative for Congressman John Burton (at left), who sponsored the legislation in the House of Representatives, was the  late Jerry Friedman of Point Reyes Station, chairman of the county planning commission and co-founder of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin.

Writing on behalf of Congressman Burton and half a dozen environmental groups, Friedman told senators holding hearings on the wilderness bill that it was written so as to “allow the continued use and operation of Johnson’s Oyster Company in Drakes Estero.”

Alan Cranston and John Tunney co-sponsored the wilderness legislation in the Senate. In written testimony, Senator Tunney noted that under the bill, “the existing agricultural and aquacultural uses can continue.” Senator Cranston took the same position both orally and in writing, as records of the hearings show, attorney Calhoun writes.

In separate legislation, Congress in 1980 declared that “encouraging aquaculture activities and programs in both the public and private sectors” was federal policy. Like the State of California, Congress complained that jurisdictional questions and misplaced government regulations were interfering with “the potential for significant growth” in US aquaculture.

In short, even if the Park Service decides to unilaterally reinterpret the concept of “potential wilderness,” Congress and the Legislature have already declared that more, not less, aquaculture is needed. Supt. Neubacher may want to defy Congress, the Legislature, and the state constitution, but it’s doubtful that any court will let him.

Most West Marin residents want the oyster company to survive, and because the State of California has an established interest in promoting aquaculture in the estero, it’s time for Assemblyman Jared Huffman and State Senator Mark Leno to join US Senator Dianne Feinstein in coming to the aid of Drakes Bay Oyster Company.

And if you have the time, attorney Sandy Calhoun’s 28-page analysis of all this is a good read. Its file can be found under “Drakes Estero: Historical Analysis of Oyster Cultivation and Wilderness Status by Alexander D. Calhoun” on Marinwatch’s Community Conversations page (near the bottom).