It was one of those times I felt like the Country Mouse.

I’d been reading San Francisco Chronicle about the city police department’s wanting to clean up the Tenderloin. And I’ve been reading Chronicle columnist CW Nevius’ fulminations against drug use and sexual activity in the district.

By the way, while most of us know where the Tenderloin is in San Francisco (see Google map at right), many people don’t know the origin of the name.

Other cities have also had “tenderloins” although New York supposedly had the first. The district had widespread graft and vice, so any corrupt cops who policed it could afford to eat well. At least that’s the etymology given by The American Heritage Dictionary.

Several major streets cross San Francisco’s Tenderloin, so I periodically drive through it. Saturday night, however, was the first time in years I’d traversed it on foot. Oddly enough, I was on my way to the Hilton Hotel which, as can be seen in the map above, sits squarely in the Tenderloin.

I was about to pick up a friend and drive him to Point Reyes Station for a visit. The friend, new-media consultant Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles, had spent the previous three days conducting training sessions at an Online News Association convention in the hotel.

After parking my car on O’Farrell Street near Market, I’d begun walking back up O’Farrell when the odd mix of characters on the street started catching my eye. A large, somewhat-intimidating man called me over, but I kept walking and quickly crossed the street.

Up ahead of me I saw a small crowd milling around Johnny Foley’s Irish House, a fashionable bar. They’d apparently gone outside to smoke. As I got closer, I noticed another group sitting on the sidewalk next to them. These folks weren’t dressed like the more-stylish bar patrons, but they too were mostly smoking, and some were jovially drinking from bottles.

Just beyond these convivial groups, however, three cleancut men dressed all in black were wrestling on the sidewalk, with two of them trying to hold down the third. Having also been reading about bystanders getting caught in gang violence, I didn’t stop to watch.

By the time I’d reached the corner, however, the man who’d been on the ground caught up, brushing himself off. Almost immediately, the other two men rushed up, and the first ran out into traffic but was caught and dragged back to the sidewalk. At this point I heard someone say, “He stole a purse.”

“No I didn’t,” the man insisted.

A block and a half further and I was at the Hilton. A policeman was standing out front, so I told him what I’d witnessed. “I guess we’d better go down there,” he said, and I went inside the hotel.

The lobby was crowded with cheery people in their late teens and early 20s. It turned out they were USC football fans staying en masse at the Hilton, and they were celebrating because USC had beaten Cal 30-3 that afternoon.

Security guards were stationed here and there, but everyone in the lobby was behaving peaceably. The only thing out of the ordinary was the apparel of a few female fans. See-through and super-short skirts revealed that thong underwear is in vogue these days at USC.

When Dave and I met up, we laughed at the fashions of “kids today” and started walking back to the car.

Half a block from the scene of the scuffle, we passed the alleged thief sitting on the ground (left) in handcuffs. Half a dozen cops surrounded him while more stood around nearby. Dave shot this photo with his mobile phone, and we continued on.

Several well-dressed celebrants we passed on the sidewalk were noticeably hollow eyed, prompting Dave to mention that when he’d gone into a hotel restroom, he’d come upon a young man who appeared to be snorting a line of cocaine off a sink.

We eventually reached my car, which in my Point Reyes Station fashion I hadn’t bothered to lock. Notwithstanding several scary-looking folks wandering the street no one had touched it.

The Chronicle has written quite a bit about drug dealing sullying the streets of the Tenderloin. Its columnist Nevius has railed against a Tenderloin liquor store’s supposedly being a magnet for street crime and against a sex club’s moving into the district. San Francisco’s tonier neighborhoods certainly wouldn’t put up with a sex club, Nevius wrote on Sept 12.

But would they put up with a Hilton? From all appearances, there was a fair amount of sex and drugs at the hotel last weekend, along with street crime near a fashionable bar less than two blocks away.

Am I criticizing the Hilton? No, it seems to be a well-run hotel that gets a variety of guests. Rather I’m saying that it’s easy to wax indignant about low-rent sexual activity in the Tenderloin and about the drugs of its hard-luck street people, but there’ll never be an editorial campaign against USC fans exposing their G-strings in the lobby of a Hilton Hotel or snorting cocaine in a Hilton restroom.

Feeling discombobulated by urban perversity, this country mouse skedaddled back to familiar old Point Reyes Station.

From 1920 to 1991, The New York Daily News called itself “New York’s Picture Paper” because it used photographs with captions rather than articles to report a disproportionate amount of the news.

In that spirit, this blog will now try out a Point Reyes Station Picture Posting.

While carpenter Charlie Morgan was walking out my cabin’s basement door this morning, he spotted a small gopher snake slithering in. We grabbed it although it pretended it was a rattlesnake, flattening its head into a triangle and shaking its rattle-less tail. (Photo by Charlie Morgan)

The snake didn’t like being picked up and tried to wriggle free, but it didn’t strike. Its mouth was so small it probably couldn’t have even if it had wanted to. In any case, I soon released it.

Seeva Cherms, daughter of Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, gave me this sign as a Christmas present two years ago.

As too many roadkills make evident, the possums of West Marin are in particular need of a safe preserve, so I’ve started one.

A continuing problem, however, is the ancient feud between my hill’s possums and raccoons. Tense encounters occur night after night, and I’ve photographed several, such as this confrontation on Sept. 12.

In an effort to end the inter-species unrest, I finally resorted to a two-millennia-old stratagem for keeping unruly masses complaisant. When anti-social disorder broke out again last night, I distracted the raccoon with bread and circuses, “panem et circenses” in the words of the Roman satirist Juvenal, who coined the phrase around 200 AD. The circus in those days was somewhat different, of course, although it did have lions.

Tonight I tried the same ploy with the possum, and it worked until the raccoon came over and stole the bread. Raccoons are like that, even among themselves. I’m tempted to send one in particular to Father Flanagan’s Home for Wayward Raccoons in Kits Town, Nebraska.

Meanwhile over in Inverness tonight, Linda Petersen, the injured ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, showed up after a Volunteer Fire Department meeting to thank firefighter Burton Eubank (right).

Burton was the first rescue worker on the scene when Linda fell asleep at the wheel June 13 near Motel Inverness and hit a utility pole.

Linda suffered 18 broken bones and a punctured lung in the crash.

Burton tonight noted the dispatcher originally said the crash had occurred just west of downtown Inverness not far from Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. As he rushed to the scene from Inverness Park, however, Burton discovered the wreck was actually east of town and radioed other members of the volunteer fire department to let them know.

Linda remembers almost nothing from the wreck, so Burton recounted how he evaluated her condition and what he and other firefighters did to remove her from the car without causing further injuries. As it turned out, Linda had two broken vertebrae, so the precautions were crucial.

Burton obviously hadn’t learned how to do all this in one training session, I quipped. “I’ve been a firefighter 24 years,” he replied, “ever since I was 18.” Burton said that some of the VFD’s traffic-accident calls are grim but responses such as Linda’s help balance that.

And put it on your calendar that a benefit to help pay Linda’s medical bills will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, at Toby’s Feed Barn. There will be entertainment by Johnny and June from El Radio Fantastique, Peter Asmus and Space Debris, and Matt Love’s band (sometimes called the Love Field Allstars). The initial, so to speak, entertainer will be Charlie, the carpenter. Charlie, who’s also a DJ at KWMR, will be MC.

Providing food will be Marin Sun Farms, the Station House Café, Olema Farmhouse, Café Reyes, the Tomales Deli, the Palace Market, the Marshall Store, and Mike and Sally Gale’s Chileno Valley Ranch. In addition, Anastacio Gonzalez will barbecue oysters with his “Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce.” The sauce is now being bottled, with retail sales having begun last July.

Last Thursday when I dropped by Linda Petersen’s temporary digs, Tim Weed and Debbie Daly were entertaining the recuperating crash victim with a mix of country and folk music.

The Point Reyes Station couple are among many people who have stepped forward to help Linda, ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, since her horrific wreck June 13 near Motel Inverness. A dozen West Marin residents have been taking turns cooking meals for her, and several have provided her with transportation.

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 and hit a utility pole. The injuries required three months of hospitalization, including seven weeks wearing a steel-and-carbon halo that immobilized her head and neck.

Linda was released from the hospital Aug, 22 and has been temporarily staying in ground-floor quarters at Karen Gray’s place in Point Reyes Station prior to moving into an upstairs apartment.

For the past month, Linda has been living out of boxes and is excited about the prospect of settling into her new apartment as soon as she can regularly climb the stairs.

Linda, 61, who works at the front desk in The Citizen office, can by now walk short distances with just a cane, and West Marin Senior Services has loaned her an electric scooter to get around town.

By chance, Missy Patterson, 82, who works at the front desk of the competing Point Reyes Light, also uses a scooter to get around downtown. The coincidence has led more than a few townspeople to suggest the two have a race.

“Missy said she would beat me, which is probably true,” Linda told me with a laugh. “Her scooter is bigger and more powerful.” Missy (seen here in the 2005 Western Weekend Parade) had started out with a donated scooter but a few years back moved up to a high-performance model.

Linda during her hospitalization accumulated several thousand dollars worth of bills that her insurer, Kaiser Permanente, is refusing to cover. To help raise money to pay those bills, a benefit with food, drinks, and entertainment will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, at Toby’s Feed Barn. More about this later…

Wasn’t that one heck of a thunder-and-lightning storm that hit here at 5:45 a.m. Saturday? Around the San Francisco Bay Area, the lightning started at least 20 fires and blacked out nearly 50,000 homes and businesses, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

In West Marin, the lightning momentarily blacked out a few homes and turned on lights in others. Here on Campolindo Drive, PG&E service was unaffected, but several homes connected to the Horizon Cable system took coaxial hits.

Like other townspeople, I was awakened early Saturday by a thunderclap as loud as canon fire. Instantly wide-eyed, I saw a fireball exploding outside my window followed by lightning flashes further away. The explosion fried my television, as my nose quickly told me, and destroyed the modem to my computer.

My stepdaughter Shaili and I occupied our time with old-fashioned reading after my Internet service went down.

One of my neighbors also lost a television while a total of four of us on this hill had our modems fried, Horizon Cable’s office manager Andrea Clark later told me. She noted all the damage to the Horizon system was along Campolindo Drive although no one has found the exact spot the lightning struck.

The National Weather Service attributed the lightning storm to a coastal low-pressure system that had picked up more moisture than expected, The Chronicle reported. The bulk of the blackouts were in San Francisco although the lightning started fires as far east as Livermore and Mount Hamilton (east of San Jose).

It’s been a busy week around my cabin. My youngest stepdaughter from my last marriage, Shaili Zappa, 16, has been visiting from Guatemala. She’s a high school junior with top-notch grades, so Monday I drove her to my alma mater, Stanford University, hoping to get her interested in applying.

After taking the official tour of the campus and talking to admissions and financial-aid counselors, Shaili came away thoroughly impressed despite the cost. A financial-aid advisor told her a year at Stanford including room and board typically costs about $50,000 these days although the university might be able to cover all but $10,000 of that.

I received a bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford in 1965 and a master’s in Communications in 1967 (when the costs were a lot less), but I hadn’t been back to The Farm in recent years. The biggest change in the last 40 years that I could see were dozens of new and expanded buildings with many more under construction despite the recession.

The recession has cost Stanford, the third wealthiest university in the US, 30 percent of its endowment, which has fallen to $12 billion from $17 billion. Harvard, the wealthiest university, has also lost 30 percent while Yale, the second wealthiest, has lost 25 percent.

Stanford reports it now has an enrollment of 17,833, but students studying for graduate and professional degrees greatly outnumber undergraduates, accounting for more than 63 percent of the studentbody.

Meanwhile, my middle stepdaughter, Kristeli Zappa, 20, has just begun college in Taiwan. Kristeli is also a good student, and the Taiwanese government offered to pay for four years of college in English following a year spent studying Mandarin. The government in Taipei is also picking up her food, lodging, and transportation costs.

Emphasizing the significance of this scholarship, the Taiwanese ambassador on Aug. 12 presented it to Kristeli in Guatemala’s National Palace at a ceremony attended by Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom and Foreign Minister Alfredo Trinidad.

The following day, Kristeli was featured in a Page 1 story of the daily newspaper El Diario de Centro America as one of four young people trying to make life better in Guatemala. Less than a week before that, she was the cover model for a society magazine, Overnight, which is geared to Guatemalan young people.

As regular readers of this blog know, my eldest stepdaughter, Anika Zappa, 22, visited me in late May and took the opportunity to shoot a whimsical series of photos using a purple couch that had been abandoned beside Novato Boulevard in Hicks Valley.

Anika a week ago began attending the University of Minnesota after studying for two years at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota. To pay her way through college, she’s been working for Best Buy stores and steadily rising through the ranks.

I’m obviously proud of my studious stepdaughters. To me, a lightning bolt outside the window seems less striking.

Linda Petersen in a wheelchair at North Beach Aug. 23, the day after she came home to West Marin. (Photo by her daughter Saskia van der Wal)

It’s been fascinating to watch the story of Linda Petersen’s car wreck, surgery, hospitalization, and homecoming spread around the globe. Not only have her friends and relatives overseas been following online the progress of her recovery, the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors last month published one of my postings about her. Now Google has taken the story to a whole new level.

Linda, who is the advertising manager for The West Marin Citizen, 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.

She has now been home for 10 days after spending two and a half months hospitalized, the last seven weeks at the Rafael Convalescent Hospital in San Rafael.

For most of her time in the hospital, Linda had casts on both legs and on her left arm. Her head and neck were immobilized by a medical “halo” (right) made of steel and carbon.

Stuck on her back and able to move only her right hand, Linda chose to fight the tedium by getting back to work. Using her cell phone and email, Linda resumed selling ads for The Citizen. Thanks to the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors republishing my posting about this, the ad manager’s dedication to her job despite personal disaster is now known to some top-notch editors around the world.

In addition, The Citizen has printed other writing and photos from this blog concerning Linda’s recovery

As is typical of thumbnail photos online, readers were able to click on them to enlarge the images.

The most-surprising republication, however, was a Google image that Linda happened upon.

The medical halo which Linda wore for seven weeks had been extremely uncomfortable, so last weekend she went online to read about medical halos. Linda Googled “medical halo” and then clicked on “medical halo pictures.” As Linda later exclaimed, “What a surprise! That was me in one of them!”

The photo (at right) was taken from my Aug. 5 posting, which described Linda’s relief at getting rid of the halo. The posting included both the photo of Linda wearing the halo, which was screwed into her skull, and this photo of her wearing only a removable neck brace once the halo was no longer needed. To Linda’s further surprise, Google was using the wrong photo to illustrate medical halos.

Addendum: Four days after Linda noticed the mixup and a day after this posting went online, Google removed the incorrect photo for whatever reason. Linda, for her part, is much amused at having spent a week or two as an international, medical-halo model.

“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.

West Marin Citizen ad manager Linda Petersen, who has been hospitalized since June 13, is scheduled to return to West Marin Saturday. She’s excited to be coming home, and many of us are quite happy for her.

Linda in the courtyard of the Rafael Convalescent Hospital this week.

Making possible Linda’s return is her rapid progress since the beginning of August when she got out of a steel-and-carbon halo that had immobilized her head and neck and then had casts taken off her right leg and left arm. She can now get in and out of a wheelchair on her own.

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.

Ever since then she’s been in a series of hospitals: Marin General, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, and (for a month and a half) the Rafael Convalescent Hospital in San Rafael.

Linda still cannot put any weight on her left leg, having shattered her left ankle and broken the left femur, which now has a permanent metal plate on it. She was already carrying a metal plate from a hip replacement in 2006, and today I happened to be present today when a Kaiser doctor looked over Linda’s x-rays and told her she will certainly trigger airport metal detectors from now on.

I had driven Linda from the convalescent hospital to Kaiser’s Terra Linda hospital for a CAT scan. It was the first time in two months Linda had been outside a hospital in an automobile and not an ambulance.

Because the procedure was brief and the day was warm, I suggested we stop for lunch at Sol Food, a Puerto Rican café, since Linda had lived in Puerto Rico for more than 20 years. Sol Food has two locations a block apart in San Rafael, and we chose the smaller one, which has a bit of a garden. It was Linda’s first chance in two months to enjoy the outside world, and she was as giddy as a prisoner just freed from Guantanamo.

And as of Saturday, Linda will be at home in the Old Point Reyes School House Compound across Highway 1 from West Marin School.

It will be a few weeks before Linda can cook for herself, and a number of her friends are volunteering to bring meals. West Marin Senior Services, which will provide dinners Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, has asked me to make up the schedule.

If any readers of this blog would like to also help out, they can email me at davemi@horizoncable.com giving a first, second, and third choice for which meal(s), which day(s), they could provide. I’ll get back to them. Linda’s only request, by the way, is that the meals not be as bland as hospital food.

West Marin Citizen ad manager Linda Petersen, who has been hospitalized ever since a horrific car wreck June 13, this past week made significant progress in her recovery.

On Friday, a doctor at the Kaiser Medical Center in Oakland removed the steel-and-carbon halo (right) that had immobilized her head and neck for seven weeks.

Linda suffered 10 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.

For the past five weeks, Linda has been in the Rafael Convalescent Hospital in San Rafael. Not only were her head and neck in the medical halo, which was screwed into her skull, she had casts on both legs and her left arm. She could look only straight ahead and could use only her right hand.

On Sunday, Linda flashed a victory sign as she celebrated losing her halo. She now wears a short-term collar, which is not particularly confining and is, in fact, welcome since her neck muscles had not been used for seven weeks.

The halo was heavy and had been dreadfully uncomfortable as well as confining. Linda was so happy at having it gone that she called me on her cell phone from the ambulance bringing her back from Oakland to tell me the good news. I immediately emailed her the link to a YouTube music video of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, which, as she later confirmed, reflected how she felt.

Without the medical halo, Linda can now raise herself up in bed and sit comfortably in a wheelchair for several hours at a time. Equally important to her, she can now wash her hair.

Linda (photographed today) at last can move around in bed and expects to soon be able to get into a wheelchair on her own. As these pictures show, Linda made dramatic progress in just a week’s time.

Today Linda was transported back to Oakland where another doctor removed the cast from her right leg and replaced the cast on her left arm with a short brace.

She now looks forward to leaving the Rafael within two weeks and returning to West Marin. This is good. Linda and her family say that after her first two weeks in the convalescent hospital, which contracts with Kaiser, her stay has sometimes been unnecessarily unpleasant.

Indeed, Linda’s daughter Saskia van der Wal, a physician in Oakland, and her son David van der Wal, a social worker in San Francisco, have filed complaints about the convalescent hospital’s treatment of their mother.

I’ve received copies of their complaints, which are also addressed to the assistant director of nursing at the Rafael, Kaiser Permante’s continuing care coordinator in Marin County, a California Department of Public Health inspector, and a state ombudsman.

A key complaint is that the convalescent hospital a week ago threatened to evict Linda the next day unless it was immediately paid for a month’s stay in advance, Kaiser having said it would drop its hospitalization coverage until she was ready for more physical therapy.

“Today, July 29,” Saskia wrote the Rafael, “you have given us less than one day’s notice to pay a total of $7,140 for the period of July 24 to Aug. 24, 2009. She had Kaiser coverage until July 23 and has since applied for Medi-Cal.

“You have threatened that she will be removed from the facility tomorrow if we do not pay this amount today. We have not received anything in writing, documenting reasons for eviction or adequate discharge planning. This is illegal.

“I have spoken to the California State Ombudsman, and they have informed me of my mother’s rights. She must be given a 30-day eviction notice first of all, and secondly, you know she has Medi-Cal pending, which means if they do not back-pay your facility, only then will my mother be responsible for the amount owed.”

Linda’s son David in a separate complaint wrote that when first Saskia and later he called the Rafael’s director of admissions to question the convalescent hospital’s threatening to evict their mother, she hung up on each of them. In his complaint, David noted he then called the director of admission’s supervisor, Abe Jacob, assistant director of nursing, but “he simply cut me off and asked, ‘Where is the money?'”

Beyond that, David added, “while my mother has been at the Rafael, there have been numerous cases of neglect.” For example, he wrote, the surgeons who operated on Linda’s punctured lung closed the incision with staples.

The “staples were scheduled to be removed July 7,” David wrote, but medical staff at the Rafael neglected to do so until July 21. [By then, Linda told me at the time, some had become infected.] “My mother had complained of pain for several days under her right breast before any action was taken by medical staff,” he noted. “By the time the staples were removed, skin had grown over several staples.”

In addition, he noted, “my mother complained for several days of pain in her bladder. The only treatment my mom was offered was pain medication. My sister (an MD) suspected a urinary-tract infection, but it was not till almost a week passed that [Linda’s] catheter was removed and antibiotics were administered before the infection worsened.”

It’s no wonder Linda is so eager to go home. In the meantime, an inspector from the state Department of Public Health has been looking into these complaints against the Rafael Convalescent Hospital.

A pair of thieves in their late 20s or early 30s cleaned out the cash drawer of Point Reyes Gifts shortly before 3 p.m. today. The shop is relatively small, however, and owner Barbara McClellan told sheriff’s deputies the loss was not large.

Shop owner Barbara McClellan told deputy Rick Johnson the couple used a ruse to distract her while the theft occurred.

Deputies said a woman, who was described as having shoulder-length brown hair and wearing a white t-shirt, asked Barbara about some clothing in the back of the shop. While Barbara attended to her, a man who was with the woman stayed in the front of the shop near the cash register, talking on a cell phone.

The man was wearing a baseball cap that may have said San Diego on it, Barbara told deputies. Eventually he ended his phone call and said his children were fighting and that he and the woman had to leave. Not long afterward, Barbara looked in the cash register and discovered all the folding money was gone.

The theft brought numerous deputies to Point Reyes Station. They fanned out around town but without a description of the getaway car, officers were unable to find the couple.

Deputy Johnson tried dusting for fingerprints but unfortunately found only smudges.

Barbara is the daughter of the late Jack Mason, West Marin’s well-known historian. Her daughter Patty Collins is a former manager of the town’s bank and now works in East Marin.

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.