Mossyrock

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Mossyrock

This is Mossyrock, Washington, the town I was raised in. That's pretty much the entire town in one frame, which gives you some idea of the size of the place. I've traveled around almost all of the United States now, and I realize that I was pretty lucky to have been raised in this little town. It was a safe, if white bread, slice of American life in the sixties and seventies. I suppose I missed out on a lot, coming of age in a town of 400 people, but it didn't ever feel like that. To be completely accurate, although I think of Mossyrock as my hometown, it's not the town I was born in. That town is here:

That lovely view is of Riffe Lake, which was formed when the Mossyrock Dam was constructed in the mid-sixties. The town I was born in was also called Riffe, and it is now at the bottom of that lake, along with a small plastic backpack full of my favorite toys that I left behind on my last day at our ranch house in 1966. I didn't realy understand "We're leaving, and we're never coming back," at the age of six.
From the age of six through eighteen, I called Mossyrock home, most of it on Damron Road.Mere moments (okay, it was a couple of months) after graduating from Mossyrock High, I took off for the big city - Seattle. I left behind, albeit not voluntarily, the girl I loved. Thirty one years later, through twists of fate almost too incredible to be believed, I found that girl, now woman, again. I wooed her all over again and somehow convinced her to be my wife. Now she is sitting beside me on the couch watching Family Guy as I write this blog. Our life's story is in the midst of a Happily Ever After.
I wrote two books about those unbelievable events. I know they are unbelievable because occasionally someone will say, "I don't believe this is true" in an Amazon review. Many of the people who were part of those books have passed on now - both sets of our parents, my sister Terri, my nephew Tommy - but there are enough living witnesses who will testify that things happened pretty close to the way I wrote abut them.
This past weekend, Dawn and I took a trip back to Lewis County. While we were there, we made an effort to take pictures of a lot of the places that I wrote about in the books. This is one of the advantages of writing non-fiction. I'd love to take a picture of the roller rink where Jimmy Velvet met Buddy Holly for the first time in Rock 'n Roll Heaven, but that picture only exists in my mind. Since Mossyrock is real, I thought it would be fun to take some pictures and share the passage from the book where I wrote about it. That way you can see if I did an adequate job of transporting you there, or if I fouled the whole mess up. It could go either way!

This is Bill & Bea's, which is actually in Centralia, about 40 miles from Mossyrock. This is the location where I saw Dawn for the first time in 27 years, on December 1st, 2006. It's also the first scene in both Feels Like the First Time and Both Sides Now. Here's what I wrote about B&B's in FLTFT:
Up ahead, I saw a sign that read Bill & Bea's. I hadn't even known that place was still open. I'd eaten there a lot when I was in high school in the '70s, but I hadn't been back since I moved out of Lewis County.

This is the side yard of 141 Damron Road, where I grew up. Dawn's house was to the left in this picture. In the '70s, there wasn't a fence, or that row of plants and bushes along the left. Our yard and Dawn's yard were open, and that was where we spent much of our time hanging out - becoming friends, the big brother-little sister, then... more. This is how I wrote about it in Feels Like the First Time:
As the months passed, I started to look forward to hanging out with her. One evening we sat in our yard talking about things that were important to us - like whether Kojack was tougher than Baretta. That night, Dawn told me her favorite song was The Air That I Breathe by The Hollies. Since she had told me that Wildfire by Michael Martin Murphy was her favorite song just a few weeks earlier, I pointed out she could only have one favorite. She pointed out I was crazy, and she would have as many favorite songs as she wanted. That night, after Colleen called Dawn inside for dinner, I lingered outside, kicking the heads off of dandelions. I was sorry to see her go in, and I was a little surprised at the feelings for her that were growing inside me.

This is my step-dad's potting shed, which was attached to the back of his little shop, which he used as a Spousal Avoidance Center. I know it's just a rundown little shed, but it's the site of one my lifetime's happiest memories. From FLTFT:
I pulled the Vega up into the yard with the doors open and the radio on. Jackson Browne's The Load Out was playing loudly. I'd already soaped and rinsed, and was starting to dry it off when Dawn appeared. It was a warm spring day and she was wearing shorts and a halter top. The sun had been shining all day, but spring weather changes quickly in western Washington and the sky suddenly darkened.
The thought of rain crossed my mind when I felt the first raindrop, the size of a nickel, splash warmly against my arm. I looked up to see a sudden squall upon us. Drying the car was suddenly less of a priority. Both our houses looked far away, so we dashed inside the greenhouse my step-dad had built across the back of his workshop.
In the time it took us to run to the greenhouse, we were both soaked. Inside, the smell of potting soil, plant starts, and gardening chemicals was heavy in the air. The rain escalated quickly into a thunderstorm. It beat down with incredible force and noise on the tin roof of the greenhouse. The storm came on so fast it made us laugh with surprise as we watched the show Mother Nature was putting on for us. I looked at Dawn with her soaking wet hair and held her close. I sang the song Rain on the Roof by The Lovin' Spoonful softly in her ear. I'd never felt closer to another human being, almost whispering the words to her. I was in heaven, and wished those days would never pass.
By the way, you might have noticed that even in these little excerpts, there are several mentions of songs. Yeah, I do that a lot. If it bugs you, you probably won't like these books. If it stirs a memory in you, or you think it's kind of cool, you might like them!
Here's a couple more, then I'll save the rest for another blog in a few days. First, this is the G Theater in Mossyrock. If you were a teenager in Mossyrock, you didn't have a lot of options to entertain yourself There was Mossyrock Lanes, The G Theater, or parties at the gravel pit or someone's rural house. Almost all the great movies of my youth - Mary Poppins, Flipper, The Ten Commandments, The Godfather - were seen at The G. In 2010, when KISS II reunited, we were blessed to meet Mike and Vicky Howard, the current owners of The G. They were kind enough to give us the use of the theater at no charge for the weekend. This is what it looks like today:

...and this is what it looked like on July 30th, 2010:

I'm the second one from the right, in case you don't recognize me from my author photo. I hope you can see by our faces that a good time was had by all. Just in case you're curious, this is a shot inside The G that same night: