You Catch a Bug Up Here No, this column isn’t about bark beetles again. It’s about people who move up here and catch the bug, or those who live here all of their lives and keep it or keep catching it again. You might call it the Crestline bug or the small-town bug or whatever, but it hits you when you move to a place like this. Call it friendliness, camaraderie, we’re-all-in-this-togetherness, or whatever. But you find it here. We moved here from a place where people would deliberately try to run you down in a crosswalk if you dared to assert your pedestrian right of way within 200 feet of the front of their cars in a 35-mph zone. After moving to Crestline, I now live in a place where I have seen an old World War II veteran with a cane hold the post office door open for eight incoming people before he felt he had earned the right to amble down the ramp to his car in one of the handicapped spaces and take his mail home. Russ Keller, a board member with the Rim of the World Historical Society, is a good example of “getting the bug.” He, like me, is only a five-year resident of Crestline. From his front deck, Russ arguably has the best view that anyone will ever have of Crestline without being in an aircraft. The fire marshal even uses his deck as a platform from which to take monthly photos that chronicle the die-off of the trees in our community—that’s how good this view is. And from his vantage point and his frequent trips around town, he finds things that bug him. (We’ll keep the bug analogy going.) As with many more longtime Crestline residents, it bugged Russ that the original Switzerland subdivision signs from the 1930s had slipped into disrepair, so instead of going to a town hall meeting, pounding his fists on the table and asking whether somebody could do something about it, he went to the Rim of the World Historical Society, of which he was a board member, persuaded the group to provide the funding, got some help from residents Jim and Doe Huff, and just did it. It also bugs Russ that the little roof-like caps have long been missing from the pillars on the old Switzerland subdivision walls around town. He and Jim Huff will soon be working to restore those. And now he’s got his sights on another landmark that is in disrepair. As long as Russ and his friends keep the bug, little bright spots in Crestline’s history will keep coming back to life for all of our enjoyment and quality of life. One thing that really bugged Jim Iacono, owner of Rim Lanes, was that there was no place for children in Crestline to go to after school to be safe and keep out of trouble. So he first started letting the kids meet in his business, then with some seed money in 1975, he started the first Boys’ and Girls’ Club in the mountains at Mountain High School. Jim obviously kept the bug—25 years later he took his hard-earned money and sprung for the building for the club’s present location at 607 Forest Shade in Crestline. I wonder how many of those kids over the years caught Jim’s bug while they were there and are now adults following his lead in the community. It bugged new Crestline resident Zoot Velasco that people in Crestline didn’t have a place to go to enjoy the arts. So he’s trying to get the county to approve plans to make a new arts center for the community at the San Moritz Club. He and members of the Crestline Arts Network and the Crestline Chamber of Commerce worked hundreds of hours in preparation for their first demonstration of what that would be like—this took a whole bunch of people with a big bug. Their Family Arts Festival last Saturday night was a hit and a big hoot for the families who attended, and I know that those parents and kids are telling all of their friends what they missed. My 7-year-old boy and his best buddy are still talking about it. So am I, because I loved the show and won an annual family swim pass to Lake Gregory for next summer and three nights camping at Lake Silverwood in the raffle—so when they do something like this again, my family can tell you that you shouldn’t miss it. I found that getting the bug includes even the small things, like coming to the aid of one person who just needs a lift once in a while. I thought I would never pick up a hitchhiker, although many years ago I hitchhiked often and expected people to give me a ride. But on several occasions in 2001 and 2002, as long as no other family members were in the car (because it would set a bad example), I picked up this one hitchhiker, because he once lived just down the street from me, and I knew his tale of misfortune. His car had died, then a week later, the bank foreclosed on his landlord, so due to no fault of his own, he was kicked out of the place he was renting for cheap, and because of the slow economy he was working for a pittance temporarily at other jobs until he could work at his regular trade. He was walking about three miles to work and back at the time. I haven’t seen him hitchhiking lately, but he’s still around, and I still don’t know his name. I hope the few rides I gave him at least helped lower his stress level if nothing else. And if things are turning around for him I’d like to give him my old hearty German, “Herzlichen Glueckwuensch!” (luck wishes from the heart, or as we say, congratulations). I have to emphasize that I don’t recommend picking up hitchhikers. And hitchhikers, get a clue, as a former colleague, I can tell you, if you want to get picked up, there are five simple rules for getting that passenger door open—snuff out the cigarette before you stick out your thumb, drop the beer (into a trashcan, preferably) before you stick out your thumb, try to look like you recently washed, don’t present obscene gestures to the people who pass you without picking you up, and wear some shoes and a shirt for goodness’ sake. I see people just going around Lake Gregory with big bags picking up trash because they don’t want to see it there. They’re not serving out the terms of their probation and they’re not just picking up redeemable recyclables for their own benefit. They just have the bug. There are many instances of people in Crestline who catch the bug and make a difference to people one at a time or a whole community at once. It is much more rare in most of the communities that I have lived in down the hill. I’m glad for this job, because it helps me run into a lot of those people who have the bug. That means that if I ever start losing it, one of these fine people will sneeze right in my face and I’ll get it all over again. |
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