Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

Sid Lester had often wondered over the years whether Lena, Lena of the Caffe Lena, would have ever gotten to the Mendocino of her dreams. At least that was the take that the McGarrigle Sister, Anna and the late Kate had on her when they wrote the song to put to words what Lena had in her heart about what must have seemed a mystical place (and it was, is). And they should have known since they were both staples of the place in lean times and had lived there as well. So they knew that Lena coveted a trip to the West where the continent ends and all you have between you and the Japan seas and the search for the high white note, folk variety, were the magnificent cliffs and fieriest ocean splashes along the decadent Pacific Coast Highway well to the north of San Francisco.

For those who have forgotten, or are too young to have any memories of the old place Caffe Lena’s was, and is, the small coffeehouse in Saratoga, New York fast by Skidmore College that weaned many folksingers beside the McGarrigles like Arlo Guthrie, Utah Phillips and Rosalie Sorrel in the days when such activity was on deck, in the time of the now fabled early 1960s folk minute. That time of our time when a whole bunch of young people like Sid and his assorted consorts had taken a short time out from their cradle to the grave rock and roll, the signpost that they had come of age under and would return to once the ossified music that counted as rock in the late 1950s went to the shades and a new crowd came in. Lena was the owner, manager, chief cook and bottle washer, talent-spotter that made the place jump for many years and it would not have surprised Sid if she had not been to untie the umbilical cord that fastened her to the place, made her use up her fair share of nervous energy keeping the project together, keeping the spirit of that too short folk minute alive.   

Lena, she the grey eminence now, had long gone to the shades when Sid was seriously asking the question and so that was not her bother to answer if she had ever gotten to the Mendocino of her dreams and the consummated the ocean splashed out on the rim of the world song of the same name that the McGarrigle Sisters had written for her when she dreamed the dream of West Coast dreams. This was nevertheless no mere academic question just now as we sneak a peek at the scene since Sid was asking it not only to himself but to his lovely companion, Mona Lord, who was accompanying him just that moment on the Pacific Coast Highway about fifty miles from that very spot, from the Mendocino of his dreams if not Mona’s (fifty miles but probably about three hours away given the hairpin turns that he increasingly hated to take along some very treacherous stretches of that beautiful view highway having almost gone down an un-guard-railed embankment to the ocean around Big Sur a few years back).

It was not like Sid had not been to the dreamland before, having made the trip up from the fetid seas of Frisco town a number of times (fetid Ocean Beach fast by Seal Rock or inside the breakers come hard on Golden Gate pilings in comparison to the Mendocino white-washed breakers eroding the sheer rock at a greater rate than he would have expected). Six or seven mostly when he was younger and had the time and nerves to traverse that treacherous stretch of road. (Sure you can take Highway 101 in and run through the gods’ wine country but frayed nerves or not if you are coming up from Frisco town why not take the beauty in). He had taken the trips up mostly with his old time now long gone to “find herself” Laura, Laura Perkins whom he had talked into going up those several times based on nothing more than that he liked the song when he first heard on some now defunct folk radio station of blessed memory.

Liked too that she, Laura in her, their sunnier days, days when they had pledged eternal love on some splashed splintered rock in those environs liked it as well and would cover the song anytime she could find somebody to do a duo with her at “open mics” and features depending on how she was feeling.

(After the feverish folk minute had run its course, by say 1966 with a residue of folk rock that lingered for a while the folk aficionados hunkered down, continue to now hunker down not in places like Caffe Lena, Club 47, The Gaslight, the Club Nana and Café Blue in places like North Beach, the Village and Harvard Square but in small eateries, storefronts and what Sid laughingly called the U/U circuit of monthly coffeehouses put on by those self-same angel aficionados in basements and rec rooms of, well, mainly friendly Universalist-Unitarian Churches and hence the name. There long-time amateur folk-singers and a few aspiring new-comers gather to sing a few songs each and maybe occasionally get a longer stint as a feature doing perhaps eight to ten songs. Some things never change though as their reward is whatever cash turns up in the “basket” (or hat) that is sent around the audience just like in the old days. Sid assumed that Laura was still plucking away somewhere he did not know since she had left one afternoon leaving only a note saying that she had had to “fine herself””-alone  and that she would contact him when she landed in some stable spot. She never did and Sid reluctantly moved on.)   

Mona having heard the song exactly once when Sid had the car radio on to one of the faded folk radio stations and the song came on as she was arguing with him about when he was going to take her to California (her California really Hollywood and Los Angeles if you need to know). She didn’t like the fact that Laura had liked the song and had been to Mendocino before she had and would not listen when Sid tried to play it on his car CD player as they got closer to the place on this trip. Moreover she was reserving judgment, her standard being very different from Sid’s, on the relationship between the song and the place.

And that last point, the point for Sid anyway, was exactly how the song and the place connected. Was the real source of his wonder, his wonder like some old Dutchman seeing for the first time as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in one of his books the “fresh green breast of land” and the promise that it held, about old Lena back in the tired old East. Did she too long like he had to be done with Eastern pressures and pitfalls. To say to hell with the ticky-tack world Malvina Reynolds observed out in that 1950s Frisco suburban night.  Could Lena take time to stop worrying about where the money would come from for rent, to pay the utilities, hell to pay the performers and stop them from having to play for the foolish “basket” like when they had just started out on some forlorn street in Cambridge, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Old Town or the Village. Stop all of that madness, stop the blues from whence she came, and head West, head to South Bend for a minute, head out over the Rockies and suck in the breezes of the new land, of the new dispensation. Yeah, Sid bet though that Lena never got to the West, never could leave her cats, never could get that café out of her system, and would probably fret even if she only went out for a week or so.

As they, Sid and his new friend Mona, approached the out rock outskirts of Mendocino the town in the distance, he wondered, seriously wondered whether Mona would ask him someday to speak of Mendocino, to let the place get under her skin, to let the rocks save her soul and wash her clean like in some bygone day some religious revival would have put her heart on fire. Yeah, speak to me of Mendocino.