Where From?
Loyalton, California
In November, 2001, I found myself at the Sacramento airport, with a ticket to Edmonton via SFO, parking.return from Calgary via DEN, in plenty of time for the United Express, except….my passport, mandatory post 9/11, was in my car in long-term.
United didn’t care, so long as I knew that I was on my own upon arrival in San Francisco,
The nice people at Air Canada were Nice, assured me that I was welcome to fly with them to Edmonton, but asked me to please be at the airport in Calgary as early as I good because the nice people at the Canadian outposts of U.S. immigration were not always particularly Nice.
So I greeted the bored INS guy at his desk in an empty terminal at the Calgary airport. I grovelled an apology as best I could. He asked, rather indifferently, for my social security number.
I gave it, and he asked for my birthplace.
Loyalton, California
He had never heard of such a place, while claiming that he knew Northern California well. “What’s it near?”
I told him about 40 miles north of Truckee, which he claimed to know.
Since it is north of Truckee and in California it is obviously north and east of Reno, Nevada.
“Obviously,” he said.
I began to appreciate how his INS had earned the reputation of “not always particularly Nice.”
“Give me someplace else,” he demanded, burnishing the reputation.
”We’re getting into some pretty small towns now,” I warned, envisaging Chilcoot. “The biggest in the neighborhood is Portola.. Do you know where Portola is?”
”Of course I do.”
”I mean Portola the train town in the mountains, not Portola Valley, the horsey suburb of Palo Alto.”
“That’s the one. A river runs through it.”
I smelled fishy business and expressed astonishment at the depth and breadth of his geographical knowledge.
Warming to the task, now in a helpful mood, and no longer bored, he proposed:
”You’re driving down the road and you come to the Sattley Cash Store. If you turn right does this get you to this Loyalton place you keep talking about?”
”No, you made a wrong turn in Sierraville. If you had turned right you would have got to Loyalton. How do you know where the Sattley Cash Store is?”
His father had worked at the box factory at the Graeagle Mill. The family lived in Clio. He was in the 9th grade at Portola High when the mill closed, and the family moved to McCloud (Shasta County).
He had been at Portola High just long enough to learn correct treatment of strays from Dogtown (a name he knew)..
He asked me, Nicely, to please keep my passport with me next time I came to Canada since “you and I are the only two people in Canada who have even heard of Loyalton.”
Or Portola, I might have added, had I not wished to return to the United States that day.