I remember that first day Robert and I found Lake County. We were searching for an inexpensive weekend place. We needed to be close enough to Oakland to keep an eye on our house there, since there was no chance of selling it anytime soon. We drove into Lakeport past the sparkling lake and ended up in Library Park. We sipped wine in a nearby caf? that afternoon and thought we had stumbled on Nirvana. My husband declared this was the place we had been searching for, beautiful scenery, clean, seemingly safe and close enough to SF that he could get to a company office if necessary. Looking out at the sun setting over Clear Lake I felt almost like I had been transported back to the Minnesota lake towns of my childhood.
We started looking for a house. We looked all over Lakeport; it had always been my husband”s dream to live in a small town. Unfortunately, our meager budget didn”t hold up too well in Lakeport and eventually we settled on a more rural area in Kelseyville. The first time we saw the house I said “No, Robert, this house needs too much work, it looks exactly like it did when it was built in 1978.” But my husband loved it; the house had no close neighbors, a view of the volcano, even a small slice of the lake could be seen from the deck. He was sold.
We headed up right before Labor Day; we planned to stay for two weeks. Get the house set up, dishes in the kitchen, sheets on the bed, etc. The time passed in a flash and Robert returned to work. I decided to stay in Lake County and work on the house. I had my dog and felt relatively safe at least until I heard the first whoop of the siren from my deck the second night after Robert left. I jumped up and started walking the length of the deck looking for the police car on the road. I couldn”t see anything, not a car, no one on foot, and certainly no police car. I heard it twice more that night and locked up extra tight before going to bed.
The next day I ran into a neighbor and asked if he had heard a siren last night. “You heard a police siren?” “Yes, the whoop, whoop an officer gives when he wants to pull over someone on the street corner, maybe a drug dealer or a gang member.” The neighbor slowly looked me up and down, I could sense he didn”t think I”d heard a police car, but all he said as he turned toward his house was “you have a nice day”.
The whoops continued sporadically. One evening as I was cleaning up in the kitchen I heard the whoop of a siren coming from the back yard. I whirled instantly and threw open the back door, my dog ran out ahead of me ? darting madly into a flock of quail that started whooping excitedly. It was then I realized I had not been hearing a police siren at all, I had been hearing the quail. I remember letting out a long sigh, it was funny, but it was also sad. I had lived in the Oakland war zone so long that I could no longer distinguish a police siren from a bird. It seemed clear I needed a long rest.
Two weeks later my husband returned and started settling into life by the lake. After a few days he ran in from the deck one afternoon “Mary, I don”t want to upset you, but I heard a police siren. I think the police might be on that road that runs on the hill above our back yard.” Smiling, I got up and extended my hand, pulling him outside to meet the quail.
Mary Becker is a retired San Francisco business owner who recently moved to Lake County.
