Fallbrook Fireside Chats
The story of a small town and a big fire
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Author’s Note
On 22 October 2007, the Santa Ana winds blew a voracious wildfire into the east end of Fallbrook, California, as the town’s entire population was evacuated to the west — all except those who didn’t like being told what to do, those too ornery to have friends in safer places and those who saw adventure in staying put. Although the fire was damnably real, ultimately consuming two hundred and six homes, Fireside Chats is indeed a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual Fallbrookians or events other than the fire is a wishful figment of the reader’s imagination.
Good morning, friends, and welcome to Fallbrook the Friendly Village.
Fallbrook is a small town, best known, if at all, for avocados and racism. Since discovering the place so many moons ago, I’ve thought the combination compelling, almost cosmic. Does one somehow balance the other? Perhaps bigotry and an oft-maligned fruit are not so much a burden for my little community to bear. And, yes, the avocado is one of our many fruits, but I suppose that’s an inside joke. Indeed, over the years, I’ve become tolerant of those who remark on “the illegals, the damn liberals and the fags,” a remnant, perhaps, of my dearly besotted and now departed mother’s advice to love the unlovely or, more likely, a function of my adamant desire to avoid the incarceration inherent in taking a poke at those who annoy me. And if I annoy them? So be it.
As for the avocados, they’re actually quite yummy, really a dreamy palatal delight. They’re particularly fine tenderly mashed into buttered brown rice with a soupçon of tree-ripened lime picked just before dinner, a garnish of fresh cilantro, perhaps a crisp little Pinot Grigio — if only I could partake, but alas no (my fabulosity diminishes by the ounce, so my AA brothers tell me). Or try them simply halved and pitted, the soft, gentle green spooned right to your eager tongues, Dears. Yum, yum!
Whatever our sins — venial, cardinal, imagined — our avocados temper us, forcing us to contemplate nature as we slowly trail packinghouse flatbeds and growers’ trucks stacked high with Fallbrook’s produce; as we hug the winding double line in fuel-greedy cars eager to pass caravans of bicycling pickers bowed with age and occupation. They tote lunchboxes and hope, which most commuters don’t see. But the harvest and the harvesters, they tether us to the earth, to our so-subtle seasons, to our odd and uncalculated blend of people and proclivities, to the terms of our town.
And it is a town awash in community, community as deep and as raging as the floodwaters of the Santa Margarita River — outlandish, annoying, creative, eccentric, prejudiced, diverse and delightful community. This is our town. Here, where people who love to hate are surely outnumbered by those who simply love. Here, where the businesses can barely keep their doors open (if we’d all just shop Fallbrook first!). Here, where every child knows the avocado is a fruit. Here, where we were baptized one recent October in waves of fire crashing across our hills and canyons, driven by desert winds in the sere heat of autumn. And the waters of the Santa Margarita were an impotent trickle.
These are a few of our stories, shared that you might know us at all.
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©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
