Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

A man wanted in connection to numerous burglaries in the Bayside community is now in custody.

Carriedo.

On Dec. 16, 2022, at about 6:14 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a property on Idyle Bear Lane in Bayside for the report of wanted burglary suspect, 41-year-old Emiliano Ruiz Carriedo, being detained by a community member.

Deputies arrived and learned that Carriedo and a second suspect, 31-year-old Hanna Brooke Jean Hall, were found trespassing on the property. Upon seeing deputies, Carriedo attempted to run, however, he was quickly taken into custody. While searching Carriedo, deputies located burglary tools. Hall was also taken into custody without incident.    

Hall.

Carriedo was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on five counts of vehicle theft (VC 10851(a)), vandalism (PC 594(b)(1)), possession of burglary tools (PC 466) and trespassing (PC 602(m)), in addition to warrant charges of burglary (PC 459/461(a)). He is being held on a $150,000 bail.

Hall was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of trespassing (PC 602(m)).

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office would like to thank the Bayside community and the multiple Neighborhood Watch groups in this area for their continued collaboration, allowing for the successful apprehension of Carriedo.

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

###

Roxanne Grago’s fifth-grade students at Lake Marie Elementary should be able to read a short story, analyze it, and support their analyses with examples from the text.

But Grago said that during school closures and other pandemic-era disruptions, students fell behind academically. Today, they struggle to interpret the meaning of a story because they didn’t master the basics of reading. Many didn’t receive adequate instruction in phonics, the practice of sounding out words, when they were in full-time remote learning in third grade.

“That’s another reason why my students aren’t progressing,” Grago said. “You don’t teach phonics in fourth and fifth grade.”

Across California, teachers like Grago are struggling to get their students back on track after they missed large chunks of reading instruction in third grade — a pivotal year for literacy, when students transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Reading at grade level by third grade ensures they can understand their science and history textbooks in later grades.

The stakes are high for getting students caught up. Studies show that students who can’t read at grade level by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school as well as earn smaller salaries and have lower standards of living as adults.

“When students missed the most crucial year for learning to read, the system was never set up to help support them,” said Shervaughnna Anderson-Byrd, the director of UCLA’s California Reading & Literature Project. “They came back to a system that assumed they had received instruction.”

“That’s another reason why my students aren’t progressing. You don’t teach phonics in fourth and fifth grade.”
— Roxanne Grago, fifth-grade teacher at Lake Marie Elementary

State standardized test data released in recent months show Grago isn’t the only teacher trying to help students recover fundamental reading skills. California’s Smarter Balanced tests are given to almost all students in grades three through eight and grade eleven every year. They measure whether students have mastered state standards for math and English language arts. Students take the assessments every spring with scores released the following school year, usually in the fall.

The test was canceled in spring 2020 and was optional in 2021. The spring 2022 test results provided the first comprehensive look at how much students fell behind since the start of the pandemic.

Both math and English language arts scores dropped, but no other subject controls how well students learn other subjects than foundational reading. Among all grade levels, state data show third-graders saw the steepest declines in English language arts: Comparing 2019 to 2022, the share of third-graders meeting or exceeding standards dropped from 49% to 42%.

Among California school districts that tested more than 100 third-graders, South Whittier Elementary’s third-graders saw the biggest drop. In 2019, 36% of third-graders in the district met or exceeded English language arts standards. In 2022, that number plummeted by more than half, to under 18%.

Remote learning and pandemic disruptions had disparate impacts for English learners and low-income students, who are more likely to be Black and Latino. At South Whittier, about a third of students are English learners and nearly 90% of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

Closing the achievement gap for Black, Latino and low-income students has long been the goal of policymakers in California. Under the state’s education funding formula, public schools serving more low-income families, English learners and foster children get more money from the state. But students in those groups were more likely to fall behind during remote learning due to a lack of internet access, language barriers and mental health challenges.

In the early months of the pandemic, teachers taught lessons to faces on computer screens, but some students turned their cameras off. While some students managed to keep up, some had to work out of cars in Starbucks parking lots for a reliable Wi-Fi signal. And others just disappeared from this virtual version of school, forced to take care of siblings or work to help pay rent.

Statewide, the achievement gap between Latino students and white students on the Smarter Balanced tests grew slightly. Latino students in third grade saw a slightly steeper drop in test scores than third-graders overall. They went from 38% in 2019 to 31% of students meeting or exceeding standards in spring 2022. Black third-graders saw less of a decline, but they have the smallest percentage of students who met or exceeded English language arts standards, at 27% in spring 2022.

“This becomes about social justice and race,” Anderson-Byrd said. “Our Black and brown children are suffering the most with low reading scores. Especially our Black children.”

Two years ago, Grago’s students were in third grade and should have mastered phonics and started reading for comprehension. But that school year, Lake Marie Elementary School in the South Whittier School District had moved to full-time remote learning, a period of tumultuous and disrupted instruction for students statewide.

Grago had the same students last year when they were in fourth grade. She said her students have gotten closer to reading at grade level since last year, but about a quarter of them still struggle with phonics.

“We did very little phonics instruction last year, but I should’ve done more,” Grago said. “Now they definitely need it.”

Snowballing learning loss

Even though many students are far below grade level in reading ability, California’s education system requires teachers to meet specific instruction standards for each grade. Because the state assesses districts on these standards through the Smarter Balanced tests, teachers feel unable to spend more time teaching students the material they may have missed in past years.

“Our system is not designed for the individual child,” Anderson-Byrd said. “Our system is designed for the system.”

The South Whittier School District requires fifth-grade teachers to grade students on 54 standards across all subjects. In English language arts, students should be able to compare two characters from a story, synthesize information from multiple sources and identify the main ideas of a written work. Grago said these requirements leave little time for catch-up.

“I’ve been looking at what they have to learn in fifth grade, and it’s harder to fit in phonics,” Grago said. “It just keeps snowballing.”

“I feel bad handing the middle school teachers these students. Because I don’t know how they’re going to make up the losses.”
— Emily Thompson, fifth-grade teacher at Lake Marie Elementary

Educators and experts have widely referred to this missed instruction as “learning loss.” Teachers tasked with helping students catch up while meeting mandated standards feel students will never recover what they lost, especially in literacy.

Emily Thompson, who teaches sixth grade at Lake Marie, said the typical student in her class reads at a fourth-grade level. Up until last month, the average reading level for her class was third grade. She said she’s “genuinely afraid” of her students’ inability to read at grade level before they move onto middle school.

“I feel bad handing the middle school teachers these students,” she said. “Because I don’t know how they’re going to make up the losses that I couldn’t make up.”

Thus far, teachers say absences and positive COVID cases are down this school year compared to January’s omicron surge, but students still have a hard time focusing in class after a year of learning from home.

Thompson’s students sit on the ground in front of her facing the white board. They’re reading a novel together called “Esperanza Rising,” about a Mexican family that immigrates to California during the Great Depression. One of her students is learning English and follows along with a Spanish version of the book. There are several students talking to each other instead of paying attention as Thompson tries to start a discussion about the novel’s characters.

“In terms of COVID-related disruptions, this year has been much more stable,” she said. “But I would say student behaviors have been worse. It makes it more difficult to teach.”

Getting extra help

Carmen Gonzalez is the reading interventionist at Lake Marie. She sits at the head of a semi-circular table with half a dozen students around her. She sounds out words on a card while her students repeat after her. Students at Lake Marie who are furthest behind get pulled out of their classrooms and work with Gonzalez for half an hour a day.

“When you enter a first-grade classroom today, it feels like you’re entering a kindergarten classroom,” she said, describing the literacy levels of current students.

It might take a couple of more years to undo the academic fallout of the past three years and get students reading at grade level, Gonzalez said, but she’s encouraged by the progress her students have made this year.

“Children are like sponges,” she said. Before the pandemic, they used to be more embarrassed about having to meet with her, but now getting extra help has become more normalized.

“They may feel that, ‘Oh, I’m going there because I didn’t do well on a test,’” she said. Eventually, Gonzalez said, students adapt to and start to enjoy the ritual of working with her.

But Grago said students need much more than half an hour a day.

“I don’t think it’s a significant amount of time,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s really making a difference.”

Students can also stay after school for extra help, but Grago said only about half of the students who really need it will stay. In general, making extra help optional outside of the school day creates inequities. For example, students whose parents have flexible schedules will be more likely to get rides home if they stay after school than those who don’t.

Intervention should not be optional, Anderson-Byrd said. “It means that you’re already selecting some students to fall behind.”

Thompson said that last year, the school had three reading specialists, but two moved to teaching classes. The school hasn’t been able to fill those positions, leaving Gonzalez as the sole specialist.

“We’re kinda stuck. We do the best we can,” Thompson said. “But truly we aren’t doing enough because there aren’t enough resources.”

Anderson-Byrd said it’s possible to recover learning loss while teaching students new material. She’s seen some principals use COVID relief funding from the federal government to hire several reading specialists and conduct frequent assessments of all students.

Some schools focus on literacy across all subjects. Science, math and social studies instruction all can be opportunities to focus on reading, Anderson-Byrdd said.

“There is no normal. It’s almost criminal to throw them back into the system and expect things to be normal.”
— Shervaughnna Anderson-Byrd, the director of UCLA’s California Reading & Literature Project

South Whittier School District administrators are confident that test scores will bounce back closer to pre-pandemic levels by the spring. Rebecca Rodriguez, associate superintendent of educational services at South Whittier School District, said the 2021-22 school year was far from normal and not a good baseline.

“You can’t have a knee-jerk reaction to last year’s scores,” Rodriguez said. “The scores are going to be different this year.”

Experts agree that last year’s test scores don’t determine the fate of students who endured the pandemic.

“We need to look at the data four years out since the start of the pandemic to see how persistent this drop-off is,” said P. David Pearson, an education professor at UC Berkeley. “We need to look at the current fourth-graders two years from now.”

In the meantime, the current crisis in literacy presents an opportunity to rethink reading instruction, Anderson-Byrd said. Most aspiring elementary school teachers receive about 10 weeks or one semester of training in English Language Arts, which includes reading and writing, during their one-year credentialing programs. She said reading instruction deserves a year-long course with more emphasis on developmental psychology, which focuses on how young brains work.

Additionally, because California serves so many English learners, Anderson-Byrd said reading instruction courses should also focus on language acquisition. That means first training teachers on better assessing their students’ language abilities and identifying students who need extra help from language specialists.

“I hear a lot of teachers saying they just want to get back to normal, but for some kids that’s two years of instruction they missed,” Anderson-Byrd said. “There is no normal. It’s almost criminal to throw them back into the system and expect things to be normal.”

###

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Chinook salmon haven’t spawned in the McCloud River for more than 80 years. But last summer, thousands of juveniles were born in the waters of this remote tributary, miles upstream of Shasta Dam.

The young Chinook salmon — some now finger-sized smolts in mid-migration toward the Pacific Ocean — are part of a state and federal experiment that could help make the McCloud a salmon river once again.

Winter-run Chinook were federally listed as endangered in 1994, but recent years have been especially hard for the fish. Facing severe drought and warm river conditions, most winter-run salmon born naturally in the Sacramento River have perished over the past three years.

So restoring Chinook to the McCloud has become an urgent priority for state and federal officials. In the first year of a drought-response project, about 40,000 salmon eggs were brought back to the McCloud, a picturesque river in the wilderness of the Cascade mountains.

Iconic in Northern California, Chinook salmon are critical pieces of the region’s environment. They are consumed by sea lions, orcas and bears, and they still support a commercial fishing industry. Chinook remain vital to the culture and traditional foods of Native Americans, including the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, whose historical salmon fishing grounds included the McCloud River.

Conservation experts say the McCloud’s cold, clean water holds great promise as a potential Chinook refuge — and perhaps even a future stronghold for the species. Restoring salmon there is considered critical to the species’ survival, since they now spawn only in low-lying parts of the Central Valley near Redding and Red Bluff, where it’s often too hot and dry for most newborn fish to survive.

“We probably won’t be able to maintain winter-run chinook on the valley floor forever,” said Matt Johnson, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Johnson spent much of the past five months camped beside the incubation site on the lower McCloud River, guarding the eggs and emerging fry and overseeing the experiment, which is a collaboration between his agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.

So far, the project, biologists say, has gone well. About 90% of the eggs hatched, and the young fish have reportedly thrived in the McCloud, growing faster than hatchery fish.

Recent rain storms have boosted river flows, which may increase the odds that salmon will reach the ocean this year, escaping the dangerous water pumps and predators of the Delta.

The project is the first step in a long-term plan that may involve capturing adult winter-run Chinook in the lower Sacramento and transporting them to the McCloud to spawn. It’s a difficult and risky venture for the fish but it may be the best shot the species has at survival.

“The winter run is headed for extinction, no question, if we don’t develop an artificial system for keeping it going,” said Peter Moyle, a fish biologist at UC Davis who has studied Central Valley fish since the 1970s. He co-authored a report warning that many of California’s native salmon and trout are likely to vanish this century as the environment warms.

A genetically unique run of salmon, winter-run Chinook once spawned in the McCloud in great numbers, along with other seasonal runs of the fish.

“The winter run is headed for extinction, no question, if we don’t develop an artificial system for keeping it going.”
— Peter Moyle, UC Davis fish biologist

Even though the Central Valley’s river system, which includes the McCloud River, marks the southern limit of the Chinook’s range, it was once their stronghold. Between 1 and 2 million fish, some weighing 50 pounds or more, spawned in the tributaries of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers each year before the Gold Rush.

The fish have dwindled to a fraction of their historic abundance. Spawning numbers of winter-run Chinook dropped to fewer than 200 in the early 1990s. They’ve rebounded, but their future remains in doubt.

The McCloud — a state-designated wild and scenic river — used to offer prime habitat, with deep gravel beds for egg-laying and year-round flows of clean, cold water from Mount Shasta. Construction of Shasta Dam in the 1940s – and Keswick Dam shortly after – changed all this by locking ocean-run salmon out of some 500 miles of productive high-elevation habitat.

The salmon became confined instead to the lower reaches of the Sacramento River system, where they did not previously spawn. Blazing temperatures in the summer — when the winter-run fish lay and fertilize their eggs near Redding and Red Bluff — have made it difficult for salmon to thrive. Chinook, especially in their early life stages, are sensitive to high temperatures.

Only with the support of hatcheries have California salmon remained abundant enough to be fished.

For decades, fishing groups, agencies and Winnemem Wintu tribal leaders have pondered the possibility of reintroducing salmon into the McCloud. Finally, last spring and summer, after two poor spawning years in a row — and with a third one looking likely — federal and state agencies took action.

Last year “temperature modeling going into the winter-run spawning season showed a lot of uncertainty — basically a 50-50 chance of being able to maintain suitable temperatures for winter-run eggs to develop in the river,” Johnson said.

A bumpy trip for precious salmon eggs

Because winter-run Chinook are listed as endangered, fishery agencies are scrambling to save the fish. Last spring they transported about three dozen adult winter-run Chinook trapped at the base of Keswick Dam, just north of Redding, about 50 miles southeast to the north fork of Battle Creek, a tributary near Red Bluff where waters typically run cool and clear.

They also launched a more complicated effort: They took winter-run Chinook eggs from adult fish at a federal salmon hatchery and transported them up and over Shasta Dam to a remote national forest campground next to the McCloud River.

They came in two batches of 20,000 – the first by truck on a bumpy, 80-mile ride. A helicopter delivered the second clutch. “We wanted to make sure the transportation phase went smoothly,” Johnson said.

The fertilized eggs were incubated in protective cages submerged in river water for weeks. The scientists even placed an electrified barrier around the eggs to protect them from foraging black bears.

Of the 40,000 eggs, Johnson said, about 36,000 emerged as fry. In late summer, the biologists released them into the wild.

The scientists wanted the fish to spend time in McCloud, both to utilize its invertebrate food sources and to undergo the olfactory imprinting process that enables migrating adult salmon to find their birth streams years later. Indeed, it is this process that gives salmon their remarkable homing powers and would truly make these fish McCloud River salmon.

In an undisturbed ecosystem, the fish in the river would simply swim downstream, through San Francisco Bay, and out into the ocean. But this unique scenario, where a dam and reservoir block their migration, called on a different approach that required human help.

State and federal scientists had to recapture the salmon and release them into the lower Sacramento River. The Fish and Wildlife team placed several traps on the McCloud about 20 miles below the release site and managed to capture 1,600 of them. They then drove the fish downstream and released them into the Sacramento River. If all goes well, some of the young salmon will return from the ocean in two to four years.

The agencies plan to repeat the project next year, transporting more Chinook eggs up to the McCloud and again hauling the young fish back downstream. “We intend to do it again, and do it better,” Johnson said.

To improve the program’s effectiveness, scientists are now addressing some unanswered questions from the experiment.

Rachel Johnson, a biologist with NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, wants to know how many of the salmon released at the incubation site made it as far downstream as the fish trap array. This will reveal the survival rate of the released fish and help Johnson and her colleagues better understand the quality of the McCloud’s habitat.

To do this, she is studying data on daily river flow rates and capture rates in the traps, then combining this information with known effectiveness of the types of gear they used. That, she said, would “give us the number that swam past.”

From what they already know about the size of the fish upon recapture, it’s looking good.

“The fish in the McCloud were 30 to 40% larger than the average winter-run fish that were being caught at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam,” she said, referring to a structure downstream of Shasta.

A gem in ‘a string of pearls’

A great deal of work has already been done to help Sacramento River salmon. State agencies and conservation groups have restored floodplains and side-channels, where slow-moving water provides young fish with abundant food and shelter from predators. This work often involves removing or carving notches in levees so that river water can flow over farm fields.

Johnson sees this connected system of restored habitat parcels as a “string of pearls,” and says the McCloud might be one of its more valuable gems.

Better still, the McCloud’s geographic location at the upper end of the watershed could have a beneficial trickle-down effect through the watershed and the early life stages of Chinook, ultimately improving their life-long survival rates.

“If you can have such highly productive, good-growth habitat so high in the system, it starts the fish off in such a strong condition,” she said.

Protecting areas lower in the watershed are important to Chinook, too. Research by Jacob Katz, a biologist with the group California Trout, shows that floodplains restored in the lower stretches of the Sacramento watershed have helped salmon. Smolts grow faster on inundated floodplains than they do in the river’s channelized mainstem.

Katz said reintroducing Chinook to the high-elevation spawning areas in the McCloud will complement the work he has done, and vice-versa.

“Both spawning habitat and rearing habitat are necessary, yet insufficient on their own,” he said. “We need to restore every link in the habitat chain.”

Ambitious future plans

The summer’s salmon relocation effort was technically not a reintroduction project but an emergency drought action required by the state and federal endangered species acts and intended to shield winter-run Chinook from drought impacts.

However, it’s likely that the McCloud effort of last summer will develop in years ahead into a full-fledged salmon reintroduction program.

Randy Beckwith, head of the state Department of Water Resources’ Riverine Stewardship branch, said “the juvenile collection piece is the most difficult part” of a potential long-term McCloud River reintroduction plan.

While the state and federal fishery scientists did their work a few miles upstream, Beckwith’s agency tested a $1.5 million contraption dubbed the Juvenile Salmonid Collection System in the narrow McCloud River arm of Lake Shasta. The setup is a floating array designed to deflect floating debris, like logs and trash, while a dangling synthetic curtain funnels the young salmon into a dead-end live trap. The trap component has not been installed yet due to regulatory constraints associated with handling endangered species, but the agency has plans to do so, possibly next summer.

While traps of the sort already used on the McCloud are designed to catch a sample fraction of a river’s fish, the system the state is working on will hopefully catch all of them.

A successful McCloud River salmon reintroduction would also mean giving adult salmon access to the river. Currently, Keswick Dam, just upstream of Redding, marks the end of the line for free-swimming adult salmon. If they are to get beyond this point, fishery managers will need to do one of two things: build a stairway, called a fish ladder or fishway, which leads migrating salmon around a dam, or trap the fish and truck them upstream.

Ladders would give the salmon autonomy to migrate on their own. But Shasta Dam is a 600-foot-high barrier, so hauling them instead would be much cheaper. It is generally considered the only feasible solution on the table, although federal officials have no firm plans to do so yet.

But scientists have questioned the effectiveness of trap-and-haul programs. In a 2017 paper, Moyle and a colleague, biologist Robert Lusardi, warned that it can cause high mortality rates in transferred fish, both adults going upstream and juveniles coming downstream. A trap-and-haul program for salmon “should proceed with extreme caution,” they wrote.

There’s another option, too. Battle Creek, which flows off Mount Lassen’s south flank, could also serve as a lifeline for winter-run Chinook. It was once an important spawning stream and, like most California rivers, is now riddled with dams.

But unlike Keswick and Shasta, they are small. One dam was removed in 2010, and Katz said there are plans to remove or modify the rest to provide Chinook with unassisted passage.

“Battle Creek offers an opportunity to have a second population of winter-run fish that doesn’t need to be trucked – a completely volitional population,” he said. “Battle Creek could be the epitome of a 21st century reconciled watershed.”

###

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

[Just discovering this LoCO feature?
Find the beginning by clicking here.] 

CLEAN BREAK

by

Lionel White

CHAPTER THREE

1

For a full five minutes after she heard the outside door close, Sherry Peatty sat motionless on the bed. There was a thoughtful, speculative expression in her usually very pretty, but listless eyes. The index finger of her right hand played with the tip of her small right ear.

At last she made up her mind. She was out of bed then, with a quick soundless movement, and she thrust her small feet into a pair of high heeled slippers and pulled a silk robe over her shoulders. She crossed the room and went down the hallway to the living room. She didn’t have to look up the telephone number in the book.

The man who answered the phone said that Val wasn’t in and asked who was calling. She told him her first name but it didn’t seem to mean anything to him. He hadn’t seen Val and he wasn’t expecting him. Also he didn’t know where he might be. Sherry used the telephone book then and tried a couple of bars and a cocktail lounge. Exasperated, she went back to the original number. She was about to dial it, when her own telephone rang suddenly from the box next to the table and she jumped, startled.

It was Val.

“You alone?”

She said at once that she was.

He told her he had just got the message that she had called. He wanted to know where George was.

“He’s gone out,” she said. “I’ve got to see you at once. Right away, Val.”

“Something wrong?” the voice asked, lazy, almost disinterested.

“Listen,” she said, “right away. Nothing wrong—just that I got to see you.”

The man’s voice was smooth, but still only half curious.

“I told you, honey,” he said, “that until you’re ready to leave that husband of yours, I don’t want any part of anything. I don’t want to get…”

“Listen,” Sherry said, urgency making her speak swiftly. “You’ll be interested. You’ll be plenty interested. Where can I meet you, Val? How soon?”

There was a long silence and then he spoke.

“Make it in front of the Plaza, say at a quarter to eight. I’ll drive by.”

She said that she’d be there.

Back in her bedroom and sitting before the dressing table, she thought, God damn him, if it wasn’t for George, he’d never dare treat me this way. Oddly enough, however, she didn’t blame Val—she blamed it all on George.

The thing which had first intrigued her about Val Cannon had been his colossal indifference. A woman who had never had the slightest difficulty in attracting men, she had at once been intrigued by the tall, dark, rather ugly man. She’d met him through the Malcolms; had run into him a half dozen times at their apartment during the afternoons. He and Bill Malcolm had some sort of connection and the two of them frequently hung around during the day time and played the horses over the phone, getting the results on the radio.

The man’s overwhelming casualness had first piqued her and then acted almost as a challenge.

It had finally happened one time when he had been alone in the Malcolms’ place and she had knocked at the door. They’d had a drink or two and one thing had led to another. They’d ended up in bed together and she had been pleased to note that the careless attitude of studied indifference had rapidly changed. But it had only changed for that one afternoon.

Later, they’d met outside several times.

Val drove a Cadillac convertible; he dressed expensively and he was a fast man with a dollar. He never talked about himself, never told her what he did or how he made his living. She soon took it for granted that he was mixed up in some sort of racket or other.

They hung around cocktail lounges, occasionally went out to the track together—staying well away from George’s window, of course. Once he had taken her to a bar up on Ninth Avenue, a dimly lighted, tough looking place. He’d told her that he owned a piece of it. From the looks of the men hanging around the booths and silently staring at her, she’d had the impression it was a sort of gang hangout. Val had given her the telephone number of the place and told her if she ever wanted to get in contact with him, to call him there and leave a message. Today had been the first time she’d called.

It would be the first time she’d seen him now in several weeks. In fact, since the night they’d spent together at the hotel. Val, that night, had made himself clear.

“It’s like this, kid,” he told her, “I like you. Like you a lot. But the trouble is, I’m liking you too damn much. I got no objections to laying some other guy’s wife, but I do object to falling in love with another guy’s doll. So from now on, I think it’s going to be best if we just forget about things.”

She’d tried to protest, to tell him that George, her husband, didn’t mean anything to her; that in fact, she couldn’t even stand to have him touch her any more.

“O.K.,” Val had said. “Leave him then.”

“And if I leave him, what then? Do we…”

He’d looked over at her, his eyes indifferent, almost cold.

“I’m not making bargains,” he said softly. “Leave him and we’ll see what happens. I’m not going to horse trade. You get rid of that bum you’re married to; get yourself free and clear. Then you and I can start fresh.”

She’d been furious, burned up. She’d wanted to spit on him and curse him. But she was crazier than ever about him and he must have known the power he had over her. He hadn’t moved an inch.

When they’d left the hotel the next morning, he’d dropped her off a few blocks from her apartment.

“Lemme hear from you,” he’d said.

She knew what he had meant. Let me hear from you when you have left your husband.

She had, at last, made up her mind to leave George Peatty. Her decision came on the very afternoon that he had come home and broken down and told her about the plan to rob the race track.

The doorman at the Plaza eyed her suspiciously as she walked back and forth in front of the main entrance of the hotel. She looked down several times at the tiny wrist watch and she knew that she still had a couple of minutes to wait. The doorman had asked if he could call her a cab, but she had shaken her head.

She was standing still, tapping her foot in irritation, when the Cadillac pulled around the circle and stopped opposite her. She started for the car, but the doorman reached in front of her and opened the door handle. He tipped his hat as she got in.

“Damn it, Val,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t make me meet you on the street like this. That damned flunky thought I was out on the town.”

Val laughed.

“Where to, kid?” he asked.

“Any quiet spot where we can talk,” she said.

He nodded and was silent for a time as he swung the car into the traffic heading across town.

“Decided to dump old George at last?” he finally asked. 

She looked at him, a surge of sudden anger coming over her. But when she spoke, her voice was calm.

“Something more important than that, Val,” she said. “That is, if you consider money—say a million or so—important.”

He looked over at her quickly and whistled under his breath.

“We better find a quiet spot,” he said softly.

Twenty minutes later they were seated in a table-high booth in an almost deserted Chinese restaurant on Upper Broadway. Canned music drifted from a speaker on the wall over their heads and drowned out the sound of their voices as they talked in low tones. Neither did more than toy with the dishes in front of them.

Val listened quietly as Sherry told him of her conversation with George.

For several seconds, after she was through, he sat silent and thoughtful. Finally he looked up.

“You mean,” he said, “that your husband told you seriously that he and some mob are planning on knocking over the race track? I just can’t believe it.”

She looked at him, annoyed.

“You can believe it all right,” she said. “George may be a fool—in fact he is—but he’s no liar. Don’t forget, he works at the track; he’d be the logical guy to use as a fingerman on the job.”

Val whistled, under his breath.

“He’s crazy,” he said. “The guy’s nuts. It can’t be done.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him,” Sherry said. “But he said that it was going to be done—that the job was all set up. They got the mob and they got everything set.”

“Who’s in it with him? He can’t be masterminding it alone, that’s for sure. I thought you always told me this husband of yours was strictly a square?”

Sherry shook her head.

“You can’t tell about George,” she said. “For me—I believe him.”

Val reached for the drink he had ordered and hadn’t touched so far. He stared for a long time at the girl before speaking.

“Look,” he said finally. “What’s your angle in this? Why are you telling me about it? I should think…”

“I’m telling you for a couple of reasons,” Sherry said, her eyes bright and hard. “Until I learned of this when George got home, I was all set to leave him. I guess you know why I was leaving, too. But now things are changed. If this deal goes through—if by some miracle they do knock off the track—George will be in the chips. He’ll have plenty.”

Quickly Val interrupted her.

“That’s all he needs, isn’t it?” he said, his thin lips cynical. 

“He’d still be George,” Sherry said. “With it or without it, he’d still be George.”

Val nodded.

“And you think, that let’s say they do pull the job and that George gets his cut, maybe I could take it away from him?”

Sherry stared him straight in the face and didn’t blush. She nodded her head slowly.

“Yes,” she said. “I think you could.”

There was a long interval of silence and they picked at their food. Neither was hungry.

“How about the others—any idea who they are? Any idea when this thing is to come off?” Val asked at last.

“Only this,” Sherry said, reaching for her handbag, and taking out her lipstick to repair her face. “I know George is having a meeting with the mob tonight. While he was cleaning up in the bathroom, I went through his clothes. I found a slip of paper. It said, ‘712 East 31st Street Room 411 Eight o’clock.’“

“Address mean anything to you?”

“Nothing.”

Val took a cigar from a thin leather case. He put it in his mouth but didn’t light it. For a long time again he thought before speaking.

“Kid,” he said at last, “I think we got something. If they’re having a meeting tonight, the chances are they’ll be making final plans. Most of the mob will be there. And they’ll take plenty of time. This thing, if it’s true, is a lot bigger than you think. You’re interested in George’s cut, but sweetheart, let me tell you something. George’s cut will probably be peanuts compared with the total take.”

Sherry looked up at him then, sudden surprise on her face. 

“What we gotta know,” Val continued, “is a little more about the over-all plan. You think George will tell you anything…”

“Not a chance,” Sherry interrupted. “I could see that he was scared stiff that he’d talked as much as he did. I don’t think I’ll find out any more until it’s over and done with. George is smart enough to know that my interest isn’t in what he’s going to pull, but only in the dough that it brings in.” 

Val smiled thinly and nodded.

“Probably right,” he said. He watched her closely as he continued to speak. “What we got to know,” he said, “is who’s at that meeting on Thirty-first Street and what goes on during it.”

“You mean…”

“I mean that one of us wants to get up there and get outside the door of that room and case the place.”

Sherry nodded, hesitantly.

“You’re the baby to do it,” Val said. “If by any chance your husband does run into you—that he leaves early or something—why tell him you just didn’t believe his story in the first place. Tell him the address fell out of his pocket when he took his coat off, that you read it and thought he might be two timing you.”

Sherry laughed.

“George knows damn well I wouldn’t care if he was,” she said.

“So what if he does know. You’re smart; you can handle it.”

A half hour later they left the restaurant and Val drove downtown. He dropped Sherry at Thirty-fourth Street.

“Take a cab and get out a half a block from the place,” he said. “I gotta couple of things to do, but I’ll be in the neighborhood a little later. George comes out and if he’s got anyone with him, I want to tail them. You see what you can find out, but be careful as hell. Don’t be seen if you can help it. I won’t plan to see you again tonight, but I’ll stop by tomorrow around noon, as soon as George leaves for the track.”

Sherry was stepping into a taxi as he pulled the Caddie away from the curb and turned back uptown.

# # #

2

Only Marvin Unger looked up at him, sharp and startled, when he finished speaking. Big Mike sat solidly on the couch, his legs spread and staring at a spot of floor between his large feet. Randy Kennan stretched out in a chair, fingers interlaced in back of his neck and his eyes closed. Peatty paced back and forth at one end of the room, nervously dropping ashes on the floor.

“You mean to say,” Unger said, “that there are going to be three more guys in this? Three more guys and that we’re not to even know who they are?” He sounded incredulous. 

“That’s right,” Johnny Clay said.

Unger almost snorted.

“What the hell is this anyway,” he snapped. “I don’t get it. First, why three more; secondly, why don’t we know who they are? Don’t you trust…”

Johnny stood up suddenly and his face was hard. His voice was tense with anger as he answered.

“Listen,” he said. “Let’s get something straight. Right now! I’m running this show. All the way through. And to answer your last question first—yeah, I trust you fine. But I don’t trust the three men I’m bringing in on the deal. If you guys don’t know who they are, then you can be sure they won’t know who you are. That make sense to you?”

He stopped for a moment then and looked at the others. No one said anything.

“These guys we got to have,” he said then. “One of them I need for the job with the rifle. Somebody’s got to handle that and I don’t think any of you want to do it.”

Once more he looked at them, one after the other. Once more no one answered him.

“I need a second guy for the rumble in the lobby,” he said. “The third one runs interference for me when I leave that office. These men are not going to be in on the basic scheme. They’re getting paid to perform certain definite duties at a certain definite time. They’re not cutting in on the take. They will be paid a flat price to do a straight job.”

Kennan opened his eyes and looked at Johnny. He winked, imperceptibly and so that the others didn’t see it.

“Johnny’s right, Unger,” he said. “They don’t know who we are, or what the deal is, so much the better. And if we don’t know who they are, what’s the difference. If you don’t know something, you can’t talk about it.”

Big Mike grunted.

“We can trust Johnny to handle that end all right,” he said. 

Unger still didn’t seem satisfied.

“If they don’t know anything about the basic plan, about the job,” he asked, “then why are they doing it? How do they know they’re going to get paid if they don’t know where the dough’s coming from?”

“Simple,” Johnny said. “These boys are straight hoods. They get paid in advance. Five grand for the guy with the rifle; twenty-five hundred apiece for each of the others.”

This time they all looked up at Johnny, startled.

It was Marvin Unger, however, who spoke.

“Ten thousand dollars,” he said, aghast. “Where in the hell are you…”

Johnny cut in quick.

“Yeah, ten grand,” he said. “And cheap. For Christ sake, we’re shooting for between a million and a half and two million dollars. What the hell are you doing, screaming about a lousy ten grand?”

For the first time George Peatty spoke up.

“It isn’t that, Johnny,” he said, “it’s just that where are we going to get the ten grand from.”

Johnny looked at him coldly.

“What the hell do I care where you get it from,” he said caustically. “There are four of you—that’s twenty-five hundred apiece. You’ll just have to get it up.”

Unger interrupted angrily.

“Fine,” he said, “just get it up. So what about you—you going to get your share up too?”

Johnny went over to the couch and sat down before answering.

“Listen,” he said, at last, his voice unhurried. “Let’s get one thing straight. This is my caper; I’m setting it up, I’m doing the brain work and the planning. I’m the one who figured it out and got you guys together. I’ve worked four damned long years perfecting this thing. Also, I’m the guy who’s taking the big chance when we pull the job. I’m the guy who goes in with the chopper under his arm.

“Each one of you is working; each one has a job. You got some sort of income, some sort of legit connections. So go to the banks if you got any dough; borrow from ‘em if you haven’t. Go to the loan sharks if you can’t get it from the banks. It’s the least you can do. We’re shooting for real money; you can’t be pikers if you want in on this deal.”

He turned suddenly to Marvin Unger.

“You,” he said, “what about you? You’re supposed to be financing this thing. What the hell do you think you’re in this for—a few lousy sandwiches, a flop for a couple of weeks and a messenger service that any kid could handle? You’re too goddamn yellow to waltz in on the caper itself—the least you can do is get up some dough!”

Unger reddened and for a moment looked sheepish.

Kennan stood up and stretched.

“I’m not at all sure, Johnny,” he said, “that I can get any dough. “I’m head over …” 

Big Mike and Peatty both started to talk at once, but Johnny interrupted them.

“All right,” he said, “let’s settle it this way. We’ll bring in three more boys; cut ‘em in on the total take that you guys are splitting. It’s simple enough.”

They began to protest all at once and Johnny suddenly pounded the table in front of him.

“For Christ sake, quiet down,” he said. “You want everyone on the block to hear you?”

Unger spoke then as the others suddenly stopped talking.

“All right,” he said. “I guess it’s up to me. I’ll raise the ten grand. Only thing is,” he added petulantly, “I feel I should be reimbursed…”

Randy Kennan guffawed.

“Haw,” he said. “Reimbursed! Brother, you’re being reimbursed several hundred thousand dollars worth. However, once we pull this job and get the dough, I’m perfectly willing to see you get an extra ten off the top.”

The others agreed and Johnny turned back to the rolled up drawing lying on the table.

 

“Well, that’s that, then,” he said. “I’ll see that the contacts are made, that the three boys are arranged for. Just be sure I got the money to operate on. I’ll need half of it by the first of this next week; the other half the day before the big race.”

He reached down and picked up the roll of paper and carefully spread it out.

“This is rough,” he said. “It’s a drawing of the clubhouse and track as I remember it. Randy,” he turned toward the cop, “you got to get me a damned good street map of the whole district. And you, George, I want you and Mike to go over this drawing with me careful as hell. I want to bring it completely up to date. Add or subtract even the slightest change which may have been made. Even if it’s something as unimportant as the placing of a soda stand.”

The four men in the room crowded around him looking down at the two foot square of paper he spread out. Randy Kennan pulled a tall piano lamp over and took the shade off so that they could see better.

The room was thick with smoke and Unger began to cough. He left the table and walked to the window and started to raise it. Johnny turned toward him at once.

“Goddamn it,” he said, “keep that window closed. You want…”

“It only opens on a court,” Unger said.

“I don’t care, keep it closed.” He turned back to the table.

He reached down with the yellow pencil in his right hand so that it traced a line from the section marked off “clubhouse” to the main entrance gate.

“This,” he began, and then his voice went suddenly silent. He lifted his head and listened intently. In a moment he looked up at the others who were staring at him. He started to speak again, but quickly whirled and took three swift steps across the room. His hand reached out and he turned the snap lock on the front door of the apartment and jerked it open.

There was a quick short cry and the sound of a sudden scuffle.

A minute later and he was back in the room.

He held the girl by both arms as he pulled her in with him. She started to scream again and one of his hands reached up and covered her mouth.

“Close that door!” He snapped out the command as he half carried the girl across the room.

Randy Kennan quickly kicked the door shut. Mike and Unger stood in the center of the room, motionless and speechless. George Peatty was completely white and he weaved on his feet. He looked as though he were about to faint.

Johnny took his right hand from over the girl’s mouth and simultaneously his left hand shot out and his fist caught her flush on the chin. She sank back on the couch unconscious.

# # #

3

“Oh my God, Sherry!”

The four men took their eyes from the girl and stared at George Peatty as the words left his mouth.

Randy Kennan was the first to recover. He was across the room in a flash. He spoke as he pulled the blackjack from his hip pocket.

“You stupid, double-crossing, son of a bitch,” he said. He lifted the blackjack.

George was still staring helplessly at his wife as the weapon descended across the front of his forehead. He fell slowly to the floor.

Johnny reached the cop as his foot started back to kick the fallen man.

“Hold it,” he said. “Hold it, boy. Get the girl in the other room before she comes to. We’ll bring this bastard around and find out what this is all about. And keep it as quiet as you can. We don’t want a rumble.”

Unger was looking pale and he went over to a chair and sat down, his eyes still on the girl. Big Mike looked at Peatty for a moment and then went into the kitchen. He came back with a glass of water and threw it into the fallen man’s face.

“Whoever she is,” he said, “George knows her. But he wasn’t expecting her; he was as surprised as any of us.”

Kennan had lifted Sherry’s slight, unconscious form and carried her into the other room. He closed the door behind himself and was gone several minutes before he returned. He held a small pocketbook in his hand and was carrying a driver’s license.

“Tied her up and gagged her,” he said. “It’s his wife.”

Johnny and Mike between them had lifted George Peatty up and half sat him on the couch. He was still unconscious.

“Christ,” Mike said, “you shouldn’t of hit him so hard. You maybe fractured his skull.”

Randy grunted.

“Wish I had,” he said. “The bastard. But don’t worry. I didn’t. I know how to hit them safe.”

“Well, let’s get him so he can talk,” Johnny said. 

Unger looked up then.

“He’s supposed to be your friend, Clay,” he said, “how well …”

“I know him,” Johnny said shortly. “Let’s just get the story before we go off half cocked.”

“He must have told her,” Randy said. “The damn fool, he must have told her about the meet.”

Peatty began to groan and a moment later his eyes opened. He looked up then, dazed, for a second. His eyes cleared and he darted a glance around the room. They could see that he was looking for his wife.

Johnny reached down and grabbed him by the lapels of his coat.

“O.K., George,” he said. “O.K., boy. Let’s have it. Quick!”

Peatty looked up at him, watery blue eyes wide with fear. “Jesus, Johnny,” he said, “she must a followed me. She must have followed me here. Where…”

“She’s in the other room,” Johnny said. “Never mind about her. Just tell me; what have you told her—what does she know?”

“Nothing,” George said, stuttering to get the words out. “I swear to God she don’t know anything. She must have followed me.”

He looked up and his eyes were wide and beseeching. “Johnny—Johnny, don’t hurt her. She’s—well, she doesn’t mean anything.”

Mike walked over in front of them. He stared coldly at George.

“You give her this address?”

George shook his head violently. “God no!” he said. “I never even…”

Randy got up and slapped his face hard.

“Shut up,” he said. “God damn it, Johnny, this does it. If this bastard’s been talking…”

“I haven’t,” Peatty said. “I swear I haven’t. She followed me.”

“How much do you suppose she heard?” Johnny said.

Randy and Mike both shrugged.

“Couldn’t have heard too much,” Randy said. “But that isn’t the point. What was she doing at that door listening? Why did she come? That’s what we got to find out.”

Marvin Unger crossed the room and spoke to Johnny.

“You got to get her out of here,” he said. “We can’t have anything happen here.”

Johnny sat down on the couch and thought for several minutes. Finally he looked up.

“All right,” he said. “There’s only one thing to do. First, get Peatty out. You Randy, take him home; stick with him. Don’t let him out of your sight. Mike, you and Unger take a powder for a while. Go for a long walk. I’m going to find out what she was doing here; what she knows.”

Peatty looked over at Johnny, his eyes wild.

“God,” he said, “don’t hurt her. Don’t do anything to her!” 

“I’ll …”

Peatty interrupted him.

“Listen, Johnny,” he said. “I had the address here written down. I know it was crazy, but I thought I might forget it. She probably found it and came here. Maybe she thought I was two-timing her or something. Yeah, that was probably it. It couldn’t have anything to do with the…”

“Pipe down,” Randy said, making a threatening gesture.

“I won’t hurt her,” Johnny said. “But George, get one thing straight. I’m not letting anything interfere with this job. I’ve planned it too long; there’s too much at stake. Nothing is going to crap up this deal—you or your goddamned wife or anything else.”

“She doesn’t know anything. She…”

“I’ll find out what she knows,” Johnny said. “Get up now and go with Randy. Don’t give him no trouble. You’re telling the truth then you got nothing to worry about.”

“Johnny,” Peatty said. “Please don’t…”

Johnny Clay looked at him coldly.

“I’m going to find out what she knows,” he said. “If she knows too much, then she’s got to be cooled off until this thing is over. Someway she’s got to be cooled.”

“You can’t do it to her here,” Unger said hurriedly. “Jesus, Clay, you wouldn’t …” 

“You damned fool,” he said, “I’m not going to kill her. But I am going to find out the score. If you’re nervous, take a powder.”

Big Mike reached over and his ham-like hand grabbed Peatty by the shoulder and he pulled him to his feet.

“I’ll go along with Randy,” he said. “We’ll take George out for a ride around the park for an hour or an hour and a half. You go ahead and do what you have to do.”

A moment later he pushed the other man in front of him through the door. Randy followed on their heels.

Unger waited until they were gone and then turned to Johnny.

“I’ll go out for a while,” he said. “I don’t want to…” 

“Go ahead,” Johnny said.

He turned to the bedroom as the other man put his hat on.

“Don’t let this throw you,” he said, over his shoulder. “Peatty himself is all right. I know he’s O.K. About the dame—well, we’ll soon find out. When you’re shooting for this kind of dough,” he added, “you have to expect trouble. It never comes easy. And I’d just as soon have the trouble now as later.”

Unger didn’t answer. He didn’t look happy as he left the apartment.

Johnny hesitated for a minute and then turned and went to the door and locked it after the other man. He looked over toward the bedroom door then for a minute, but instead of going in that direction, turned and went into the kitchen. He poured a stiff shot of Scotch in a water glass and downed it without a chaser.

Then he went to the bedroom.

She lay in a crumpled heap on the bed, her hands bound with a necktie at her back. Her feet were also tied and her short skirt was hitched up almost to her waist.

Johnny tried to keep his eyes from the soft bare flesh of her thighs as he approached. He leaned down and with one hand turned her over so that she lay on her back facing up at him. 

Her huge midnight eyes were wide open and they stared into his own.

He reached under her head and untied the handkerchief gagging her mouth. There was a single drop of blood on her chin.

He felt around and behind her and found the knot binding her wrists.

Untying it, he said, “One God damn peep out of you and I’ll knock your teeth down your pretty throat.”

As he released her hands he looked once more into her face. He looked for the fear that he knew he would find there. She was looking right at him. She was laughing.

# # #

Tune in next week for the next chapter of Clean Break!

Stark House Sunday Serial is brought to you by the Lost Coast Outpost and Stark House Press.

Based in Eureka, California since 1999, Stark House Press brings you reprints of some of the best in fantasy, supernatural fiction, mystery and suspense in attractive trade paperback editions. Most have new introductions, complete bibliographies and two or more books in one volume! 

More info at StarkHousePress.com.

“I think a lot of people are working in the right direction, and a lot of people are working together really well. We would just like to know which destination we’re going to, so we can really focus our efforts to make sure we can send folks there.”

— Mike Seibert, lead spacecraft systems engineer at JPL and an Opportunity (Mars rover) driver

###

Seibert probably knows as much as anyone about the crazy politics involved in NASA’s decision to focus on either Mars or the moon. When he made those comments a few years back, the path was open: either the easy goal — the moon — or the hard one — Mars. Since then, NASA has firmly, perhaps irrevocably for the foreseeable future, opted to take the easy path, back to the moon. For one obvious reason — because it can. Fifty years of technological improvements after the last Apollo mission (Apollo 17), of course it can. Where’s the challenge in that? The reality is that NASA isn’t responding to a challenge, but to a perceived threat.

At the height of the Cold War, five years after the USSR had launched Sputnik into Earth orbit, JFK told 40,000 people at Rice University that the US would put “a man on the moon” before the end of the 1960s “because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” That is, if we don’t get there first, the Ruskies will. (The race was all over by 1965, with the USSR all but ceding the race to the moon to the US.)

The threat now — essentially why we’re going back to the moon — isn’t the USSR/Russia anymore, it’s China. Bill Nelson, NASA director, was unabashedly explicit in a recent interview. “We don’t want China suddenly getting there and saying, ‘This is our exclusive territory.’” Which is BS. The six Apollo landings left six US flags — not UN flags — on the moon, but as far as I’m aware, that didn’t make the moon our 51st State.

If you look for why we’re going back to the moon, other than this fatuous Chinese threat, you’ll hear all sorts of equally fatuous reasons. As I say, the main one is that we can. Then there’s the idea that the moon will be a testing ground for Mars. It isn’t, and won’t be. I wrote about the jagged and corrosive lunar dust here — which will be a major disincentive to lunar exploration (Mars dust, eroded by the wind, is much more benign, more like dust here on Earth). Then there’s this notion that water on the moon can be mined and converted into rocket fuel. Well sorta. It’s in the form of ice. Deep frozen ice. In craters permanently in shadow, at about 25 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. Getting this stuff out isn’t a trivial problem, then you’ve got the challenge of separating it into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen (lots of energy needed for that) before storing and shipping…

Then there’s the totally different EDL (entry, descent, landing) requirements. To drop down to the airless moon from orbit, you just need a reliable retrorocket, per “The Eagle has landed.” Mars, you’re hitting the planet’s thin atmosphere at around Mach 2, enough to burn you up but not enough to slow you down efficiently. Oh, and then there’s gravity — around 18% of Earth’s at the moon, but 38% on Mars. And obtaining liquid water on Mars will be a snap compared to the moon.

As if all that isn’t enough, it takes three days to reach the moon, six months to Mars, with a round trip (because of Mars’ and Earth’s relative orbits) over two years. Radio communications to the moon lag about a second each way; between here and Mars, five to 20 minutes.

Bottom line, it’s ridiculous to claim that our current moon adventure will prepare us for Mars.

As usual, the real problem is money, since it’s a zero sum game; it’s either Mars or the moon, and NASA’s current focus on the moon will have a direct effect on any future Mars ventures. I hate to say it, but for Mars, we’re going to have to put our hopes on Elon (bless his black heart) Musk and SpaceX, with SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket. I wish it were otherwise, but, you know, money talks.

The most recent lease auction for the Humboldt Wind Energy Areas shows that wind energy developers are excited about the potential for floating offshore wind off of Humboldt’s coast. Where will these floating turbines be built? The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District is visioning how they can be built locally, with family-wage blue-collar jobs building our renewable energy future.

Larry Oetker, Executive Director of the Harbor District, joins Gang Green to discuss port redevelopment plans and what Humboldt Bay may look like in 10 years time.

Every year at the Humboldt County Fair you joke about bidding on one of those farm animals raised by a child. Every year you think about splitting the cost with a bunch of your friends and getting the whole animal butchered. You dream about having local, organic meat at your table and the rest tucked away in your freezer.

That dream is a lot closer than you think.

Farmers usually transport livestock to a facility approved by the USDA for processing before it can be sold. With Mobile Slaughter Operators (MSOs), farmers can sell the living animal first and then have it slaughtered and butchered. Here’s how it works: You purchase an animal locally, pay the rancher to care for the animal and collect the meat after the animal is harvested.

Back in 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 888 – Mobile slaughter operations: livestock into law, allowing cattle, goats, sheep and swine to be slaughtered on the ranch where they were raised. With the rising interest in how and where meat is produced, demand also went up for local slaughtering. This is where MSOs step in.

Meet Clyde Dalton, licensed to kill.

Dalton, age 30, owner and operator of the Lost Coast Mobile Slaughter Service, brings his truck out to farms and slaughters your animal. If you are worried about sanitation or the humane aspect of slaughter, Dalton follows guidelines provided by USDA and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). Every year he pays a licensing fee to be a livestock meat inspector with the CDFA and completes a training program provided by the Meat, Poultry and Egg Safety Branch of the department.

Stepping away from the bureaucracy of an LLC, Dalton operates on knowledge and practice. Born in Fortuna but raised in Carlotta, he has been raising animals as well as slaughtering them since he was a kid.

“I was probably around six years old and I got used to the process,” Dalton told the Outpost on a recent tour of his operations. “I remember being interested in where our food comes from.”

The Lost Coast Mobile Slaughter Service has been in operation for roughly a month, and most business is coming from local small farms. He has not been able to operate within city limits because of his primary tool for slaughter — his gun. Using a firearm within city limits is prohibited in most scenarios, and that includes the killing of livestock.

“I’m hoping to get a bolt gun in the future so that I can adjust and possibly do work within city limits,” Dalton said.

To be clear, he does not butcher livestock. He simply slaughters. He charges a flat fee depending on the animal, but is learning to pivot as things change.

Just recently he slaughtered a massive bull weighing somewhere around 2,200 pounds. It took him three hours to kill, skin and clean. He also cleared out its innards and left the head for the owners to deal with. As part of the category he operates in, Dalton is technically not allowed to keep, dispose of or process any of these parts.

“Once I have the animal ready I leave all that for the owner,” Dalton said. “I take the carcass to the butcher shop and that’s it.”

In the same week that he slaughtered the massive bull, he took care of two pigs and two sheep over the course of three days. It is tough and honest labor.

“Somebody’s gotta do it,” Dalton said. “And I don’t mind it because I grew up hunting.”

The main reason Dalton is even able to run a business like this is because of his truck, which was custom-built by Dalton himself over the course of six months. There are three major components that aren’t inherently part of the truck. There’s the welded pillar that can swivel so that Dalton can hook up a carcass and lift it from the ground. There are the tracks inside, used to hang the carcasses for storage and travel. And there are the chains to keep the hooked carcasses from sliding back and forth on the tracks.

He welded every necessary piece, installed easy-to-clean flooring, bolted down a large container for water used to spray the inside of the truck and the carcasses clean.

His truck is not perfect, but it is an impressive start. He solves his problems as he goes and keeps in mind potential issues. Things like driving out into muddy areas on farmland can be difficult for keeping the truck and carcasses clean.

“I’m already thinking about having to slaughter an animal on a hill,” Dalton said. “Those areas can be tough because if I lift the animal here, the weight of it might swing it away from the entrance.”

It is important that his truck is so custom. Unlike cement trucks, you cannot just go out and buy a slaughtering truck. Such a thing hardly exists.

There have been attempts at making them commercially available. These have names like “Mobile Slaughter Units” or “Meat Harvest Units.” One I could find is strictly limited for poultry, known as a Poultry Processing Unit, and it costs $150,000. It is not really something a farmer, much less the average person, could afford.

All of this started because Dalton likes being outside every day. He is a skilled handyman: he welds, does fencework, builds kennels, paints houses, helps with his in-law’s firewood business, and just about anything that keeps him busy. On top of all the work, he is raising his two kids alongside his wife Aryn.

All of them are self-proclaimed animal lovers, and they have a whole pack of dogs that run on their property with their young cow.

“My little girl tells me she doesn’t want me to slaughter our cow.” Dalton said. “I’m not sure I ever will.”

Dalton believes that the slaughtering of an animal affects the quality of the meat. Considering the stress of it all, he tries to slaughter as quickly and humanely as possible.

“Some farmers have these animals like they are pets,” Dalton said. “Sometimes it’s hard for them to kill the animals themselves. It can be sentimental.”

Dalton has goals to expand and even adapt in some areas but since he just started, his main focus is letting us know that he has time to kill.