A Rose for Calistoga

Everything I looked at today brought back memories of the decade I lived in the Bay Area and reminded me that everyone there is surrounded by fire right now. I'm heartbroken.
In the late 70's I lived on a place outside of Middletown (where they suffered a huge fire just a few years ago) and worked for the 'Weekly Calistogan' in Calistoga. The woman (Marjory Brandon) who owned that newspaper also owned the one in Guerneville. The papers were printed in Healdsburg, so as a Jill-of-all-trades for her, I would find myself driving over the hills on #128 among those towns. One of my all time favorite memories is of the ride with her between Calistoga and Healdsburg to deliver the stripped negatives to the printer so they could burn the plates and print that small weekly newspaper while we waited. Marjory never did anything slowly or without fanfare; we flew back to Calistoga around those curves, up and down those hills, her with a scarf blowing in the wind, me turned half way around in the car seat frantically checking that the bundles of newspapers, piled high in the back seat, weren't flying out of the big, red Cadillac convertible she drove.
If I ever need fodder for a story, I have it right upstairs in a box where I've kept many issues of the paper and other articles having to do with Marjory Brandon.