Retirement Locales: Auburn vs. Ashland

Back to our trip to Eureka and my introduction to huckleberry pie on the way from Eureka to Redding. Redding was another retirement possibility and I think we looked into it a little. Redding is too hot in the summer though so it was never very high on the list. One edge it did have was some remote employment in the chemical engineering field — one of the large paper companies had a facility at Anderson, about eight miles south of Redding. But I never looked into this. I suppose that Eureka also presented this possibility.

One of the two places that we finally narrowed our retirement consideration to was Auburn, California. I think earlier we had explored other towns in the California foothill country; I know we visited Grass Valley and Nevada City and I think we looked in at some realtors. Over the years we lived at 411 Bonnie Drive we visited Auburn several times. A longtime friend of Jean’s dad’s, Al Flint, lived there in retirement with his second wife. I think her name was Katherine.

I don’t know just how we started this practice of occasional visits to their home in Auburn, but they were pleasant, relaxed occasions. Al Flint was a grizzled gray man, I suppose in his late 60s or early 70s when we visited them; Katherine was I surmise younger, still dark-haired and ungraying and one of those women with a surprisingly deep, rich voice. She outlived Al and after his death moved away from Auburn to someplace further south in California. A very hospitable lady and she served us more than one lunch I’m sure, along with our daughters whom I am sure were along with us.

I think Al remembered the air gun or rifle that Jean’s dad made at one time. Jean thought her dad had disposed of this by giving it to her cousin Glen (who ended up in Idaho, and was a gun fancier, going to gun shows and indulging in such activities) but when she queried Glen about it he said he didn’t have it. So what happened to it is lost — it wasn’t in the house on Stuart Street when Jean’s dad died.

I’m sure we also passed through Auburn on various trips, up I-80, or when driving through the “gold country” on such trip as to or from Placerville. And there was the memorable supper we had at Butterworth’s when Jean and I, Muriel and Palma drove to Houston after we accepted the transfer there. We had left El Cerrito late afternoon so it was suppertime as we came to Auburn. As we were driving around looking for a place to eat, Palma spotted this old house which had been turned into a restaurant. It hadn’t been open long at the time, and we had a truly exceptional meal. A mark of its character was the fact that Muriel and Palma ate the vegetables with relish and without demur. It was also the place where Jean had her first experience with key lime pie (I think).

Jean and I went back to Butterworth’s once after we moved to Ashland, this time for lunch. It was still elegant and the lunch was very good but, for me, it didn’t have quite the magic of our first encounter there. Anyway when we really started to a serious consideration of places where we wanted to move back to in the west, Auburn was one of the two places in the final running, along with Ashland of course.

Whether it would have won out, had there been a stronger response from realtors there, or even a response at all from the school system I don’t know. Ashland on the other hand seemed much more receptive and may well have been the better choice as things have developed since. The last time we passed through Auburn was a year or so ago. Jean was interested in delving around in Truckee on a genealogical search for possible traces of her Ribley grandfather. Family hearsay was that he had a sawmill there which burned. This was during the 20- to 30-year gap in his history of which Jean has been unable to track down any record. It was during this period that he was supposedly married to his first wife. But we found no trace of him or of his supposed wife.