SQUID FRY 12.22.16: Festivus Shopping…

FESTIVUS SHOPPING… Sometimes even grinchy Squid can’t help but get into the holiday spirit. Squid just baked crustacean-shaped sugar cookies and went gift shopping.

Squid got retiring Congressman Sam Farr a personal CHP escort so he can avoid traffic caused by the short-term renters as he travels back and forth from Carmel to his party property in Big Sur. For his successor, Jimmy Panetta, a map of Washington, D.C. For Seaside Mayor Ralph Rubio, a rocking horse to swap in for the Monterey Downs thoroughbreds. Monterey Mayor Clyde Roberson – who’s been elected with 100 percent of the vote, twice – gets a Rey-de-Monte crown. A violin goes to Fisherman’s Wharf merchants so they can play a sad song as they complain about being bullied by Monterey city officials. Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter gets a minor league baseball team; only things just never seem to go Salinas’ way, and now Monterey might get a home team.

Outgoing County Supervisor Dave Potter seems to be more in the habit of gift-giving than gift-getting – he bestowed his blessing on Alan Williams’ subdivision at Ranch Cañada in his very last meeting – but Squid gifts him a boogie board, daybed and lifetime supply of white wine to enjoy retirement. For Royal Calkins, blogger at Monterey Bay Partisan, Squid’s getting footsie pajamas, since Calkins doesn’t seem to need soles for reporting these days; he does his work from the couch. Come to think of it, Squid might get Squidself some PJs too, curl up in the lair and come back out after the cheer is done.

HAPPY ENDING… The only thing Squid doesn’t like about this week’s 101-word short-story contest (p. 24) is that Squid is not allowed to participate. Every year, the stories provide a unique window into the county’s writerly soul.

Seaside City Manager Craig Malin, who happens to be an excellent writer, was among this year’s entrants, though you won’t find his three stories in this issue (“please publish all three or none,” he wrote with his submission). The reason his stories didn’t make print – though you can read them in his Dec. 5 newsletter, called the “manifest” – is that they weren’t stories, but mostly lists of the good and bad of now-defunct Monterey Downs.

None had a beginning, middle or end, but Squid will attempt to tell the Monterey Downs story using his sentences, remixed from all three “stories”: “Introduction of new industry to region. Happy people and their horses. Massive grading and tree removal demonstrating fundamental lack of sensitivity to unique character of the land. Much horse dung. Subdivision design not forward thinking. Numbingly tedious presentations. Lawyers. So many lawyers. Needed far more Aldo Leopold. In the end, more trees and better access to the Fort Ord National Monument. Seaside, California; the two most evocative place name words, getting more evocative.”