“Cruisin’ The ‘Nade: Coming Of Age In The 1960s In Northern California”

For longtime Chicoan Michael Halldorson, “my ‘coming of age’ began in September 1959 when I, and other Chico Junior High School graduates, moved on to Chico High School to begin our sophomore year. It ended in June 1969 upon my graduation from Chico State College.”

In between, “a three-year hitch in the Navy in the mid-1960s, serving aboard a destroyer off the coast of the Republic of Vietnam, marked an interlude in my studies at Chico State.” He adds, in a winsome memoir, that “one of my first priorities upon returning to college was to learn how to do all the new dances with all the bitchin’ moves that had come out while I was overseas. This would also be, I believed, a good way to get a girl.”

Though he played sports at Chico High, he mostly focused on “cars and girls”; his co-author, prolific Chico writer David Bruhn, supplies background material on some of the great athletes who emerged (like MLB pitcher Nelson Briles) and offers historical insight. Together they make “Cruisin’ The ‘Nade: Coming Of Age In The 1960s In Northern California” ($23 in paperback from Heritage Books) a must-read for those who want to know what makes Chico Chico.

Chapters cover the explosion in 1962 which “destroyed a Titan 1 missile and caused extensive damage to its silo … north of the Chico Municipal Airport.” 

There were the hot rod races by high school kids on the Esplanade. Halldorson and others “tooled around,” “honking at girls and honking at friends. Once downtown, the typical route was to start by the college and cruise out to the A&W Drive-in and back.” His first car “was a 4-door 1953 Chevy.” His second: “a 1950 Olds painted metallic blue. I got in in 1963….” 

The book covers the Chico draft protests in 1968, concerts at Chico State (Lou Rawls, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash), and more.

Halldorson studied art at Chico State under world-renowned printmaker Janet Turner; spent time in the Netherlands with M.C. Escher; and was named a Chico State University distinguished alum in 2019. 

Took some time, but he “came of age.”

“Unmasked: A 90 Day Journey For The Traumatized Heart”

Chico Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Natalie Stromberg (natalierstromberg.com), with a Master’s degree in Psychology from Chico State, knows the reality of trauma. During a missions trip to Thailand for her church, she spoke with human trafficking survivors. “I encountered a familiar brokenness in their stories,” she writes, “one that mirrored my own wounds from years of silenced trauma, cycles of revictimization, and a childhood marked by sexual abuse.”

In “Unmasked: A 90 Day Journey For The Traumatized Heart” ($15.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), Stromberg has written a deeply insightful Christian devotional filled with compassion, gentleness, and love. Each short entry offers a reflection on a key Bible verse and a prayer for the day. Slowly, slowly, day by day, the reader is asked to “look beneath the masks that once kept you alive.”

She writes “to the wounded inner child who walked these ninety days with trembling hands and guarded hope—you did not walk alone.”

“Trauma,” Stromberg writes, “often convinces us that we are invisible, unheard, or unworthy of care. Yet God turns that lie on its head. He does not dismiss your wounds or rush you past your grief. He bends low, draws near, and honors the depth of your sorrow. His presence does not erase your past, but it redeems it, weaving even your most hidden anguish into His story of love and healing.”

Trauma, Stromberg says, lives in one’s mind, body, and spirit. In a personal reflection, she notes that “Therapy became a sacred place for me to gently challenge” the lies trauma tells. “The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. I discovered that healing required movement, breath, gentleness….” And her spirit—“the deepest place—needed permission to trust again. Scripture, prayer, and honest conversations with God reminded me that I was never abandoned, even when it felt that way. God met me not in perfection, but in presence.”

The book focuses on that deepest place. “The chains of trauma, shame, and fear do not have the final say—Jesus has set you free, and now,” she writes, “you walk in the unstoppable power of that freedom.” 

“Lilith And The Holey Man”

Sam Smith, computer programmer, finds himself at Museo del Prado in Madrid viewing Hieronymus Bosch’s extraordinary triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights—“full of naked figures, fantastic creatures, and giant strawberries and birds which were symbols of sexuality, and imagery that has entertained and confounded viewers across five centuries.”

He notices a young woman on a nearby bench. “It was hard to ignore what was obviously very long red hair stacked atop her head like a malformed mound of cotton candy held together with a trio of chopsticks.” And, Sam adds, “I have an attraction—my friends say fatal—to red haired women.”

So begins the propulsive story of “Lilith And The Holey Man” ($13.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) by Chico writer/photographer Doug Keister, his forty-ninth book. It is love at first sight; a kind of lightning bolt hits them both, and soon the mysterious woman, whose name may be Lilith, is in Sam’s hotel room, lying atop him, as both experience transcendent sex.

Earlier, looking at the section of the Bosch painting depicting Hell, Lilith tells Sam, “I think human beings are full of holes. All of us…. I think a lot of people are afraid of loving someone then being rejected, so they fill their love hole with things like money and power and control…. And random sex.”

The two are drawn to the legend of Lilith from a medieval Jewish text called the Alphabet of Ben-Sira, where God creates Adam’s first wife, Lilith, not from his rib but from the dust of the earth, like Adam. The two are equal, but soon quarrel, and Lilith disappears. Legend makes her the “other,” Eve the subservient one.

Lilith leaves Sam’s room to attend to an errand, but never returns. What follows are alternating chapters as both Sam and Lilith attempt to find each other with little to go on. Years pass, but Keister has a lightning bolt or two left to throw. 

Afterward, the author chats with the reader, showing how Bosch’s painting may point to Lilith; opening up the legend all the way to Cheers; and how the holey in all of us might be filled.

“Midstream: A Life Remade In 50 Swims”

Sacramento writer Kate Washington (kawashington.com), who grew up in Chico, detailed in her book “Already Toast: Caregiving And Burnout In America” how suddenly, unexpectedly, she had to become the caregiver for her husband Brad, whom she married in 1999, after he faced aggressive lymphoma in 2014; in his mid-40s, he needed a stem-cell transplant. 

Now the rest of the story. Though Brad survived, the marriage did not. A year-and-a-half away from her 50th birthday, Washington writes that her life “felt constrained and constraining, dull and joyless, full of doing for others while neglecting myself.”

So she “hatched the idea for what I came to call the 50 Dunks Project. My plan was to get in fifty different natural bodies of water before turning fifty in October 2022…. However I got in the water, I hoped it might dissolve my midlife stagnation.” The liberation process is told in “Midstream: A Life Remade In 50 Swims” ($27.95 in hardcover from Beacon Press; also for Amazon Kindle).

Both Kate and Brad were PhD’s with English degrees and they had two daughters. Kate was devastated when her mother died by suicide, and Brad’s new job meant Kate had to take on childcare responsibilities. And Brad’s cancer did not so much as change everything, but revealed a dark truth: “Our tendrils were diverging well before Brad was sick, with separate interests and the pull of careers, but afterward it was like we were strangers.”

During the Dunk Project (and counseling) it became clear the marriage wouldn’t survive. All 50 swims are listed, though only some key encounters with the freeing waters are given in the chapters. Dunks include Salmon Hole in Upper Bidwell Park; Bear Hole; One Mile; Butte Creek. “I had become embodied again,” she writes, “after years of alienation.”

With great insight, Washington confronts “my fears and dissatisfaction with myself and my choices.”

Kate Washington is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, July 15 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, July 19 at 8:00 p.m. The Bookstore in downtown Chico will be holding a creekside book launch party and author signing July 23; contact the store for details.