<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: large;">By the Diablo
mountains</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Concord on the northeast side of the Bay Area of San
Francisco lies on the western slopes of the Diablo mountain range whose peak
and hills extends from Costa Contra County in the north to the Kern County
south where Bakersfield is county seat.
Concord is the largest city of Costa Contra next to the county seat of
Martinez.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">My daughter’s house is about four houses from Buchanan
Airfield that straddles the border of Martinez and Concord. The airport is a controversial prime property
and its function as an airport with jets has since been replaced by Byron
airport and as an airfield diminished to hosting small propeller engine
planes. Buchanan’s history began as the
Concord Air Force Base in the 1940s on to being an originating point to
military flights headed for the Korean theatre.
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<div class="MsoNormal">On this week’s visit, my daughter’s Queensland heeler dog
barked as pilots training to fly prop planes from the airfield buzzed the
neighborhood. The US Coast Guard uses
the facility for emergency purposes, particularly to drench bush fires in the
brown hills surrounding the verdant forest of the Diablo peaks seen from a
distance.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">This is not a travelogue on the mountain range nor on the
interesting Bay Point of the San Francisco Bay Area extending towards Pittsburg
CA, the current end point of the BART’s Yellow Line. A descriptive tour might delight our
California readership, but that has not been the regular tone of this column.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Nor an introduction of Concord, Martinez, and Walnut Creek
(CM&WC) would be unwelcomed by the towns consumers for they have converted
their downtown areas as shopping centers of boutique quality, and in this mode,
the towns are quaint with antiques, and contemporary in coffee shops where a
hazelnut macchiato in espresso is not an uncommon fare!</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">It is the “devil” in “Diablo” that intrigues us and why that
would even be relevant in the downtown areas of CM&WC where retirees tend
their social nets well and have come to live and are visibly in display all
over the place enjoying the sunset of their years. There are younger families in the area, my
daughter’s included but of the short times she cruised with me in the three
towns looking for a place that might sell USB connectors to two external drives
that have photos of my China home I wanted to share, the places teemed with
well-heeled retirees who did not hesitate to draw out their credit cards for
any purchase in any of the stores.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">A disambiguation: “Diablo” is used as name for fictional
characters, music pieces, video games, places like the aforementioned mountain
range, sports personalities and teams, a gene that negatively interacts with
the death cell, and a type of hot, dry wind common in many deserts. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">There was once a USS <i>Diablo
</i>American submarine named after a deep-sea bottom-dwelling batfish of the
West Indies whose first assignment was to sail to Saipan after it was
commissioned just before the end of WWII hostilities. Exchange of firepower on Mt. Tapuchao ceased
before the Diablo reached its destination so its eventual first portage was
Guam. The submarine was delivered later
to the Pakistan navy in a military assistance package and became the <i>Ghazi, </i>Pakistan’s sole underwater
military submersible that mysteriously sank in 1971.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">My devilish sense looking up at the majestic mountain range
from Concord probably stems from my detachment from the rabid consumerism now
attendant to a country that still holds my fealty and political devotion. Everywhere I turn in my visits to my two
daughters’ families, the symbols of economic prosperity around them are held up
as the overriding preoccupation of identity, vocation, and lifestyle. No activity or value is worth pursuing until
one had done the math on how much it will cost, or what amount will be gained,
a cultural practice of estimation I am not privy to.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">As a retired member of the straddling class between the
“silent” and “baby boomer” generations, I might still carry the traditional
value of personal character against personal wealth as criteria for measuring
an individual’s worth. While finances
are obviously very important, and my daughters are not by any measure counting
their pennies, they have yet to make it the overriding consideration in gauging
people’s social standing. Happily, I
might claim that my daughters’ attitude, to a certain degree, reflects that of
their father.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">I am evidently divorced from the contemporary preoccupation
of personal worth by accumulation and expenditure, not from the inability to
earn the dough (though the charge had been leveled against my earning skills)
as it is an absence of passion to follow the acquisitive path; I am too
habitually at home in the monastic practice of earthly detachment. I do not condemn the practice but I
acknowledge that I no longer belong to this age. In fact, my room smells too much of my age
that I have to open my window to let the Diablo air and the hydrocarbon
emissions of fast moving traffic on CA State Highway 4 not too far from my
breathing, to come in.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">The devil is in the details, we say. This one is mountain size.</div>
<br>
<div style="clear:both"><i>j'aime la vie</i><br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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