The Farm, pt. 3
On My Way to Confront a Cult, I Got Stuck at the Boardwalk
For my paid subscribers, I’ll be posting sections of a memoir outlining how my family became part of a doomsday cult in Tucson, Arizona in the 1980s, and how I found myself traveling across the country to seek revenge on the cult’s leader.
These posts will be part of the first draft of a final compilation, so keep in mind that they are works in progress.
Today, I’m continuing the story of life on the farm. You can read part one here, and part two here. In part three, I’ll explore our time in Santa Cruz and how I started to feel trapped.
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After about a month on the farm, I started to feel restless. I had traveled across the country to start a new life, and that life felt very small at times. It was rare in those first few weeks for us to venture off the mountain to see Santa Cruz proper. If we were able to leave, we usually headed down into the little town of Boulder Creek for groceries or supplies at the hardware store.
The most I could hope for on those days was for Jesse to look at the clock on his busted cell phone and say something like, “Ah, fuck it, we have plenty of time,” before deciding we were heading into the brewpub adjacent to the hardware store, which was also just across from the grocery store. That was the trap in Boulder Creek: no matter what errand you needed to run, you were never more than 500 feet from the bar or the brewery. No matter how urgent the day’s tasks were, there was always time to be wasted over a pint.
Boulder Creek Brewery was exactly what you would expect from the 13th craft brewery to open in California’s history; the walls were clad in a faded nicotine-beige wallpaper and aged pine paneling, the drop ceilings were water-stained, and the lighting fixtures were reminiscent of those found in old-west saloons. Still, the beer was shockingly refreshing for being 45 minutes from civilization, and the burgers were just cheap enough to be good.
We usually took seats at the bar when they were available. It was a long, inwardly curved wooden bar that made the production space behind it too narrow to be practical. The beer was brewed in that cramped passage, where there was just enough room for a few 300-hundred-gallon steel tanks and a thin walkway for the brewers and bar staff to share.
Sitting at the bar meant you sometimes caught the brewers—two guys in their 20s—either goofing off or doing something mildly interesting with the brewing equipment. They worked so close to the bar that it was impossible not to strike up a conversation about what they were doing. Years later—long after the Boulder Creek Brewery was burned down to ashes—one of these brewers became a close friend of mine, and was even my employer as I, too, learned how to goof off while brewing beer.