A "Patriot" from Weaverville

Nancy is a local resident of Weaverville who chatted with us for a bit on Sunday before we left for the coast.  She works in a seasonal job and is about to be laid off for the winter when she will collect unemployment until spring.  She complained about the economy in Weaverville where there are rich people, "people on welfare" making babies or on disability and the middle class like her who are struggling to make ends meet.  She is a Tea Party Patriot and somehow didn't see the irony of her decrying the people on welfare while she collected unemployment from the government half the year. She also admitted she and her husband hadn't made a mortgage payment for two years and were trying to prove that Wells Fargo didn't actually have a legal claim on their property due to the fact that they didn't seem to have the original note for the mortgage.  She had a good crop of marijuana about to be harvested and it was already pre-sold to large grower they knew who exported a large crop to Colorado.  It seems that growing pot is pretty common around here, but it doesn't seem that most people are making much money from it.

This far northern part of California was going to become the state of Jefferson, if the ballot initiative to split the state into six different states had passed.  As it turned out, they couldn't gather enough signatures to get on the ballot.  It is sure apparent that this area is worlds apart from Silicon Valley, 200 miles to the south.