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Dispatches from the Lucky Land of Lassen

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What Susanville looked like this week.

By Jeremy Couso
Publisher and Editor, SusanvilleStuff

The Lassen County Childrens Fair is Saturday! I have a lot of love for this event because I have such fond memories of its beginnings, four decades ago, when I was just a young tyke.

In 1987 our band, the Main Street Band, played at the second annual Children’s Fair and I can still remember how crowded it was and how much fun we had up on the main stage. It was THE event back then, attracting thousands of kids to the fairgrounds each May.

Originally the Children’s Fair featured live entertainment throughout the day, including a bunch of local students and their talents. I particularly remember this awesome lip-sync show they did with puppets. There was a lot of unique stuff at those early Children’s Fairs!

The high school actually let all of us in the band get out of school to rehearse for the show! Mrs. Poteete gave me a hall pass that just said, “Band Practice,” and in the weeks leading up to the May event we would go play rock and roll each afternoon instead of going to school. That was heaven and I would love to spend just an hour reliving one of those after-school rehearsals.

Honestly, that was about the coolest thing that ever happened to me in high school.

This iteration of the band included Mike Holliday on guitar, JC Picco on drums, Ed Peterson on bass and I think Brad Weaver was still playing guitar for us at that point.

For a bunch of kids making loud noises, still trying to figure out how to be an actual band, we were absolutely thrilled to get to take part in the Children’s Fair at all. The fact that the Office of Education provided an awesome stage and a pro sound system just made it all better. I am grateful for the experience.

Speaking of Feeling Old
I feel so old this week. Susanville Fire Chief James Moore, after 36 years with the fire department, has announced his retirement. As I was writing my SusanvilleStuff story about his August retirement, I was thinking that it just seemed like just yesterday when he was a kid in the Explorer program.

When they made him Chief back in 2015 I thought, “but he’s just a kid!” and now, all these years later, as he prepares to retire, I still think the same thing.

James is one of my favorite people in the world and I wish him all the best. Sincerely Chief Moore, thank you for your 36 years with the Susanville Fire Department. You have done a lot for our little town, and we appreciate it.

Full disclosure – James also saved our cat when our house burned down. So, in our family, he is a certified hero.

From the April 11th, 1989 issue of the Lassen County Times newspaper.

Movin’ On Down the Road
For the last couple of years Pastor Charles White, from Susanville’s United Methodist Church, has been a wonderful presence in our community. His dedication and his passion are evident through the wide swath of good he has done in his short time here, and his accomplishments are many. The Hope Food Pantry is just one example of the contributions he has made to our town.

I have appreciated his calm, reasoning voice in some difficult local issues, and overall have just been really thankful that we had him in our community.

This week the Methodist Church announced that Pastor White has been appointed to Redding First United Methodist Church, effective July 1st, saying, “Pastor Charles has been an integral part of our church community since November 2019 and has impacted the lives of so many of us through his leadership, support, and community involvement.”

There will be a special potluck for Pastor White at the end of June, right before his departure for the valley. We wish him all the best and hope he comes back to visit frequently.

Help Me Come Up with Some Ideas

What are your favorite things to do around town? What would you tell visitors to do for fun? I am about to script a couple of videos – one of them is Ten Things to do in Lassen County and the other is Ten Places to Visit in Lassen County, and I would love to get everybody’s thoughts on this.

The target audience for the videos is two-fold. I want to have something that gives people planning a trip to Susanville an idea of what awaits them. Also, I want to create something that employers can use to market the area to potential employment candidates.

Marshel and I will be shooting a lot of video and drone footage in the next few months, and we want to make sure we get nice quality, spring and summer footage of the neat parts of our county. We don’t want to miss anything.

The video about ten events is going to be fairly easy to come up with, I think. We have at least that many quality events that take place each year in our little town. It might be more difficult to come up with ten places or destinations for people to visit.

For events I am thinking of things like the Lassen County Fair, the Main Cruise, High Country Cruise and the SIR Pow Wow. Big events that attract a lot of people.

But I want to hear everybody’s thoughts on this. Hopefully, you will think of the places I haven’t thought of yet.

You can either email your suggestions for ‘places to visit’ or ‘things to do’ to me at jcouso@jeremycouso.com or leave them here in the comments. I will read them all and use the good ideas. Thank you for your help!

Have a terrific weekend everybody and I’ll see you here next week!

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