The Modesto Bee from Modesto, California • 55

The Modesto Bee Sunday August 20 1989 tA Manuel DiasThe Bee Carlos Rios learn how to maneuver his boat next to a dockside mailbox for a drop on one Section of the many islands tk Carlos is my only contact with the outside world Mack Colburn Stockton Books F-6 Arts F-7 Travel F-8 Erma Bombeck List of honors keeps growing The club for the Incredibly Stupid and Dumb Beyond Belief (1SDBB) was not founded by me It was begun by a friend of mine in the East who thought there should be a tangible award for turning a simple situation into a disaster You give a Heisman Trophy for something like that So a confession to such a deed is rewarded with a statue of a creature with a potbelly and a club in its hand Someone had bought it at a garage sale Like a torch it is passed from one incompetent to another My friend got it for sitting up all night in a living room chair waiting for her teen-age son to come home only to learn after a restless night and a sore back that he had come in through the kitchen door around 11 She in turn passed it on to a friend who thought he left the lens cap to his new camera in a shop in Mexico After hours of retracing his steps to all the stores he had visited he discovered the lens was retractable and opened and closed with a flip of the finger The ugly 1SDBB statue found its way west when my husband told them the story of how he left his passport on top of a hotel TV set in London and had to pay an empty cab $40 to pick it up and rush it to the airport 1 remember the reason he sent it back East but the statue broke in transit and he got it right back for being dumb enough to send it in a shoe box wrapped only in tissue in the first place We have kept it ever since because we realized we had enough 1SDBB candidates within our family to keep it moving briskly for the rest of our lives My mother paid $3000 to buy a battery-driven chair for my father to tool around the house only to discover it fit through the door frames We give her the ISDBB trophy until she sold the chair for $1000 Pouring boiling water from a spaghetti pot down my stomach make me stupid enough for the award Telling my mother about it did My daughter got it when she was sucking so hard on a Tootsie Roll with her tongue that it caused a blood blister to pop under her tongue A couple of days ago 1 was running barefoot through the house I have made a million speeches to people who visit us in the desert about running around in bare feet It is one of my more inspiring speeches We have a lot of animals here who take a dim view of being stepped on I stepped on a scorpion In bed with my foot on fire 1 waited for the ugly statue with the potbelly and the club in its hand to appear Finally the family gathered around and said I would have permanent possession of the award 1 had just been named to the Stupid Hall of Fame They all applauded Inside FORGET THE dogs that sing this squirrel plays the drums Page F-2 HE WANTS to know why there are so many Ashleys Page F-4 THIS DOCTOR keeps James Bond in the pink Page F-5 mystic poem' other writings to be published Page F-6 MAGIC MESSAGE and fun in fairytale Page F-7 HOLY LAND has always Manuel DiasThe Bee Coffee can serves as mailbox for a Delta resident mail to Delta dwellers Years of practice helped Getting the By FRED SCHWARTZ Bee staff writer STOCKTON not snow rain heat fog or gloom of night that keeps Carlos Rios from the completion of his wet-and-wild mail route through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta high wind that slows him down often turning the vast network of 1000 miles of waterways into a dangerous if not inaccessible place for boaters Rios a Stockton resident works six days a week taking the mail to 34 mailboxes all on the water in a 19-foot runabout powered by a 100-horsepower engine His circuitous route covers about 20 islands and some 60 miles wind can get pretty rough out here especially when on Tract near Bethel he says seen it get up to 60 or 70 miles an hour with the whitecaps coming over the top of my On days like that he says he uses great caution Sometimes rundown 36-foot wooden boat on Cut just across the river from Bethel Island Rios not only brings her the mail but also stops by a store in town to buy her packs of cigars only get into town about once a month for my says Colburn who lives with six stray cats and an adopted raccoon is my only contact with the outside Rios is also a favorite with the dogs of the Delta He carries a handful of dog biscuits and calls each animal by name as he pulls up to their docks Sometimes the mail boxes he must reach are awkwardly placed so he has to maneuver his boat carefully around the docks and pilings Even so his boat has a few scars Some of the boxes are the standard metal ones found on rural roads A few others are made of wood floated by on the river A nest with five baby birds is nestled under one Rios an independent skip part of the route hoping the wind will die down by the next day usually he says like that are pretty unusual but they do Mostly he says the route is a pleasant taking him into parts of the Delta that most people only hear about He knows the labyrinth of sloughs river cuts and bends like a taxicab driver knows busy downtown streets Along the way he visits stately and exclusive places like the St Francis Yacht Club on Tinsley Island and the Delta Yacht Club on Tule Island He also delivers to private residences houseboats and large farming isles Farmers river dwellers and isolated resort managers along the river have come to depend on Rios to keep them up with the news For some like self-described river rat Colburn he provides more than the mail Colburn lives aboard a was painful to put together something so says Roberts a 45-year-old social worker in Stockton was so final this last act of affection for a friend of so many Now he says he has four more quilts to make there is a cure for AIDS I will have even more quilts to make as this disease quickly takes my friends from me" quilt panel will be shown with 367 others at a cere contractor begins his shift at 7:30 am at main post office He sorts the mail and arranges it in order of delivery Then he drives out to Herman and Marina at the west end of Eight-Mile Road where he starts and ends his unusual route On a normal day in the water by 9:30 am and back at See Page F-3 MAIL covers eight football fields Each panel bears the name and a memento of someone who has died of AIDS made by the mothers lovers and friends of people from all over the country as well as Canada Whether drawn painted appli-qued or stitched each panel has a story to tell The panel for Herb Finger for example expresses rage blood-likeslashes of red paint drip from the crimson name Others opt for whimsy: this AIDS quilt panels to be displayed in By CHERI MATTHEWS Bee staff writer The first time Byron Roberts saw the Names Project Quilt in San Francisco he was thankful that he had nothing to add to the hand-sewn tribute to tens of thousands of AIDS victims But shortly afterward a close friend died from AIDS and Roberts knew what he had to do This week he finished the 3-foot-by-6-tyot quilt panel he made to memorialize Ron Young an interior decorator mony tonight and in open displays on Monday and Tuesday at the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium The panels will cover the auditorium floor and hang from the balconies and stage representing only a part of the entire quilt that was started by a San Franciscan in 1987 The traveling quilt now has 10000 panels in all about a fifth of the number of Americans who have died from the AIDS virus in the last decade and Art? No! Fred The panel for Liberace glitters with sequins and the note on the back from a Hollywood designer reads: memory of Mr Showmanship He showed me there was a place in the world for more Carolyn Cotta president of the Stanislaus County AIDS Project saw the quilt displayed at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and describes it as See Page F-4 AIDS.