Smartville residents react to Marine's death

SMARTVILLE - Adam Strain, Nevada County's first soldier to fall in Iraq, grew up in the unincorporated town of Smartville, dotted with oak woods where the grass grows green in the winter and turns tawny in the mid-summer heat.

The Smartville grocery store and the post office close for lunch. The steps have fallen away from beneath the weathered green doors and peeling white clapboard of the Immaculate Conception church, built in 1871. Even residents disagree over whether the town's name isn't really Smartsville, with a second 's.'

Miners' cabins, sleepy Victorian cottages and old pickup trucks are starting to give ground to Silicon Valley retirement money, designer weekend spreads set amid grazing horses and new SUVs. A 15-home development plopped onto the landscape off Highway 20 looks like a typical California stucco subdivision.

Many residents coming to the Smartville post office Friday had lived in the area for a few years or a few months. They had arrived from places such as South Carolina and Oregon.

A few had seen the "RIP Adam" banner strung Thursday over a freeway overpass in Grass Valley, which is nearly 20 miles away. But most hadn't heard the news by Friday afternoon that one of their own had been lost to the war effort.

"Oooh, boy, close to home," said Doris Bullock, a resident for 18 years. "That's too bad. He was really young."

An American flag hung from Bullock's porch and patriotic bunting was tied to the railing, still there from Independence Day. Her house had been a dance hall in the 1930s, built to serve what had been a Prohibition-defying saloon next door.

Bullock's granddaughter, 11-year-old Lacy Bullock, said she had heard of the war in Iraq, but didn't know much about it. She said she doesn't watch the news because the family doesn't have cable television, and the broadcast signal doesn't make it out here.

The news of Strain's death "makes me think about war," Lacy said.

Dennis Beam, a 10-year resident, had been in the Navy during the 1980s, out in the Mediterranean when Lebanon was hot. Beam said he was tired of hearing about the war.

"We went in and did what we have to do over there," he said. "Now let's get out."

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To contact staff writer Trina Kleist, e-mail trinak@theunion.com or call 477-4231.