TIME TRAVEL : STEPPING BACK INTO ERA OF PENNY CANDY, HIGH-TOP SHOES IN FERNDALE.

Byline: Susanne Hopkins Daily News Travel Editor

Sandra Mesman straightens a display of Dr. Pierce's Family Remedies, a popular antidote 60 or so years ago for whatever ailed you, and glances fondly about the Golden Gait Mercantile she and her husband, Marlin, own.

In this cavernous structure with its old-fashioned cabinets and creaky wooden floors, she sees everything from penny candy (much more than a penny these days), oil lamps and Argo starch to authentic granny boots, fancy beads and wooden shovels.

``You know what this store does?'' she asks finally. ``It triggers memories. We don't sell anything you need, but we can certainly sell you a lot of memories.''

You could say that as well about Ferndale, the town the Golden Gait Mercantile has called home for 20 years. For years, tourists have delighted in discovering this jewel of a Victorian village 20 minutes south of Eureka in Northern California. In those old enough to remember a slower, more dignified time, a visit triggers fond memories; in those of a younger age, it sparks yearnings for such an era.

The tidy town, which dates to 1852, is so filled with well-preserved Victorian homes and business structures (even its public restroom boasts a Victorian storefront) that it has been designated a state historic landmark. Its Main Street is so well maintained that it has earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places.

Set in a pastoral scene of dairy farms and ranchland five miles west of Highway 101, Ferndale is a place where cats snooze in the shop windows, a storefront is filled with the local millwork's handiwork (all that Victorian gingerbread has to come from somewhere), the churches with their fancy spires are filled on a Sunday and storekeepers have plenty of time to visit with customers.

It's a town where the local newspaper trumpets the need for candidates in the upcoming elections and editorials are dedicated to such concerns as cleaning up the public restrooms (Visitors, said a recent editorial in the Ferndale Enterprise, have a right to expect the public toilets to be ``in good working order and as a demonstration of Ferndale's fine hospitality.'').

Just a down-home, friendly kind of place.

``Everyone knows everyone and their pets here,'' the cheery owner of Valley Arts, a small gift shop and art studio, tells me. ``We're like one big happy family.''

That makes for a pleasant ambience as I stroll along Main Street and poke into its quaint shops. Folks amble along clutching ice cream cones from the local ice-cream shop, and residents call greetings to one another. It's all very laid-back. There is, after all, not a lot to do here.

From most merchants, you can grab a pink visitors guide that stretches out into a walking tour map. It'll take you past 50 historic business buildings, lovely old-fashioned churches and Victorian mansions (termed ``butterfat palaces'' since it was dairy farming that enriched the barons who lived in them).

And, if you're in town 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday in winter or 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday in summer, you can visit the Ferndale Museum at Third and Shaw streets. It houses historical exhibits and artifacts from this town once nicknamed ``Cream City.''

There's also the Kinetic Sculpture Museum in Ferndale's version of a mall (four tiny shops) at 580 Main St. This curiosity stems from a wild-and-crazy competition held each May (this year's begins at noon May 26) that features zany, people-powered machines traveling through mud, on land and water. The 35-mile race starts in Arcata, north of Eureka, and ends at the Ferndale Fairgrounds. Some of the race's past entries are featured in the free museum open during business hours: a swan made of lace, a giant raccoon, a contraption made completely of license plates.

I spend a fair amount of time, though, in the mercantile. It's kind of what Ferndale is all about: treasuring the old.

It's what prompted the Mesmans to establish the mercantile. ``When I was a little girl and I lived in St. Johnsbury, Vt., my mom used to go into a store and the proprietor would wait on her from big bins,'' says Sandra Mesman. ``And if we (she and her brother) were good, he'd give us a cookie from one of the bins.''

When she came to California years later, there were no such stores, she says. ``They had Super Safeway out here. You had to wait on yourself. There was no reaching into a bin for a cookie. Those days were gone.''

So, in 1972, she and Marlin established the mercantile in one of Ferndale's old Main Street structures (which in 1889 was the Old Citizen's Furniture Store). They outfitted it with as much old merchandise as they could find and filled in with a few bread-and-butter products like local jams and jellies and kitchen mitts and towels. They turned the upstairs into settings from the old days: a Chinese herbalist's shop, a millinery store, a dress shop, a toy store. And now, in addition to doing business with tourists who come by, the Mesmans sell items to museums, the state of California and clothiers such as Ralph Lauren.

But their greatest joy is in listening to visitors exclaim over moustache wax, Fels Naphtha soap and other items of yesteryear.

``Did you hear that?'' Marlin Mesman asks his wife as a customer leaves the store. ``That woman commented on your creaky floors. Said she liked the sound.''

That pleases Sandra Mesman, who remembers very fondly searching for a squeaky board in the old general store she frequented as a child and rocking on it to make it sound.

``If you're comfortable with aging, if you think that yesterday wasn't so bad, then you'll have an appreciation for this store,'' she says.

And for this town.

On Location Ferndale is just one of several sights to see in this area of Northern California. Just 20 minutes north on U.S. Highway 101, there's Eureka, a busy fishing port and the hub of social and cultural life in this section of the state.

While it has no particular charm, it does have Fort Humboldt State Historic Park (3431 Fort Ave.; open daily; free), where Ulysses S. Grant was stationed in 1854 and which now boasts logging and military displays; Clarke Memorial Museum (240 E St.; noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; donation; [phone]), with its fine collection of American Indian baskets, as well as natural history specimens such as rocks and birds; Blue Ox Millworks Historical Park (foot of X street; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday (closed Sunday in winter); $5 adults, $4 seniors, $2.50 children 6 to 12; [phone]), where you can take a self-guided tour of an old Victorian sawmill where they still turn out those artistic wooden furbelows that decorate the area's Victorian homes; and the Samoa Cookhouse Museum (end of Samoa Bridge; open 6 to 3:30 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. daily; free; [phone]).

The latter, a rambling red structure, has been an institution in these parts since it started as a lumber camp cookhouse in the late 1800s. The public can eat here nowadays. It's family-style food and plenty of it and there are no menus. You get whatever the chef feels like cooking. Prices for adults range from $5.95 for breakfast to $11.45 for dinner. And when you're done, you can visit the little museum in the next room with photographs of early logging days and a well-used collection of logging equipment.

About a half-hour south of Eureka on Highway 101 is the company-owned town of Scotia, which boasts the largest and one of the oldest (1912) redwood sawmills in the country (Pacific Lumber Co.; 7:30 to 2 p.m. weekdays; free; [phone]). On a self-guided tour, you can watch logs turned into planks and waste turned into energy. On catwalks above the workers, you can watch planks being neatly edged and boards turned into flooring in the planing mill. There's information on the logging of redwoods and you can even bring home some free hardwood chips and sawdust.

Three-and-a-half miles further south, you can turn off the highway onto an old portion of Highway 101 now called the Avenue of the Giants. For 31 miles, you'll wind through beautiful, vast forests of redwoods, past the muddy Eel River and Humboldt Redwoods State Park, which has the largest stand of virgin redwoods in the world. You can picnic, camp, hike, bike ride, even swim, fish or go rafting along the way. You'll see oddball sights such as hollowed-out redwood trees that house shops, trees you can drive through and famous trees like the Dyerville Giant, which at 362 feet tall was, until it fell in 1991, taller than Niagara Falls by 200 feet. And you can stop at little towns like Myers Flat and Weott. The trail, which adds about 30 minutes to the drive, stretches between Pepperwood to the north and Phillipsville to the south.

For more information about Ferndale, contact the Chamber of Commerce, [phone].

For information about Eureka, contact the Eureka/Humboldt County Convention & Visitors Bureau, [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Box, 4 Photos

Box: On Location (See text)

Photo: (1--Color) Muchof the village remains as it was built in the Victorian era.

(2--Color) A horse and a carriage full of tourists are silhouetted against Ferndale's historic downtown area.

(3--Color) A stroll through Ferndale takes visitors past 50 historic buildings, as well as several old-fashioned churches, their spires reaching skyward.

(4) Not far from Ferndale, visitors can see a working sawmill that still turns out the gingerbread that decorates Victorian homes.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News