The Visit: An Unusual Walk Through Sonoma History On An Early Easter Morning 4e1co

The Visit

An unusual walk through Sonoma History on an Early Easter Morning

Newton Dal Poggetto

Copyright © 2012 by Newton Dal Poggetto.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920594 ISBN: Hardcover Softcover Ebook

978-1-4797-4286-8 978-1-4797-4285-1 978-1-4797-4287-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, : Xlibris Corporation 1-888-795-4274 www.Xlibris.com [email protected] 118412

Contents

Author Note

Dedication

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Author Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is coincidental.

However, there are fictional meetings and conversations with my friends Bob Cannard, Don Eraldi, Henry Mayo, Bob Kruljac, Dan Augney, DDS, John Holden DVM, Henry Marioni II and Daniel Dolan, which could have occurred. And, of course my parents and grandparents lived and loved in Sonoma.

Dedication

For those who come to know and enjoy Sonoma, in The Valley of the Moon.

Acknowledgements

I thank our critique group consisiting of the late Arthur Chung, M.D., Gen. E. “Ted” DuBois, Carol Biederman, Wendy Kruljac, Yvonne Beere, and Lesleie Polit for their assistance and interest over the years in this and other writings.

Also assisiting are the Sonoma Valley Historical Society, Diane Moll Smith, Linda Hansen, editor David O’Donnell and photographer Melinda Kelley and designer Wendy Kruljac in preparing this for publication.

All of them have labored here in Sonoma Valley, this unique place in which we enjoy our lives.

Cross at the end of Second Street East Photo by Wendy Kruljac

CHAPTER 1

OUT OF THE MIST

At first light on Easter Sunday morning I drove into Sonoma for my usual walk and parked alongside the bike path near the Vella cheese factory on Second Street East. I got out of my car and faced north, uncertain whether to walk east or west. I looked for the large white cross on Schocken’s Hill, but the ground fog was too thick and I couldn’t see it. Then I noticed a dark object emerging from the dense mist, which materialized as a stocky man. He walked slowly, tentatively, in the middle of the street, perhaps unsure of where he was.

As he approached, he saw me and stopped. He appeared to be about sixty, bald, wore an oddly cut dark blue serge suit… and he was barefoot!

“Good morning,” I said.

He nodded and replied, “Buon giorno.” He hesitated. “Excuse me. I mean “Good morning.” He corrected himself in a faint Italian accent, his olive complexion coloring slightly in mild embarrassment. “It has been awhile.”

Ignoring his bare feet, I commented, “You’re up early.”

“Yes, I get up with the chickens.”

“Where are you going?”

“For my morning walk around town.”

“Do you live here?”

“For almost forty years.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Glen Ellen. I was a young man when I came down from Glen Ellen.”

Masking my bewilderment, I said cheerfully, “I like to walk early in the morning, but I’m usually only able to on weekends.”

“Bene.” He shook his head as if clearing his mind. “I mean ‘Good.’ Would you like to walk with me?”

“Yes. I was trying to decide which way to go.”

“Shall we keep walking down this street?”

“Why not?”

“Si, uhh, yes.” He looked up at me. “My name is Charles.” He extended his hand and I clasped it, feeling his broad cold palm.

We crossed the bike path and Charles stopped, seeming puzzled. “What happened to the railroad track?”

“It was removed after the railroad abandoned it.”

Charles digested this, then sighed. “Too bad. Did the automobile cause this?”

“Yes, and trucks.”

“Ah,” he murmured. “I like to take the train down to Sausalito and the ferry to San Francisco.”

I probed gently. “Have you been away a long time?”

“Quite a while.”

We walked a few steps, he raised his head and stared at the old stone building as it appeared from the mist. “Ah, the brewery. Too bad it failed. We tried hard to make it a success, but there were too many problems. And I could see big changes coming.”

“What happened?”

“Well,” he said softly, “Prohibition came in. At first we couldn’t believe it. It’s against all of history and human nature.” As we stepped closer, Charles looked up. “What happened to the top floor? It’s gone.”

“For a while it was a mushroom-growing plant, but it caught fire and the top burned off. Now it’s Vella’s cheese factory.”

Vella’s Cheese Factory in Charles time, and today Photo on left courtesy of Sonoma Valley Historical Society- Today photo by Melinda Kelley

That didn’t seem to .

“We made good steam beer, but our brew-master was a hard man to get along with.”

“Was that John Steiner?” I ed my father telling me about him and his owning the Union Hotel and the social hall next door.

“Yes,” he answered, as though he expected me to know this. “A tough German, but I got along with him. Our boys are good friends.”

How strange, I thought, where did this polite, old-fashioned man come from? I decided not to speculate, but to suspend disbelief and encourage him to tell me more.

As we strolled down Second Street East, Charles stopped to look at the old redwood horse barn. “Young Harry is not taking good care of his father’s barn. He loves his Clydesdale horses, but he isn’t interested in much else.”

Young Harry? I suspected he was talking about Harry Castagnasso and referring to the early 1920s. Harry’s son Milton is eighty-seven now and lives in

the family’s two-story Victorian on the corner.

We crossed Spain Street and continued south. Charles ed a few houses and stopped in front of a fine remodeled home set back from the street. “I see Angelo has fixed up his house. No wonder he’s broke.”

“Angelo who?” I asked gently.

“Beretta. Angelo and Angelina. Angelina drinks too much, but she is a good soul. She should have had children.”

I ed them, and I searched my memory for more clues about the time frame Charles was talking about. Angelo operated a small ice-making plant on the east side of the Plaza and the Berettas had died about forty years ago.

I looked closely at Charles, as he moved toward East Napa Street, not bothering to look for traffic, he crossed. He stopped at the stone bridge and gazed down on Nathanson Creek, which flowed gently beneath it.

“The creek looks about the same,” he said, bending over the iron-pipe railing in the low stone wall.

Rip Van Winkle came to mind. But Charles seemed to have been away much longer than twenty years. I scanned his mildly protruding middle-aged profile, the celluloid collar and the thin black necktie. His white shirt was stiffly starched and his general appearance reminded me of an early-twentieth-century wedding

picture. I recalled my parents’ 1921 wedding portrait, but Charles didn’t resemble my father, and his suit seemed to predate the one my father had worn for the picture.

Charles straightened and looked down the creek; the clear water moved through a long pool toward downtown, then turned south. “Sonoma is such a pretty little town, much like my birthplace in Tuscany.”

“Where was that?”

“Porcari, just outside the wall of Lucca.”

I had been to Lucca, and to Porcari, a small town about five miles to the east, on the road to Florence. Many of the Italian immigrants to Northern California had come from Tuscany in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, and quite a number had settled in Sonoma County because it resembled the Tuscan countryside and had a similar climate.

Clewe House (now Cedar Mansion) Photo by Melinda Kelley

Charles turned away from the creek, moved a few steps and stopped again to look at the extensively remodeled Clewe home and garden. “Ah, Fred has such a fine home. His father built it right. But some of the rooms are too small. I like the Duhring home better. It looks more Roman than the Clewes’ German.”

Knowing something about local history, I recalled that the Duhrings and the Clewes had been across-the-street neighbors and had largely established the new eastside residential district. It was distinct from the cluster of original Spanish California residences closer to the Plaza.

Charles looked across the street to the rather grand Duhring residence and grounds, and, as though ing, said, “Judge Tom Denny married a Duhring and the two of them moved in when the older Duhrings moved to San Francisco. The Germans who came here are good people, fine farmers and businessmen, and better educated than the rest of us. It’s a good thing they came here.” He paused and smiled. “I don’t like their opera; it’s too warlike. But their other music is fine. I like them, but not their cooking. Sauerkraut and sausages. Ours is much better… and so is our opera.”

I asked, “Where in did they come from?

“Southern mostly, the Rhineland. Grape growers. Some are Catholic. A few send their children to the university.”

Charles turned and moved on. He walked slowly and I walked beside him,

watching his close observation of the homes. “So many new houses, but I recognize some of the old ones.”

“How long have you been away?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Time is meaningless to me. Everything changes.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “the only constant is change.”

Charles cocked his head and looked up at me. “To speak like that you must have been to the university.”

“Yes,” I itted, “but I have lived here most of my life.”

“This is a fine place. It has been good to me and my family.”

I probed politely. “Where do you live?”

“On Broadway. I built a fine house there. We were just moving in when the earthquake hit. One of the chimneys fell off.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“No. We were asleep, but it shook us awake. The second story fell off the bank up the street, but there was no fire like in San Francisco. Nor damage as great as in Santa Rosa.”

“How long ago was that?”

He thought a Moment. “About fifteen years. I don’t know why it wasn’t worse. God was good to us.”

Another clue. I quickly added fifteen to l906.

Charles looked at the shingled house next to the Clewes’. “Do you know who lives there now?”

“Yes, Roger and Mary Farrell.”

The names didn’t . “Or here?” he asked, pointing to the two-story house next to it.

“Not now. When I was a boy, it belonged to the druggist, L.S. Simmons. I never did know his first name. His granddaughter was in my class in school.”

“Ah, Simmons, a good man and a fine druggist, but his Wife was a bit different,

and their daughter was a hellion.”

“Where did you come from this morning?” I asked, changing the subject.

I supposed he didn’t understand because he answered, “Tuscany, a part of the unified Italy. Garibaldi unified the country when I was a small boy. He was a great man. Just think, he unified Italy after fifteen hundred years of the dark ages and wars that gained us nothing.”

“How did you get here?”

“My brothers sent for me. I was fourteen. For hundreds of years we lived around Lucca and Porcari. There were too many of us for our land. I was very excited. I had never been on a train or a boat. I had no idea how far California was from Lucca.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Eighteen seventy-five. My brothers were working on the Kohler and Frohling ranch in the hills above Glen Ellen. They had good grapes and a winery, and made brandy.”

“Didn’t Jack London buy that ranch?”

“Yes, about thirty years later, when he was famous.”

“Did you know him?”

“Yes, but not well. By the time he came with his girlfriend, I had long been living in Sonoma. He stayed around Glen Ellen. Drank a lot in the bars. Seemed to be unhappy. Simmons the druggist knew him and so did our doctor. He was a strange genius. I liked his books, but not his politics. He was a dreamer.”

I recalled that Jack London was a socialist and political maverick, so I asked Charles, “What are your politics?”

“I’m a Republican. Like all good Italians, I believe in republican government, not monarchies or dictatorships. We people should govern ourselves by voting. Even the women should be able to vote when they become better educated about government.”

“When will that be?”

“Maybe in a few years. My Wife knows enough to vote now.”

I recalled that early-migration Italians ed the Republican Party because they were opposed to tyranny and did not understand that all of our political parties believed in the republican form of government.

Charles glanced down the street, moving his head slowly from side to side. He drew in a deep breath and sighed. “The neighborhood is the same, yet different.

All these new houses and the smooth black pavement. The people must be very prosperous.”

“Yes, we have been fortunate.”

A new Mercedes came slowly up the street, its headlights shining despite the imminent sunrise.

“Good God!” Charles exclaimed. “What’s this coming?”

“It’s a Mercedes.”

“An automobile?”

“Yes, made in .”

“? How can the Huns make such a wondrous thing when they just lost the war? My son fought them in .”

“The Germans recovered quickly,” I answered, thinking of World War II.

“But how can we buy things from the Germans?”

“Because the war is over. Their automobiles are the best, and we are a rich country.”

“How strange.” He seemed to think a Moment, considering this turn of events. Then he smiled and said, “Yet, how grand! Like Jesus said, we should forgive those who tres against us. Maybe that will stop wars.”

“It’s the Christian thing to do.”

“Yes. Like in church, we should sing more and fight less.”

“Make love, not war.”

Charles smiled shyly, seeming slightly embarrassed at the sexual connotation. “Yes. Europe has been fighting useless wars for thousands of years. I was glad to leave. For a long time I missed my parents and my other brothers and sisters, but it is so wonderful here.”

I asked, “Your son was in the war in Europe?”

“Yes. The Huns almost killed him, but his luck changed. I know he sowed a lot of wild oats in . He didn’t want to come home. But he’s finally settling down and has just married a good woman. Now tell me more about that German car.” I did, and he seemed to accept and understand that there had been great advances in automobiles since he had been away.

We crossed Patten Street and Charles paused in front of a two-story shingle house, much like the Farrells’ next to the Clewes’. He tried to look in the front window from his position on the sidewalk. “The Cereghinos must not be up yet. Margaret always goes to early mass, but Tony would rather go fishing. Margaret is a busy German who is strict with her two young girls. Like me, Margaret came from Glen Ellen. She is a Freidiger. I think Tony came up from the City already a butcher. Midge, the older girl, is about nine and she’s going to be a beauty. Both of them have Tony’s sense of humor.”

I ed both girls as my babysitters. At six, I was in love with Midge, and her sister Fran, a tomboy, spanked me after I swatted her on the fanny while we were playing marbles.

Charles gazed at the burnt orange sun as it rose over the eastern hills. “Ah, Easter sunrise. The resurrection! Jesus is risen from the dead… and disappeared.”

“Do you believe that?”

Charles smiled, but didn’t answer.

“I would like to believe. But none of us really knows. It’s a matter of faith,” I said, hoping Charles would respond.

He nodded. “The Christian religions have created many nations and great businesses from the Easter story.”

“Selling hope of eternal life?”

“It’s the best of businesses. All the religions keep selling their stories and still have it all left.”

“Like prostitution?”

“Yes, but the flesh wears out. Religion is much better.”

“And that’s because we want to believe in an afterlife?”

Charles was noncommittal. “You want to know before you are bones and dust?” He leaned back and regarded me carefully. “How old are you?”

“Eighty-two.”

“That’s very old, you won’t have to wait long. I won’t be sixty until November. I think sixty is old.” He stared at me some more. “You don’t look that old. You still look big and strong.”

I removed my Ducks Unlimited baseball cap to show him my bald head and gray fringe.

He seemed surprised. “You’re as bald as I am and grayer, but you still don’t look that old. You must come from a strong bloodline.”

“I suppose so,” I said, not yet realizing I was talking to my grandfather.

CHAPTER 2

CHARLES AND JACK LONDON

Charles took a few steps down the sidewalk, and I followed. Impulsively, I probed, “You mentioned that you knew Jack London?”

He stopped, turned and waited for me to catch up. He looked surprised and quizzical, but replied simply, “Yes, a little. I only met him once.”

“Tell me about him,” I asked.

“He was a strange man. I liked him.”

“So tell me about him.”

Charles smiled, as though ing, and then began.

It was a beautiful day late in the spring of 1911. I had driven my new automobile slowly up to Glen Ellen and stopped at the Chauvet Hotel to have lunch and relax in the saloon for a while. I planned to visit some old friends before driving the rutted dirt road back to Sonoma. I was feeling very good, pleased with myself and with my new Ford. I wanted to show it off to my friends in Glen

Ellen. I thought I would have a drink with Mr. Chauvet before I began visiting. I had no sooner sat at his bar when I noticed a surrey pulling up, drawn by two spirited horses. A handsome man, a stranger to me, stepped down, tied the surrey to the hitching post and burst into the bar. He was tousle-haired and very impatient. “Give me my usual,” he shouted to Mr. Chauvet. “I have a terrible thirst.”

He sat on a stool two down from me and told Mr. Chauvet, “I had a good morning, wrote my thousand words before noon and brought Charmian down to visit some of her lady friends. They bore me, so here I am.” Looking around, he noticed me and asked, “Who are you? I haven’t seen you before, have I?”

“No,” I answered, “I live in Sonoma.”

The bartender explained, “Charles used to live here. That’s his new Ford outside.”

“My God! You must be a rich man,” the man said.

“No,” I answered, “I borrowed the money from the man I bought it from. I think you call it a down payment. I will not really own it until I pay him off.”

“That’s crazy. Suppose you wreck it, then what?”

“I will pay for it anyway. I gave the man my word.”

“So your word is your bond?” he asked doubtfully.

“Absolutely.”

“Then give this man a drink, bartender. I want to drink with this honest man.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“My name’s London. Just call me Jack. What’s your name?”

“Charles. Charles Dal Poggetto.”

“Charles, huh? You look like a Carlo to me.”

“You’re right,” I confessed. “My baptismal name is Carlo, but when I came to America I decided to become an American, so I changed my name to Charles.”

“That’s smart. I know you Italians are good hard-working people, and a lot more fun than the Germans or the French. I’m just an old American myself, born in San Francisco. I’m a writer. Bought the old Kohler and Frohling ranch and hope to pick up some of my neighbors’ places, if they want to sell.” He picked up his drink, which looked like some kind of whiskey, and downed it quickly. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “The elixir of the gods!”

The man, Jack London, he’d said his name was, seemed restless.

“You’re interesting,” he said. “You have that fancy new car, yet you don’t really own it. You must be a good negotiator. Tell me, what do you do?”

“Many things. I’m a businessman.”

“What in hell does that mean? How did you get started?”

“Well, when I got here, I was only fourteen and had only a little schooling. I went to work with my two older brothers in the Kohler and Frohling vineyards and winery. I had to teach myself English. I got some books and practiced by reading them out loud, and I tried to talk to everyone in English. After a few years, a widow lady I worked for part-time here in Glen Ellen helped me learn other things. She was educated, so she taught me many things.”

“I’ll bet she did. You get into her drawers?”

I guess I blushed, because he laughed and told the bartender to give me another drink.

“I would like to buy you a drink,” I said.

Surprised, he looked hard at me. “That’s fair,” he said. “You must be a generous man.”

“I try, but my money does not come easy.”

He smiled. “I had the same problem for quite a while. I didn’t have money for many years, but now I have more than I can spend.”

“Does it come from your writing?” I asked.

“Yes. I write all kinds of stuff, and people pay good money to read it. I can hardly believe it, but it’s happening. And I love it!”

“So you’re a happy man.”

“I am. And I should be.” His face clouded. “But sometimes I’m not, and I can’t understand it.’ He ran his hands through his tousled hair and took a deep breath. “But then I have a few drinks and that sad feeling goes away. I enjoy getting jingled. Charmian, she’s my Wife, she doesn’t mind. She’s quite a woman.”

“You’re very fortunate.”

“How well I know it. I’m getting everything money can buy, and I’m going to make my ranch into the world’s best. I’m doing things no one else has done!”

“You’re very ambitious.”

“I am.” He looked away, as if trying to see something through the window. “There’s so little time!”

“That’s true,” I said. “But you are much younger than I.”

“Yes, but I have this real sense of urgency, like something tells me I’m not going to live long.”

“We don’t really know that.”

“No, thank God. That is, if there is one.”

“Of course there is.”

“I don’t know that. I often wonder about God. But I’ll bet you don’t. You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I was baptized in the church in Porcari.”

“The best building in town, no doubt.”

“Yes, by far.”

“Full of statues, stained glass, and enough mystical-looking stuff to scare the hell out of you.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “Vigil lights, incense, circular trays of candles to light so you can pray for the dead.”

“That’s it. You describe it perfectly. Are you a Catholic?”

London laughed. “Hell no! I have no use for that superstitious fear-and-control stuff. The Church has you by the balls from birth to death. It plays mind games with you… and always wins. It sells hope; it’s their only product. It’s free, but it sells! It’s wrapped in deceptive packages, costs them nothing, and never runs out.”

That really upset me. This man was a whirlwind. “I suppose you’re right,” I said cautiously, “but I guess we all have hope that there is a better life beyond this one and the grave.”

“I doubt it,” he shouted. Then he looked away. “I just don’t know.” He swung his head around toward me. “But I’m curious to find out. If my life weren’t so damn good right now, I would. Sometimes, I guess that’s why I get jingled.” He swallowed the third glass that Mr. Chauvet had placed before him. “Bottoms up, Charles. You’ve got to learn to drink like a man!”

He was so forceful. I was surprised. “I guess I never really have drunk much. I enjoy wine and a little brandy, but I never get jingled. I don’t like it that much.” Then I thought about it and added, “But it relaxes me and makes me feel better. I think it’s good for me, so long as I don’t drink too much.”

London threw his head back and chuckled. “Sometimes, for me, there isn’t that much. I get a real urge. Then I pay for it. Then again, I go for months without a drop. I don’t even think about it, so I’m not an alcoholic.” He paused. “Now how did we get from God to John Barleycorn?”

“Perhaps they go together,” I said suddenly, without knowing why.

“My God! You may be right. They both alter your brain. I’ll have to think about that.”

I knew that I was getting in over my head. Jack London had a very quick mind, much quicker than mine. He seemed to grasp for great thoughts and had a burning intensity about him. He seemed to be in a great hurry. And he was getting jingled. I would call it a bit drunk. He lusted for life without knowing why, but he did, and I felt for him. He was anxious and sincere, searching for answers to the big questions of life and death. We talked and he said he wanted to know why we are here, and if we are going somewhere without any body. I had my faith, but he had none, and it tortured him.

London asked the bartender for another drink. I excused myself and fled from the bar. I visited a few old friends, then drove slowly down the rutted dirt road into Sonoma pondering this strange, tempestuous man.

The Golten Home

CHAPTER 3

1921 RECALLED

Charles looked to the east toward the rising sun, which was now quickly dissolving the mist. “God has washed the earth. How fresh and clean! Especially, in the spring. So full of promise! It’s a time to dream. Begin new things.”

“This is when I plan my day,” I said, “and solve my problems.” Very curious about Charles, I probed, “Do you have any problems?”

He smiled. “No. I’m very fortunate.”

“But you have had problems?”

“Oh yes,” he said, looking into space. “All the problems of a poor immigrant boy going to a strange land. I was very frightened when I left my family. My father, Pasquale, put me on the train at the little station down the dirt road about a mile from our village. I had never been on a train. It went into Lucca, then to Pisa, up to Livorno and to Genoa. I had never seen the great sea or a big ship before. After a night in a small room in a dark waterfront building, I was led onto one of the ships in the harbor and down into what they called steerage along with other paisanos. It was dark; the air was hot and soon began to stink with our sweat. A few candles cast shadows over the hammocks where we would sleep. Only a few of us knew any of the others, and none of us knew what to expect. Hours later the ship began to shudder and move as the steam engines shook the

rusted steel plates. The ship began a slow rolling motion and many became seasick. They threw up in buckets, then all over the deck. The stink was so great it caused others, including me, to get sick. I was sick for three weeks, all the way across the great ocean to New York. We were herded like cattle onto Ellis Island. It was like a prison. I didn’t really know where I was or why. When they let us out, I only knew that I had to find the train to take me to San Francisco. I had just a few lire, knew no English and was weak and scared. A few other paisanos were going to San Francisco and together we got to the Grand Central Station and found a train going to Chicago, where we would find another train to take us to San Francisco. We had no idea how far it was.”

“That was awful,” I said, trying to imagine his plight.

Charles shrugged and added, “But I was not alone. I had no idea how big this country is, but I found out. It took about two weeks for the train to cross this great land. I was amazed that a new city like San Francisco could exist so far away from New York. It was like the end of the earth. Then I saw my brothers and I broke into tears of relief and joy. We got on a flat-bottomed boat and steamed up the bay. Finally the boat went into a narrow slough and wound around to a place they called the Embarcadero. My brothers had a wagon there with two horses. As we rode into Sonoma, then up to Glen Ellen, I couldn’t believe how much the country looked like home.”

“Did you like it here?”

“It was like heaven. Such a new and fresh land, I wanted to learn English and become an American as fast as I could. My brothers were not as ambitious. They were still attached to the old country and besides, there were few women. They eventually went home. Stupidos! And I went from Glen Ellen to Sonoma.”

Charles began to move down the street again. My curiosity aroused, I asked, “What happened in Glen Ellen?”

“Well, I worked hard pruning and picking grapes and making wine and brandy to ship to New York in fifty-gallon barrels. I knew there was no future for me just working in the vineyards. I had to earn more money, get into business. I spent my spare time in Glen Ellen learning English and getting more education. I worked doing anything. I was working one day in the garden of an Anglo widow when she said to me, ‘A fine young man like you should be in business. I would like to help you.’”

“She told me the town needed a barber and dentist. She had an empty little store building and offered to set me up in business. I quickly accepted and she bought me a wonderful barber and dentist chair and other things. By then I spoke good English, and I was soon a success. I was never very good at pulling teeth, but barbering was easy and I liked to learn from talking with people. I paid back the money she loaned me. Then my widow moved away, and eventually I bought a fine bicycle which I rode to Sonoma to look for opportunities.”

“And you found them?”

“Yes, even poor immigrants could find opportunities. Nobody had much money, but the people owned all this wonderful land. There was no nobility or aristocracy. About fifty years before, the new Mexican government, as bad as it was, had stopped the Church from grabbing land and enslaving the Indians. Most of us who came from the old country believed wealth came from owning land and doing something good with it. So I worked hard and found opportunities. The crooks who built the railroads and got control of the gold and silver mines didn’t come north of San Francisco. They couldn’t steal all the land, so some was left for us.”

“I became a fairly good student of California history and knew that, though some of the empire builders had ed through the northern counties, none had settled here.”

“Did you know General Vallejo?”

“Everyone knew him,” Charles said, and thought a Moment. “The Mexican government gave him an empire for nothing, and he let it slip through his fingers. He was a smart man, but no match for the ruthless American settlers.”

That was over a century ago, I mused, and it was still happening. Nothing had changed. I tried to bring Charles up to date. “Since you’ve been away we had years of prosperity, the stock market rose through the roof then crashed, and we had a great depression. A new president, Franklin Roosevelt, rescued us by using the power of the government to control the kind of people who stole Vallejo’s lands. But now the controls are slipping away. We are again very prosperous, but we are heading back into the late nineteenth century.”

“I don’t understand. That seems impossible.”

“We don’t pay attention to history, so we are condemned to repeat it.”

Charles smiled and regarded me quizzically. “Are you in politics?”

“No, but I’m interested.”

“So was I. But not my brothers. They saved some money and went back to Italy.” Charles didn’t seem interested in what I said was happening today. He looked around and fixed his eyes on another shingled house across the street. “That’s young Ralph Hotz’s new house. He works with his father Gustav who runs the best dry goods store in town. He’s German, but some people think he’s a Swiss Jew. I only know he’s not a Catholic, like most of us who came here after the railroad was built. But he’s a good man, and that’s enough for me.” He turned around and took a good look at me. “What kind of outfit is that you’re wearing?”

“A jogging suit.”

“Jogging? What’s that?”

“Slow running. Many of us jog around town early in the morning for exercise. It’s good for our health. I’m eighty-two.”

“Seems foolish to me. It will never replace good hard work.” Puzzled, he asked, “You’re eighty-two and still running around early in the morning in a fancy green uniform and a baseball cap which says Ducks Unlimited. Do you belong to some kind of athletic team of that name?” He thought a Moment. “I don’t believe you are eighty-two. And if you are, you’re crazy. You’ll drop dead.”

“I’m trying to prevent dropping dead.”

“Your bones will break.” He became pensive and shrugged. “But you’ve got to die sometime. And Easter morning is as good a time as any.”

“I’m not about to drop dead,” I protested. “And my bones are fine.”

“Next you will tell me that a man can walk on the moon.”

“That’s already happened.”

“Then you are crazy.” He examined me again. “But you don’t look or sound crazy. Perhaps I’ve been away too long.”

“Let’s keep walking. You’re very interesting.”

“So are you. Some crazy people are interesting.”

I gave him one of my favorite lines. “There’s a thin line between genius and insanity.”

“Are you some kind of head doctor?” he asked, looking up at me.

“No. That’s just something I learned over fifty years ago.”

“That’s a long time, but then you are old,” he said, looking carefully at me.

“How tall are you?”

“Six feet.”

“Strange, you don’t look like you have shrunk or bent your bones. Are all eighty-year-olds like you?”

“No. I’m fortunate.”

“Then let’s go on. Tell me if you get tired.”

Charles ed several old homes without comment before he stopped in front of my high school principal’s house. “Ah, my friend Louis Golton. His place looks about the same. What happened to Mr.Golton?”

“He had a bad heart attack and died.”

“Too bad. He was a graduate of Harvard University, the best university in America. He had a master’s degree, in history.” Charles smiled as he ed. “His name was Goldstein, but he changed it to Golton when he came out here. I think he was afraid of being persecuted for being Jewish. We had no Jews here, and nobody cared what he was. The main discrimination was against the Chinese. They worked for less, and some of the newer immigrants complained about that. I told them that in our free enterprise system that was the way it should be. Be a better worker, I told them, and you will get paid more.”

Thinking about Louis Golton, my high school principal, brought me for a Moment to the spring of 1940; I recalled the two greatest shocks of my young life. “Mr. Golton died suddenly two months before I graduated from high school,” I told Charles. “That was about two weeks before my father died at forty-three. Like Mr.Golton, he had a sudden heart attack. They were good friends.”

I wondered if Charles knew this, and was somehow testing me. He was greatly impressed by Louis Golton but didn’t seem interested in knowing who my father was.

“The professor was probably the best educated man in the Valley,” Charles commented. “We were lucky to have him, though some thought he was too strict. He wanted everyone to do their best, and some to go to the university. He gave me books to read.”

“How is it that you knew him so well?”

“I was on the city council when he came before us. He wanted to build a new high school, but didn’t know how to raise the money. I was good at that, so I began to work with him. We worked on the plans together.”

I ed Mr. Golton telling us how hard it had been to win an election to bonds for the construction of a new high school, and how my grandfather had helped him. That was when he taught back-to-back American history and public speaking classes. They were the best and most interesting classes I had in high school. He taught us about government, political organization and voting power. The school bond election was one of his examples of local political action.

Charles said proudly, “I had him change the plans to hide the gymnasium behind the impressive main building because I knew the voters would think it was an unnecessary extravagance and vote against the bonds.”

Suddenly I had a great ‘Ah, ha!’ Moment. Charles had to be my grandfather, who died in l921.

Mr. Golton had told our class about the bond election. He had said that Charles Dal Poggetto so believed in education that he thought it was worth a little deception. Here the end justified the means. But, he had lectured, that is rarely the case.

Now what? I asked myself. Am I imagining this? I was fascinated and didn’t want the experience to end. Did Charles know who I was? Apparently not, at least he gave no hint that I was his grandson, born a year after he died.

Charles took a few steps and stopped at the next house. “Ah, the lovely Miss Cooper,” he said, looking up at the front porch as if he could see her. “The finest young teacher in the grammar school, and a local girl. I had hoped my son would fall in love with her, but there was no spark in either of them.”

Edna Cooper was my fifth-grade teacher. “I Miss Cooper,” I said. “She was my favorite teacher in grammar school.” I waited for him to comment, wondering if he had known her again after she died. Nothing. “Did you ever meet her in her later years?”

Charles smiled enigmatically and changed the subject. “I owe everything to becoming an American. Such a wonderful country. Education for everyone, most of it free. Not so in the old country. From the beginning my ancestors were under the thumbs of more powerful people, kings, nobles, tyrants, large landowners… and the Church. They all oppressed us and gave us no chance to improve ourselves and our place in life. It was a prison without bars. Here I could learn like Abraham Lincoln, earn money and buy land. I’m a grateful and happy man.”

“Do you have an automobile?” I asked.

“Yes, the finest sedan Henry Ford makes. I have a new one! I bought it with the money I saved.”

“What do you think of Henry Ford?”

Charles paused thoughtfully. “He’s a complicated man, very smart, with a great imagination. He had the wonderful idea of mass producing automobiles so the common people could buy them. But he is also a tyrant.” He smiled. “But you can’t really be much of a tyrant in this free country. Thank God real power is in the hands of the people who vote. Ford and the other tycoons can’t control them. There’s just too many of us voters. When we disagree with the tycoons we can vote against them. We can also buy cars from their competitors. Free enterprise is wonderful.”

I didn’t expect this lecture, but encouraging him, I asked, “Do you believe in uncontrolled free enterprise?”

“No!” he said quickly. “Our republican government must regulate the greedy

tyrants. We were slow to catch on, but now we are doing that.”

I changed the subject. “What do you do now?”

“I’m a businessman. I own several businesses.”

“How did you become so prosperous?”

He smiled, as though pleased to be asked. “I became a barber and dentist, a businessman. I had worked hard for several years in the Kohler and Frohling vineyards and winery when my good-luck widow gave me the opportunity to become a businessman. I didn’t have the skillful touch, or the education to be a good dentist, and barbering wasn’t enough, so I did other things. When I went down to Sonoma I became an insurance agent for Phoenix of Hartford, and a travel agent. I bought a saloon and pool hall, which I tried to upgrade by naming it the Unique Billiard Parlor. Then I bought rental houses. I built a fine stone building with four store spaces and a sixteen-bed hospital upstairs. I put all my businesses, including a clothing store, in the building. But I needed rent-paying tenants.

“One day a fine jeweler came into town. He was born in the old country, was educated, and knew opera. So I rented him one of my new store spaces at a very low rent.”

“Was that Fernando Mosso?”

“Yes,” he said and smiled. “He is a fat, meticulous bachelor who sings opera to himself as he squints through his magnifying eyeglass, fixing watches and making jewelry.”

I ed him well, a formidable, precise man, always wearing his circular spring-like eyeglass wedged under his thick black eyebrow. After the second war, I bought engagement and wedding rings from him. I asked Charles, “How were you able to acquire property and build such a building?”

“I worked hard, bargained and borrowed. My Wife had her own money, which she kept in the bank at no interest. She wouldn’t let me use any, but my banker, Jesse Burris, knew she wouldn’t let me fail. And young Frank Burris wouldn’t either. So they lent me more money than they should have. They were real bankers… and valuable friends.”

I recalled that the Burris family largely owned the original Sonoma Valley Bank, and that my father had told me they operated it for the benefit of the local people, making loans more on character than collateral.

Charles stood on the corner of Second and Streets and looked down Second. “Good Lord! Look at all the houses. There were only fields and some eucalyptus trees along the east side of the street.” Then he turned west and glanced along Street. “More houses! Where did all these people come from?”

“We’ve been discovered,” I replied. Sonoma Valley is now a destination resort.”

“What does that mean?” We’ve had summer resorts here since Captain Boyes

laid out his land around the hot springs.”

“This is different.”

“What’s different about it?”

“It’s much more upscale. Tourists are coming here from all over the world, not just the San Francisco area.”

“Why?”

“Because of our fine wines, the climate and the scenery. It’s like Tuscany, or Provence.”

“We all know that, even if you aren’t Italian or French.”

“I guess it’s because of advertising, telling hundreds of millions of people about what we have here.”

“Hundreds of millions? How?”

“Multimedia.”

“What’s that?”

“Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet.”

“I’ve heard about radio, Marconi and his wireless, but what are television and the Internet?”

This was too much to explain, and I suppose my face showed my consternation. Charles’ quizzical expression vanished. He looked up at me and said apologetically, “I see I have been away a long time. Let’s go on. I want to see Poppe’s field and the creek.”

He moved alongside the Cooper house west on Street until he stopped and asked, “What happened to Poppe’s field? It’s gone.”

Cooper House Photo by Melinda Kelley

“It’s covered with houses, but Nathanson Creek is still there.”

“It runs along the back of my four lots on Broadway.”

“That hasn’t changed,” I said, suddenly ing my childhood and the years I spent playing in the creek with Allen McGrath, Talbert Bean, Carl Dreasel, my sister Heloise and others. We played at Rubber-band gun wars, cowboys and Indians, digging clay to make cups and plates and looking for trout and steelhead. I never saw any. There were only some suckers, polliwogs and mosquito fish. And at night, especially in the early spring, the raucous serenade of bull frogs. “My mother used to spank me when I fell in the creek in winter. She was afraid I would drown.”

“My son did the same thing, and his mother spanked him too, but it didn’t do any good, so I taught him to swim.”

We walked in front of the new houses until we reached the bridge over the creek. It looked much the same as I ed it, except that the rather deep hole which held the suckers was much shallower. I knew some steelhead ran up the creek and spawned above the Ravenswood winery, and in recent years a few king salmon had found their way up the creek.

“Look,” Charles exclaimed, “There is a cottage where I had my chicken yard, and my garage is gone. I wonder what happened to my Ford.”

He stared at another small house between the cottage and the main house which was set back a little to the north. “Part of that house was my toolshed and winter storage for our onions, potatoes, corn and chicken feed.”

“The persimmon tree is still there,” I said, somewhat surprised.

Charles chicken pen Photo by Melinda Kelley

“How did you know that tree?” Charles asked.

“I lived next door when I was growing up and ate the persimmons.”

“In that old wreck of a house?”

“No, in a new one my father built.”

“So Mary sold the lot to him?”

“Yes.”

“So you must know my Mary.”

“Yes,” I said, wanting to tell him she was my grandmother, but hesitating.

“Have you been in my house?”

“Yes, many times when I was a child.”

“How did you like it?”

“It was and still is a fine house.”

Charles squinted at the back of the house and shook his head. “It’s sort of pink now. I had it painted white.” He examined the rear of the house. “And I think Mary’s greenhouse at the top of the back stairs is gone.” Charles walked off the bridge toward the house, staring into the backyard garden. “The almond tree, the figs and the citrus are gone, but the house looks almost like new.”

“It must be redwood.”

“The best redwood I could buy. Mary complained about the cost, but she didn’t put any of her money into it, so I didn’t pay any attention to her.”

Back of Charles house Photo by Melinda Kelley

“Did she like the house?”

“Yes, but she didn’t like the toilet in the bathroom. She used the outhouse by the creek during the day. And she refused to use the electric lights, but I turned them on. She insisted on using coal oil lamps.”

“She was very frugal?”

“That’s a kind word. She made clothes out of flour sacks and patched holes in everything. She was a fine seamstress, but she embarrassed our children with the clothes she made them wear. My son used to keep some clothes that I secretly bought him under a bridge closer to school. He would change there on his way to and from school. We knew Mary would never walk uptown beyond Gottenberg’s grocery, so we were safe.”

“Did she ride in your Ford?”

“Yes. I had automobiles since before the war. I had one of the first in town. She was afraid at first, but then she got used to it and liked to visit her friends on Sundays.”

“Did she speak English regularly?”

“Yes, but she preferred Italian. She also spoke German to the Malchows and some of the other Germans, and French to Pierre Lambeye, the laundryman. He was from Marseille, and she called him ‘Laundry French.’” So did my mother, I recalled; she spoke Parisian French and shared the Parisian disdain for southerners.

As we strolled past the pink house, I asked Charles how all the different nationalities got along in the Valley.

He didn’t hesitate. “Very well, considering all the differences. I think the native Spanish Californians were more easygoing than the original Spaniards, who killed the poor Digger Indians, and the Church, which made slaves of them. The Bear Flag people weren’t much and scattered. It was the Germans, then the Italians and a few French, Irish and Civil War veterans who made this Valley prosper. That’s just my opinion. Others look at things differently. There were more Catholics than other religions. Many had escaped from religious and political persecution and didn’t want any of that cruelty and hatred here. We knew the Pope was an absolute dictator, and that the Church knew nothing about democracy or married life and raising children, so we didn’t pay much attention to its threats and attempts to make us feel guilty and bow to its control. We Italians know the church for what it is, and the priests don’t frighten us.”

“And the other religions?”

“They are about the same. No religion should rule us. If what we feel in our hearts is good… it’s probably right.”

Charles turned and moved slowly along the south side of his house, examining the side garden and the structure as though ing. When we came to the corner, he stepped onto Broadway and paused.

“Would you like to go inside your house?” I asked.

“It’s too early, but even later, I don’t think I should. This is a different time. We can’t go back.” His face saddened, then he raised his head and smiled. “But I would like to see the Plaza, and City Hall, and the fire engines.”

I brought him up to date. “City Hall is a fine building and outside it’s still the same.”

“Good,” he said emphatically. “We built it right… with stone that will last for generations.”

And then, I thought, like us, it too will become history.

Front of Charles home on Broadway Photo by Melinda Kelley

CHAPTER 4

UP BROADWAY

“My iron fence is gone,” Charles complained mildly. “I put in the sidewalk and the fence alongside it, a hundred feet long across the whole lot.”

“I it,” I replied. “I don’t know who removed it.”

“I guess it outlived its purpose. I thought it was pretty. Mary said it was a waste of money.” Then he looked at my father and mother’s house. “Is that where you grew up?”

“Yes, from the time I was seven.”

“A nice big house,” Charles said approvingly. “A different style. Mine is a Queen Anne.”

“Ours is quite different. Nineteen Thirties Mediterranean modern, I think the contractor called it, if I correctly.”

He looked across the street and commented, “It looks something like that one over there.”

“That’s Doctor McGrath’s. He had it built by the same contractor the year before my father built his.”

Newton Sr. and Marie Dal Poggetto House Photo by Wendy Kruljac

As he walked by our house, Charles squinted first at it, then at the McGrath house. He stopped in front of the next house, which had been converted into a real estate sales office. “They look much nicer than my other two houses, the ones I gave to Giglia and my son for wedding presents. They are now both commercial properties.”

“Is Giglia your daughter?” I asked, reasonably sure of his answer.

“Yes, my second child. My son is the youngest, and Alma the oldest.”

I knew that Charles had died of blood poisoning on July 20, l921. Now his time reference seemed as of that date. There was much I wanted to ask him, to fill in the blanks in our family history and to separate myths from facts that neither my father, nor my aunts Giglia and Alma spoke much about.

Charles scrutinized Aunt Gil’s house, which was now a commercial office building with a lawn sign that read Sonoma Management.

He sighed. “It looks like the business district has surrounded my houses. And back there, across the street,” he added, “I see that Henry Bates’ funeral parlor is now something called Deuce. Is that a poker parlor?”

“No, it’s a restaurant. It was vacant for many years after Bates’ successors moved the funeral business down Broadway across from the high school. No one

wanted to start a business in a place that created unpleasant memories of departed family .”

“You mean dead relatives?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “The language changes like everything else. Tell me about Giglia’s house. Who owns it now?”

“The Mori family.”

“You mean Battista’s gone?”

“Yes. He’s gone, though he lived until ninety. He ran his grocery store into his eighties.”

“I ire him. He will pay no attention to Prohibition. And he will make a lot of money. He can deliver local wine, and maybe even some brandy, down to the produce market in San Francisco. He goes down in the middle of the night to buy his fresh fruits and vegetables.”

“He did make a lot,” I said, “although he would never it it.”

“Why should he? He’s a good businessman and Prohibition is against human nature. It’s not something that should be talked about.”

I said, “Your son also sold his old house next door to Battista Mori after he built his new house.”

“You mean Newt, or Newton, as Mary calls him. I could never understand why she was so impressed by Sir Isaac Newton that she insisted on giving our son his name.”

“Perhaps she thought it might inspire him.”

“Newton was a rare genius. But no boy should be burdened by the name of such a great man.”

“Did it bother him?”

“I don’t think he paid any attention to Isaac Newton. He didn’t care for science and refused to go to college. He’s what you call personable. Everyone likes him and he always wants to go fishing and duck hunting.”

“Did Mary want him to go to college?”

“Yes. She wanted him to become a lawyer, but he refused. He said he enjoyed working with me and making good money. He loved Sonoma and his friends.

Going to San Francisco and barber college there was enough for him.” Then he smiled proudly. “But when the war came, he volunteered quickly. He was shipped to .”

“But Sonoma fitted his niche in life?”

“Yes. Both Mary and I wanted more from him, but now he’s going to be twentyfour on September 11 and he just got married yesterday to a city girl, so I think they will be dropping their roots here.”

We walked past Giglia’s house, then stopped in front of a modern real estate office. Charles seemed puzzled as he looked at the old frame house to the rear. “I wonder how they moved the house back there? They must have torn down the barn and the chicken coop.”

“Yes. Moving houses is much easier now. There are companies that do it, especially with well-built redwood houses.”

“Are you a builder?”

“No, but my son is a general building contractor and supervises the construction of State of California buildings.”

“You mean he must watch the actual builders?”

“Yes, they cheat a lot; it’s a very sophisticated game involving millions of dollars.”

“I see human nature hasn’t changed.”

“Not a bit.”

“Is American business still ruthless?”

“Most small business is not, but big business is.”

Charles shook his head wearily. “We never learn. We never send the robber barons to prison.”

“No, we don’t,” I said. “Nothing’s changed. They become philanthropists, and have foundations named after them.”

“I don’t understand how they can do that.”

“It’s our system of federal taxation and exemptions.”

“You mean the income tax?”

“Yes. Loopholes for the rich and powerful.”

“That has never concerned me. Let’s talk about something else.”

Charles looked closely at the old Davis house and shook his head. “Even the old Davis place is commercial and the field alongside has a new real estate building next to the house I gave my son. Good Lord, look! There’s even a small new hotel behind Dr. Davis’ house. My beautiful residential neighborhood is gone. What’s happened to my beautiful little town?”

“It has grown.”

He seemed puzzled, then smiled and said, “Of course, it is natural for others to discover our beautiful little village. He stared at the venerable remodeled Davis house, then said absently, “And I suppose Emma Hope Wright is gone.”

“Yes, she took care of the Davis house almost until she died at ninety-three.” She was another of my babysitters, a great friend and neighbor, and the heart and soul of the Sonoma Red Cross.

Charles asked, “Did you know Emma was the widow of a country doctor in eastern Washington state?”

“Yes. She told me they lived on a small ranch twenty miles east of Spokane. Dr. Wright would make distant house calls with his horse and buggy and sometimes

be gone for days. Emma was so lonely and frightened, she would go out onto the back porch and scream at the wilderness until she became exhausted… and strangely felt better. She never knew why it worked, but it did. Then her husband died suddenly and, childless, she moved down to Sonoma to live in the Davis house with her sister.”

“Emma Wright had just arrived in Sonoma when I knew her,” Charles said, and began moving slowly toward the Plaza. After a few steps he stopped and exclaimed, “The Congregational Church is gone! Did it burn down?”

“No, it was moved up to Spain Street. It’s been remodeled and looks fine.”

“That’s good. It was built to last. But that nice vacant lot! It is now a Shell gasoline service station.”

“Yes, but the Gustav Hotz house is still with us. Let’s go take a look at it.”

We walked across Patten Street and stopped in front of an old, but well maintained shingled house, now painted white and looking its age. I said, “G.H. Hotz’s youngest son, Harold, lived there until his death. I don’t know who owns it now, but it’s the only remaining residence on the block.”

Charles bowed his head. “The village has become a city.”

“Yes, but we have tried to keep some of the flavor of a village.”

“That’s nice, but I don’t know how you manage to do it.”

“Planning and zoning.”

“What is zoning?”

“Restricting where and how people can build.”

“You can’t do that to a free people.”

“You can if it is for the benefit and greater good of the people.”

Charles paused, his dark brown brows pinched together in thought. “That means Sonoma has too many people. We never had enough. There were vacant lots all over town and less than a thousand people.”

“Now we have about ten thousand.”

“That’s more than in Santa Rosa.”

“Santa Rosa now has about one hundred sixty thousand.”

Stunned, Charles fell silent. He took a few steps, saying, “The people must breed like rabbits.”

We strolled slowly up Broadway toward the Plaza and I watched Charles as he peered at the shops on both sides of the street, apparently trying to sort out the old from the new. When we reached Napa Street, he stopped and looked carefully at City Hall. He smiled broadly, seeming immensely satisfied. “It’s still a beautiful building. We did a good job, the best stone. It will last for centuries.”

“Like in Italy?” I asked.

“Maybe even like the Romans,” he said as he gazed intently about the full expanse of the Plaza. “How beautiful, with all those lawns and trees, flowers and shrubbery. The city must be rich to have such a place.”

“Shall we cross the street?

“Yes, I want to see it all.”

As we crossed the street, Charles noticed the rose garden near the east side of the Plaza. “Roses, just beginning to bloom. And is that a fountain?”

Sonoma Plaza Fountain Photo by Melinda Kelley

“Yes, shall we go over to it? There are seats around it. We can rest and look at the buildings across the street.”

“Are you tired?” he asked looking up at me. “I guess you are, since you are so old.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“So am I. And there is much to see.” As we ed the budding rose garden and entered the green-hedged fountain enclosure, I noticed a few sedans and pickup trucks parked along the curb. Then a large Cadillac SUV swung in, parking directly in front of the fountain.

“What is that monster?” Charles asked, his eyes bulging in amazement.

“It’s called a sport utility vehicle. It’s built on a truck frame, but it’s really a big enger car, a luxurious one.”

“Amazing!”

“Let’s sit down and watch the people across the street coming for bread, pastries and coffee,” I suggested, pointing at the circular stone ledge. “It’s like in Europe,

but here it’s considered rather quaint.”

“Yes, like in Porcari and Lucca. But there they are extensions of small bars, with brandy and wines.”

“This is a French Basque bakery. It serves coffee with its pastries and muffins, but no liquor.”

“Too bad, they should serve brandy.”

Basque Boulangerie Bakery Photo by Melinda Kelley

Facing the Boulangerie, we seated ourselves on the bench-like stonewall that encircled the fountain. It was now after seven and a few people were seated outside at the small tables. One gray-haired lady in a black coat was flanked by two well-clipped standard poodles that sat on guard at her feet.

I was distracted by a man on my left who was strolling down the sidewalk past the old Carnegie library just north of us. He was well dressed in a blue serge suite with a conservative necktie as if he were on his way to church. Dapper, but dated, I thought. He was in his early forties, nice looking, though bald, well built, but with a moderate paunch. His neatly pressed suit seemed too large at the waist, as though he had recently lost weight. And he was barefoot!

CHAPTER 5

1940

My God! It was my father!!

My stunned brain flashed back to April l940, the early afternoon of a bright spring day. In my mind’s eye, Father Mentasti suddenly appeared in the Sonoma Valley High School library where I was studying. Looking grave, he asked me to come with him. My sister Heloise was standing in the hallway waiting for us.

We went out to Father Mentasti’s car wondering what this was all about. I asked him, but he didn’t answer as he sped up Broadway toward our house. We went inside and saw my mother standing in the living room, hysterical, sobbing violently. Our neighbor across the street, Dr. Allen McGrath, stood at her side.

Pale and grim, Dr. McGrath looked at us with tears in his eyes. He motioned to me to follow him as he turned into the dining room. He put his arm over my shoulders and said, “You’re now the head of the family.”

My father had died suddenly at forty-three with his first heart attack. He had been in the bathroom getting a drink of water when it hit him. He stumbled into my bedroom with my mother following him. He fell on the bed and died.

And now here he was, strolling with the casual stride I ed, oblivious of

his bare feet. Charles recognized him and called out, “Over here, Newt. I’m over here.”

Newt approached and said to Charles, “So you’re out for a walk too,” as if it happened regularly.

“Newt, I’d like you to meet my new friend,” Charles said. “I met him near the railroad track at the brewery.” Somewhat embarrassed, Charles turned to me. “I’m sorry, I don’t your name.”

“My friends call me Dal,” I answered cautiously.

“Cal, like in California?” Charles asked.

“No. Dal like in Dallas.” I decided on evasion until I could figure out what was happening.

“Ah, like the city in Texas. Dallas, this is my son, Newton, or Newt, as most of us call him.”

I rose and extended my hand. Newt took it. His grip was firm but cold.

Panic seized me! Had I died and didn’t know it? Or was this a near-death experience? But there was no floating up over my body, nor was I coming out of a tunnel into a bright light. I was right here in my hometown standing by the

fountain Sam Sebastiani had built when I was in high school. And there were real live people across the street, drinking coffee and eating pastries at the Boulangerie.

I quickly regained my composure. “I’m pleased to meet you,” I said, peering directly into his eyes in search of any hint that my father recognized me.

“Likewise,” Newt said in a clear deep voice without any recognition of me.

Fumbling for something to say, I pointed across the street and asked Newt, “Have you been to the Boulangerie?”

Newt’s gaze followed my gesture and the turn of my head. “That was the post office! When did it become a bakery? What’s happened to the post office?”

“It’s on Broadway next to Lou Greene’s house.”

“How is Lou?” Newt asked casually. “Is he still the city treasurer?”

“No, he retired.” I didn’t mention that he had died about forty years ago.

Newt asked, “You live here long?”

“I was born here.”

“So was I, on Napa Street behind the barbershop next to Boccoli’s grocery store. You belong to the Native Sons?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So do I, and the VFW and the American Legion,” Newt said rather proudly.

“I do too.”

“And the Chamber of Commerce. I’m the president.”

“I was a member, but I’m not now.”

Newt seemed disappointed. Then he smiled and said, “I’ll sign you up again.”

“Not on Easter,” Charles interrupted. “Let’s sit down and enjoy this beautiful morning.”

We sat on the low wall, facing the street with me in the middle. Mystified, I assured myself that I was conscious and oriented in this familiar place and time. I was real, they were not. But I was hesitant to test my belief further. Apparently

Charles and Newt had not talked to each other for a long time, and they began a conversation which excluded me.

Newt noticed Charles looking intently across the street at the Sebastiani Theatre. “Why are you looking at Sam’s theater building?”

“I’m trying to what was there,” Charles said.

Sonoma Early 1930’s Photo Courtesy of Sonoma Valley Historical Society

“Not much.” Newt said. “Sam bought the old buildings north of Duhring’s up to the Poppe building. He tore down all but the one next to Durhing’s, which was originally a small hotel. Sam’s the only one who made really big money during Prohibition and in the Depression after the crash. I don’t think he can read or write English, but he can count. He’s probably the smartest man in the Valley.”

“I’m not surprised,” Charles said, then added, “What crash?”

“Newt said, “The stock market. Most of us lost our shirts.”

“I don’t understand,” Charles said, looking puzzled.

“Frank Burris at the bank talked most of us into buying stocks, and in l928, the stock market shot up. We were all getting rich. Then the bottom fell out. I mortgaged the house you gave me to buy Transamerica. Frank told me to do it. When the crash came I damn near lost the house. Then I almost lost the new house I was building.”

Charles looked worried. “What about Alma and Giglia?”

“They’re okay. They didn’t play the market. They made good money bootlegging in Marin with their husbands. Prohibition was good for them.”

“Stupid law!” Charles said. He leaned across me and asked Newt, “How did you do?”

“I was the stupid one. I refused to bootleg, didn’t want to get caught. Sam Sebastiani was smartest. He got in bed with the Church and somehow got a federal license to make sacramental wine for communion. This made him legal. Then he flooded New York and Chicago with cheap wine. He went back there regularly to collect payments in cash. He wore a money belt and came back with it bulging. It’s a wonder he didn’t get killed. He’s a brave man. I could never understand why the Feds didn’t investigate and shut him down.”

“We’re both Toscanos, from Lucca,” Charles said proudly. “I’m glad he’s done so well. You can only do that in America.”

Newt nodded. “That’s right. I’m glad for Sam and Elvira. Though he’s a crusty guy, we get along fine. Now with another world war coming, he’ll make another fortune.”

“What war?” Charles asked.

“ is doing it again,” Newt said. “They’ve conquered Poland, Denmark and Norway.”

“How could they do that?” Charles asked. “They’ve just lost a great war.”

“Adolf Hitler.” Newt spat out the name in disgust.

“Who’s Hitler?” Charles demanded.

“The German dictator.”

Charles seemed puzzled. “What is a dictator?”

“A ruler, like a king, with total power,” Newt explained. “He’s got the Germans thinking they are the master race. He’s been telling the people that the Jews are inferior and should be driven out of so they won’t mix with German Aryans.”

“What’s an Aryan?” Charles asked, apparently unfamiliar with these new English words.

Calmly Newt leaned across me and explained to Charles. “Mainly big blue-eyed blonds, Teutons and other Germanic tribes. I guess Hitler thinks that’s the way the original Germans were.”

“Ah,” Charles nodded, “like the Lombards and the Swiss-Germans. Like my Mary. She has a German uncle.”

“Yes, and she’s just as bullheaded,” Newt said.

Dismayed, Charles said, “So you went to war for nothing?”

“It looks that way,” Newt said. “ is next. They and the English have been at war with for over six months, but nothing much has happened. The French think the Maginot Line will stop the Germans.”

Charles sat up straight and sighed. “Then it’s a world war again.”

“Yes,” Newt agreed, adding, “Hitler is worse than the Kaiser.”

“Then we will have to stop them!” Charles’ eyes drifted off as he fell silent.

Newt seemed downcast. He apparently knew nothing of what had happened after April 26, 1940. He didn’t know that three weeks later Hitler had invaded and conquered Holland, Belgium and . And the Italian dictator Mussolini had ed Hitler, belatedly declaring war on England and .

I looked around, wondering if others could see Charles and Newt. The closest people were sitting across the street at the four little tables in front of the Boulangerie; a few more were entering the bakery and leaving with loaves of warm French bread. None of them were looking our way. Neither Charles nor my father seemed particularly interested or curious about me. I didn’t think I looked my age, but I was still much older than they were at sixty and forty-three. They could see that their hometown had changed, yet they were detached and not disturbed about it. It was as though they expected change and growth, and seemed to be here only for a visit.

Though my father was a friendly man and a good conversationalist, he had never really told me much about his childhood and the racier side of his life as a young man. In later years his older sister Alma had given me glimpses of my father as a lighthearted rascal.

Alma told me that at thirteen, Newt was almost fully grown and quite goodlooking. From time to time, he had glimpsed attractive young ladies strolling the grounds and lounging by the swimming pool of a secluded estate on the east side of Second Street East, below Schocken’s Hill. He soon discovered that the place was owned by a mysterious man in San Francisco, and that the ladies were prostitutes from the City, enjoying some rest and recreation. One summer day just before his thirteenth birthday, he sneaked through the shrubbery and quickly became acquainted with them. And just as quickly lost his virginity.

Sister Alma became suspicious of Newt’s unexplained absences during the summer afternoons and she followed him. Peering through the shrubbery, she saw him frolicking in the swimming pool with nubile naked young women. When he emerged two hours later she marched him down to Charles’s office. Alma complained bitterly that her young brother was consorting with whores. Charles was not surprised. He smiled and said it was time for Newt to sow some wild oats, and that it was better he learned from experienced women. Alma protested, but Charles reminded her that these prostitutes were from a fine San Francisco house; they weren’t diseased and wouldn’t get pregnant.

Alma remained furious and threatened to tell her mother. Charles quickly charmed her out of it, saying Mary was from the old country. He reminded Alma that her mother had eight brothers and no sisters, and she clearly understood, that after a certain age, it is natural for boys to seek the pleasures only girls can provide. “God intends it that way,” Charles had said, and told her to quit spying.

Aunt Alma told me she only wanted to protect her young brother. But eventually she realized that he was maturing early, and that the whores were being kind and

giving pleasure in perhaps the only way they knew.

I thought that mentioning this episode might surprise and shock my father, so I said, “Do you Alma catching you with some whores when you were twelve years old?”

Newt smiled easily. “I was almost thirteen, and I was having a great time until she caught me. Alma was a natural snoop and she loved to spy on me. She told my mother, who locked me in my bedroom at night. I suppose she had to do something. But I fooled her and Alma—for about three months, until the night Alma caught me sliding down a rope from my second-story bedroom. She stole my rope and tattled on me. So I got my slingshot and accidentally shot her in the eye with a dried lemon and gave her a black eye.

“What about other girls, the locals?” I asked.

Newt shrugged. “There weren’t many around Sonoma, and Alma watched me like a hawk. But the next summer, when my father sent me to barber college in San Francisco, I thought I had gone to heaven. I was big for my age, could for eighteen and had some money my father gave me. I learned to drink and hold my liquor. I didn’t want to go home, but my father made me go to high school, then help him in his barbershop and work in his other businesses.”

“What else did you do?”

“I played baseball and practiced the violin, but I didn’t like it and switched to the tuba so I could play in the town band.”

I was impressed with Newt’s candor, so I continued questioning him. Charles listened patiently. “Did you plan on going to college?” I asked.

“No. My mother wanted me to be a lawyer, but I didn’t like the idea. Too much arguing. I took a business course and after two years got a certificate, then worked full-time with my dad. I liked living in Sonoma.

“In the summer the Springs resorts from El Verano to Glen Ellen were full of San Francisco girls. Mostly Irish and Italian. Many San Franciscans had summer places up here. And the resorts were full of families and single women on vacation. We met them at the dances in Boyes Springs, Fetters and Caliente. Until the war, I was a catcher on the town baseball team and played tuba in the band. It was a great life.”

Charles listened with some interest, but it seemed that this was history that he already knew. He fidgeted a little and said to Newt, “Tell him about the war.”

This seemed to please Newt. He stood up like he was about to perform. He stepped to the edge of the fountain and raised his chest. “I volunteered as soon as the war started,” he said proudly. “But I almost got killed soon after I got over there.”

I ed the story, but I said, “Tell me about it.”

Newt smiled, as though fondly ing. “I was twenty and the army sent me with some of my new friends to Fort Lewis, in Washington state. I was a

good shot and became a machine gunner. We were all excited to be in the army and rarin’ to go kill Huns.

“I loved to gamble, craps and poker especially, and I was pretty good at it; shooting craps was my favorite. Most of the soldiers were lousy gamblers, and I began to win a lot of money. I was having a great time, was made private first class, and was put in charge of a three-man machine gun crew. Then we shipped out on a train and slowly went across the country. Along the way the people were wonderful, especially the women, who showered us with jams, jellies, pies and cookies every time we stopped at a station. We had so much stuff by the time we got to New Jersey that we had to throw it all out the windows. Then the fun ended.”

“Did you get more training in New Jersey?” I asked.

“No. Fort Dix was a crowded mess. It was November, the weather turned cold and it rained, then snowed. One dark morning six hundred of us were piled into open trucks and sent to New York. We were herded on board a rusty old United Fruit Company banana boat. In a couple of hours it steamed out into the Atlantic. We all got seasick as soon as we hit the ocean. It was awful. Six hundred men who had never been to sea, stuffed into cold cargo holds and throwing up all over. At first the holds smelled of bananas, then began to stink with vomit, which quickly became putrid. The first night was awful and it didn’t get any better. The damn boat made about eight knots, bouncing and zigzagging all over the rough ocean in a convoy. Most of the time when I got up on deck it was raining or snowing, and so windy I could hardly stand up. We had nothing to do. It was like being in a dark, rolling, creaking prison.

“Then I caught a terrible cold and my head felt like a watermelon. There was no doctor and I got an infection in my ears. I couldn’t hear. The food was lousy, cold mostly, and I didn’t even feel like shooting craps. There was nothing to do except swing in canvas hammocks. The old tub never stopped creaking, pitching

and rolling. It took about three weeks of misery and darkness before someone shouted down into the hold that he saw land. ‘It must be ,’ he yelled. It was just after dawn and I scrambled up a ladder to the deck. It was freezing, windy and snowy wet. The ship lurched just as I saw land. I lost my grip and fell back down the ladder, landing on my left wrist. I knew I had broken it. My head and ears ached, and I was starved. I crawled into my hammock and swung there sick, hungry and hurting, until the ship docked in Le Havre. It was midafternoon when we stumbled down the gangway onto the dock. We assembled in a ragged formation with the dock seeming to sway and heave beneath us, so much so that some of the men fell down.

“Still feeling like the land was swaying, we were herded into little French boxcars and began a long train ride through the gloomy countryside. We spent a cold night shivering in those drafty cars, with only hardtack to eat.”

As a young boy I had heard my father tell this story. I ed hardtack was a saltless biscuit the army used to prevent starvation. The next war’s C-rations seemed like a banquet in comparison.

Newt leaned against the edge of the fountain looking pained. “When we reached a camp the next day, we were put into tents along with thousands of other soldiers and just waited. The December rains had soaked the tents and the mud was ankle deep. I asked to see a doctor about my wrist and my aching ears, which were draining pus, but was told there weren’t any. They were all at a field hospital working on the wounded.

“I guessed that we were close to the front lines because I could hear cannon fire. Later I learned I was in a reserve staging area just behind the lines. A few days later my infantry company was sent up to just behind the battle trenches. The next night I was sent out on sentry duty. It was pitch dark, ice cold and snowing. The cannon fire was loud and I could hear the rattle of machine guns. I was shivering, my wrist ached and pus was running out of my ears. A lieutenant I

didn’t know approached in the dark. Because I couldn’t hear him, I failed to ask him for the , and he angrily accused me of sleeping on duty. He called for a replacement and told me I would be court-martialed and sentenced to cutting barbed wire in the no man’s land between our lines and the Germans’. I had heard enough about this duty to know it was a death sentence. He marched me at gunpoint through the mud and into a stockade. I was sick and scared to death.

“Two days later I was told I would be court-martialed the next day. I was scared Shitless. Desperate, I told a guard that I was sick, had a broken wrist and that my ears were draining pus. He looked me over skeptically. He was my last hope. He examined my swollen wrist, then looked at and smelled my ear. My ears convinced him. He called to another guard and told him to put me in handcuffs and had another guard drive me to a field hospital. A tired looking doctor in a bloody white gown examined me and found that my left ear drum was gone. He tried to set my broken wrist. He put me in the field hospital, and that stopped the court-martial. Two weeks later I was sent to the rear and placed in a casualty company of sick, injured and wounded men.

“Later I learned that my infantry company had been shot all to hell and that my best army friend had been killed going over the top.”

Newt hung his head and stared at the pavement. Then I recalled that I still had the studio picture of my father and his best friend. It had been taken before they left Fort Lewis. Both looked handsome in their army uniforms. Like my father, he was only twenty, on the cusp of his life, which he lost while charging German trenches in the bitter cold, rain and mud of December 1917.

Newt paused and moved away from the fountain. I wondered if he was going to leave us, but he stopped when Charles spoke.

“War is terrible,” Charles said sadly. “I have read history ever since I began studying for my citizen examination. It’s mainly about human beings killing each other. I know more of America’s short history than I do of Italy’s long history. When the war started I began learning more about Europe. How stupid and bloody the Europeans had always been. Professor Golton told me what to read. He loaned me books, and we’d talk after I finished one. He hated war and mobs. He was Jewish, and I think he came to California and Sonoma because there were few Jews and no one hated them.”

Newt moved back to the low wall and sat down. Pensive, he said, “I wish he had been here when I went to high school. Maybe he would have gotten me interested in college, and I wouldn’t have played around so much.”

“I spoiled you,” Charles said, politely defending his only son. “I sent you and your sisters to the convent school, but even the nuns couldn’t get you to understand that in America education is the key to a good life.”

Newt looked at Charles and said, “I finally got the message twenty years later when I had my own kids and realized how I had shortchanged myself.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “At least you learned.”

Charles turned to me. “I bet you have learned much more than we have.”

“I don’t know about that,” I demurred.

“Well, you are so much older,” Charles said. “You have had so much more time to learn. I hope you haven’t wasted it. Time on this earth is a gift from God.”

We watched a young boy ride a bicycle down the sidewalk and cross Napa Street. I wanted to continue the conversation with my father, and though I ed him telling me about his life in , I asked what happened after he got out of the stockade.

Newt smiled and rubbed his hands together as his face brightened. “I became a cook behind the lines. The boys thought I was great. They had never eaten Northern Italian cooking, which I mixed up with stuff I learned from the French. I made great soups, minestrone, and stews with horse meat, which tasted like beef after I seasoned it. I didn’t have much to work with during the winter but I worked hard at it. In the spring I became a fireman. I got more time off and learned how to get to Paris. That was the greatest place I had ever seen. My father was sending me a hundred and fifty dollars a month on top of my twentyone dollars pay. I became a rich Yankee on the loose in Paris. I knew Italian and quickly picked up enough French to get by. Then because I could speak some French and Italian I got promoted to taking German prisoners on trains to prison camps in southern and Italy. I had quite a bit of time off and when the war ended I didn’t want to come home. I wanted to stay in Paris.”

Charles seemed slightly annoyed. “And when he did come home, all he talked about was Paris. But he had no money.”

Newt said, “On the Leviathan on the way home, I lost everything but seventyfive cents in a crap game. I was three thousand dollars ahead when I hit a cold streak and some little guy I didn’t know got hot and cleaned up. He left the game with his pockets bulging, but I don’t think he ever got off the ship alive.”

Charles said, “I had to send him money to come home. And when he got here, he didn’t want to go back to work with me. Mary wanted him to go to college and so did I. She thought he should become a lawyer, but he refused, and got a job at Mare Island as a riveter. He worked on the new battleship, the California, that was being built there.”

I lasted about a year,” Newt said. “The war was over, and nobody wanted to work. As soon as we got the main deck on, the work crew would spend most of the day hiding, playing cards and goofing off. I didn’t like that, so I came home.”

Charles added, “Newt was restless. He talked about going to Australia. After Paris, Sonoma was nothing. It took him time to settle down.”

“But then I met Marie Murray,” Newt said, smiling.

“She was a godsend,” Charles said. “Such a serious young woman. She was a city girl from Alameda who worked as a secretary in San Francisco. He met her at a dance in Boyes Springs while she was vacationing with another secretary at the Morris Ranch in Agua Caliente.”

I ed the story of how my father’s best friend, Pete Boccoli, had been at the dance with Marie. He introduced her to Newt, who quickly fell for her. By the time her vacation was over, he had won her away from Pete. Pete never spoke to Newt after that… and Pete never married…

Chapter 6

BOB CANNARD

“Dal! What the hell are you doing sitting out there on that cold wall? Happy Easter!”

Surprised, I looked up and saw my longtime friend Bob Cannard coming down the sidewalk by the old library, now the Visitors Center. He had a beautiful multicolored rooster tucked under his left arm. Its dark brown and bright red feathers shined as Bob petted it on its lighter-shaded back.

“Just out for my morning walk,” I said, rising to my feet. “And what are you doing with that magnificent rooster?” I asked, stepping close to examine the bird. “Is he a fighting cock?”

Cannard smiled benignly. “Sort of. Beautiful, isn’t he? I’d like to turn him loose here in the Plaza, but since that’s now against a city ordinance, I’m taking him to a friend who has some hens my rooster would like to meet.” He gently petted the bird, which looked up at him. “Nice warm-up suit you’ve got there,” Bob said, as he stepped from the sidewalk and stood at the edge of the fountain area. “Are you still playing tennis?”

“No, I fell on my face once too often and thought it best not to risk cracking my hip replacement. But I miss the game.”

“Well, you still look pretty healthy. You’re a lot healthier than I am.”

“I’m in pretty good shape, but I still don’t get enough exercise.”

“Neither do I.” Bob looked directly at the spots occupied by Charles and Newt but didn’t appear to see them. “My doctor says I have a bad heart and need exercise.” He smiled, suggesting he didn’t want to believe his doctor, then shrugged. “Well, since we’re both early birds, maybe we should walk together some mornings. I like to talk with you. Are you ready for a cup of coffee? I can tie my cock to a chair.” I caught his reference to an old joke of local restaurateur Juanita Musson, who paraded among her customers with a large golden fighting cock, asking them, “Would you like to pet my cock?”

“Not yet,” I said, unable to tell him he was interrupting something very strange. I couldn’t tell him I was talking to my father and grandfather, so I said, “I was just sitting here relaxing, thinking about Sonoma as it was when I was seventeen.”

Bob thought a Moment. “I guess that would have been about 1940. You’re not much older than me.”

Bob noticed the brass plaque at the base of the fountain. He read about Sam Sebastiani giving the fountain to the city. “Did you know Sam?” he asked me.

“Not really. I only saw him on Sundays, lighting a full tray of candles at eight o’clock mass. I knew who he was, but he was sort of distant. His son August was my scoutmaster and I was the altar boy at his marriage to Sylvia Scarfoni. I was

just a kid and never spoke to him except to say hello. He would say rather gruffly, ‘Come se va?’ But my father and grandfather knew him well, and liked him. His Wife Elvira and my father used to trade the Cornish game hens and other chickens that they each raised. She was an Eraldi. And my father and her younger brother Dave were in the same class in the parochial school. They were the only two boys in a class with twelve girls.”

“Well, Sam certainly was a fine businessman.”

Bob sat down on the wall close to Charles and a few feet from my father. For a Moment I thought he would see them. They were having a private conversation and not paying any to attention to Bob or me.

Bob continued to pet his rooster gently. “I’ll bet you could tell me some interesting stories about this town and its characters. I’ve been in the Valley forty years and have seen plenty, but you must know where many more bodies are buried.”

“I suppose so,” I itted.

“Of course, I realize some of what you know came out of your law practice and you are bound to secrecy. You can’t tell on your clients any more than a priest can reveal what he learns in the confessional. In a sense it’s too bad so much interesting stuff must be wasted.”

Bob pushed back his wide-brimmed straw hat and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Ah yes, Dal, we’ve got to get together and compare notes. And have some biscuits and gravy with fat pork sausages. You might even write a

scandalous history of the racier side of the Valley—fictional, of course. It might sell better than the novels you’ve had published.”

“It might be fun,” I said without much enthusiasm. “I’ve thought of writing a history of some local people, but I’m not a biographer. They didn’t leave much of a written record, so we don’t know what they were really like.”

“I’ll help you. It would be fun. We could tell it warts and all. Let’s think about it.” Bob rose from the bench-like wall, carefully holding his rooster, which had suddenly become quite restless. “I better get this bird to its new home before he craps all over me.”

Charles watched as Bob moved away down the sidewalk. “Who is that big man?”

“He’s an interesting character,” I answered. “He’s been an active citizen, was on the city council, ran for county supervisor, and was manager and president of our chamber of commerce.”

“Just like I am,” Newt said.

And a councilman like I am,” Charles added.

I elaborated. “He has also been a successful nurseryman and he created the General Vallejo wine brand.”

Charles asked, “Why did he say that the rooster couldn’t run loose around the Plaza? We always had chickens eating the bugs and fertilizing the ground.”

“Some young mothers complained that the roosters bit their little children, so the council banned them.”

“Such foolishness,” Charles huffed. “Mothers should watch their children. My Mary would wring the neck of any rooster that would attack her child. And we’d have it for dinner.”

Newt nodded agreement. “My Marie would only chase the rooster away.”

I explained, “Today’s young mothers are too urbanized.”

“What’s urbanized?” Charles asked.

“Citified. They don’t raise chickens and are afraid of roosters.”

Charles slowly lowered his head. “Too bad. Every family should have a few chickens, and their children should learn about them.”

Newt agreed. “My kids grew up with chickens, pigeons and rabbits. They had cats and dogs. We fished for striped bass and trout and shot jackrabbits, quail, ducks and robins.” Then he frowned. “We damn fool hunters killed almost all the wild things without realizing it. There were so many. Then in a few years they

were gone.”

Charles added, “Mary trapped quail and blackbirds and made Polenta and stews. I think she could cook anything.”

I knew he was right; I ed my grandmother’s cooking. She had insisted on growing almost everything she ate. Each year she spaded her large vegetable garden twice, and fertilized it with manure from her chicken yard. She planted young vegetable sets she had grown from her own seeds in the glass hothouse on the back porch. Today this seems remarkable for a woman who was Sonoma Valley Bank’s largest depositor.

Mary’s father, Vincenzo Proletti, was a retired officer of the Duke of Savoy’s army. He had a large farm that extended from the valley over the ten-thousandfoot mountain range between Savoy and Switzerland. Like the fictional Heidi, Mary had gone into the mountains with her German uncle, her mother’s brother, to tend cows, goats and sheep and make cheese. She lived in stone huts during the summer. The only daughter in the family, she had a difficult time with her eight brothers and welcomed each summer away from them. Until recently I had not known whether she was born on the Swiss or Italian side of their mountain ranch. In 1883, when she was twenty-one, Mary left Savoy to her three brothers in California, two of whom lived in Sonoma Valley.

Before she left for Genoa, Vincenzo had given her thirty thousand dollars, equivalent to perhaps a million dollars today, the estimated share of her eventual inheritance. She shipped out in steerage and when she arrived in Sonoma, she promptly deposited the money in the Burris’ Sonoma Valley Bank, becoming the largest depositor of a bank that d a capitalization of fifty thousand dollars. When Mary’s heart stopped just before Christmas in 1934, the thirty thousand dollars was still there, having been on deposit for fifty-one years without interest. I have often wondered how much further Charles could have risen had Mary invested in him.

Charles leaned toward me. “Do you or your friend with the rooster know about Newt’s big trouble with the mysterious woman from New York?”

“I don’t,” I said, “so I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“Then I’ll tell you, because it was a collision of the two different worlds that existed in the Valley while the Spreckels were here. Word of Newt’s adventure leaked out and people gossiped about it, mainly because we didn’t know who the woman was and Newt wouldn’t say a word.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. I glanced at Newt and noticed his face had clouded. As uncomfortable as he appeared though, he didn’t attempt to silence his father.

“It was a great mystery,” Charles said. “One that we never solved.”

CHAPTER 7

THE WOMAN FROM NEW YORK

Newt squirmed on the stone slab, stood up and stretched, then apparently decided to come clean. He stepped over to the base of the fountain, seemingly gathering his thoughts and ing. He didn’t look at us directly, but glanced toward the hills to the north, then began.

“In 1920 Prohibition hit Sonoma Valley hard. Thousands of acres of grapes, which could produce millions of gallons of wine, became virtually useless. Only Sam Sebastiani could make more than 250 gallons of wine. All the others could only produce 250 gallons for their own use or to make grape jelly. And there wasn’t much of a market for jelly. The national post-war agricultural price collapse also struck the other crops and turned the wine country into a depressed area. The law-abiding grape growers and winemakers, particularly those of German descent, were devastated. They had come from a culture of strict obedience to kings, dukes and other autocrats who could throw them into prison or kill them. The Italians, and to some extent the French, were different. We had endured the corruption of priests, kings and Medicis, and we dared to think for ourselves. We saw Prohibition for what it was, a futile attempt by hypocrites to legislate human behavior. We knew Prohibition was unnatural and doomed to failure. And we did not believe the consumption of beverages containing alcohol was wrong! We believed a democratic government should not be in the business of denying its citizens wine and booze. Used in moderation, they were good for us. We were simply more civilized.”

I looked up at him carefully and thought he was having difficulty, even now, talking about his painful experience. He straightened up and took a deep breath, as if to say, “Well, here goes!” Then he began. “It was in that summer of 1920

that she swept into the Valley. A friend told me she had arrived in a chauffeurdriven Rolls Royce with a pretty young maid and a ton of luggage. She went directly to the Spreckels estate. We soon learned that she was a rich young woman from New York whom Alma Spreckels had recently met back there. Claus and Alma Spreckels had turned over their twenty-two-hundred-acre estate to her, and the locals who had occasion to go to the Spreckels place quickly dubbed her the Queen of Sheba. We couldn’t find out why she was there. Rumors spread of her beauty and high-flown ways.”

Newt paused and smiled. “I doubt that many of the locals knew that the real Queen of Sheba was an astute woman who had visited King Solomon to test his wisdom. I did, but I didn’t care. I only knew that I wanted to meet her. All the women I knew were pretty dull after French women.” Then Newt stopped and scraped his bare feet on the pavement.

I knew he must have been a bit sophisticated and energized by two summers in Paris, and this summer in Sonoma Valley promised nothing more than his simple pre-war pleasures with vacationing city girls. So he must have spent his spare time plotting how to meet the Queen. He knew virtually nothing of New York, having only spent a few days there as a penniless soldier the year before while waiting for his father to send him money so could he could get home quickly on the Overland Limited. I suspected he wondered why such a high-powered woman would come to Sonoma Valley alone, without male companions. I ed hearing gossip as a boy, whispers that she was high society, that her family was among the “Four Hundred.” Perhaps she was an artist or a stage actress, whose family showered money upon her. The possibility that they showered money upon her to keep her out of New York didn’t occur to Newt.

Alma ed that Newt fancied himself a worldly Parisian, able to match wits with rich city girls. He regarded famous New Yorkers as only a collection of robber barons who were no better than the pretentious robber barons of California. He recognized that the New York barons must be smart and ruthless, but they were only white collar criminals and mere mortals. They couldn’t start

world wars. So why shouldn’t he tackle the phony Queen?

Newt had local sources befitting a gossip columnist and soon learned her name was Cynthia Van Ostrand. She was about twenty-five, unmarried and bored. She had apparently expected to be lavishly entertained by the Spreckels, but something had happened in San Francisco which had caused Cynthia to be exiled to Sonoma Valley. This only made her all the more intriguing.

Newt was twenty-three, would be twenty-four in September. He had confirmed Cynthia was a worldly woman, no doubt the product of a socialite finishing school if not an Ivy League university, since it was not yet fashionable for women to attend one. No doubt she had had many suitors and rejected them all, thus establishing her formidable independence. What he didn’t know was that she was also a controlling, obsessive-compulsive switch hitter. But she was beautiful! And Newt was full of his own fancied Parisian savoir-faire.

I had been in my mid-thirties when I first heard about Newt and the Queen of Sheba from my Aunt Alma, so I was doubly intrigued when Charles mentioned the mysterious woman. Alma was twenty-seven in 1920, unmarried and still living at home. Newt was rather handsome, with thinning sandy hair and a dimpled cheek which complemented his forthright, friendly appearance. He dressed well and had a way with women. This really annoyed the straight-laced Alma, who had no such skill with men.

Cynthia was reputed to be above mingling with the middle-class San Franciscans who gathered at the Valley resorts and dance halls, and she thought even less of the Valley natives. This word filtered down from the Spreckels ranch through tradesmen, gardeners and servants. Newt soon concluded that Cynthia must be lonely and that he must meet her. But how?

Newt plotted several ruses, but finally decided on a frontal assault that was more in keeping with his Parisian concept of himself as perhaps the Valley’s most eligible bachelor. Late one morning he drove his new Model T Ford up to the main house of the lavish Spreckels estate. He parked boldly in the circular drive, stepped up to the massive front door and rang the bell. A city-dressed older man answered the door and patronizingly asked Newt why he had arrived unannounced.

“I came to see Alma or Claus,” Newt said amiably. “Is either of them at home? I was intending to shoot a few quail after sunset, and as usual give them half.” This seemed to baffle the butler. “I understand Cynthia Van Ostrand is here and she might like quail for dinner.”

Suddenly Cynthia appeared unnoticed by the butler and said, “Did I hear something about fresh wild quail?”

The butler stiffened, but stood aside.

“Yes,” Newt said. “The first hatch is flying now, and they are delicious.”

“Are you a professional hunter?” Cynthia asked, moving forward and displacing the butler as if he didn’t exist.

For a second, Newt was struck dumb at the sight of this beautiful, tall, blond woman, poised with a riding crop in hand. She regarded Newt carefully, conducting an instant inspection.

“Well,” she demanded, “are you?”

“No, I’m a sportsman,” Newt said, regaining his composure and thinking the word sounded classy.

It worked. Cynthia said, “Well, you’re obviously no tradesman. You strike me as one of the local gentry.”

“Yes, by way of Paris.”

“The war?” Cynthia asked.

“Yes, the army. I spent quite a bit of time there.”

“Do you speak French?”

“Yes, and Italian.”

“My gawd,” Cynthia drawled, “is it possible there is a cultured man in these parts?”

“I suppose you’ve been to Paris,” Newt said, making conversation.

“Yes. My parents sent me on the grand tour when I graduated from finishing school. I wasted a year in Europe before the war. About the only thing I got out of it was a taste for champagne.”

She seemed undecided about what to do with Newt. She asked, “Do you ride?”

“Not really. I prefer hiking through the woods and hunting and fishing.”

“Then you wouldn’t like to go riding with me?”

“I’m not dressed for it. I just came from the office. I work in my father’s businesses. I’m thinking of moving to Australia.”

Cynthia regarded him more closely. “That sounds interesting. Would you like to tell me more after your quail hunt?”

“Sure,” Newt replied, pleased with the invitation.

Cynthia paused, then seemed to make a decision. “I’ll have some champagne on ice. Be sure you get some quail.”

Newt seemed uncomfortable with Charles’ mention of the mystery woman and I guessed she was the same predator Alma had told me about long ago. Alma’s

story had been secondhand and gossipy, and I don’t think she ever met the woman, so I waited for Newt to tell me about her.

“I got in over my head,” he itted.

I asked Newt, “Did you return that evening with some quail?”

“Yes. I shot a dozen beautiful birds, young ones, and she had the chilled champagne waiting. The Spreckels mansion was just like Paris, only more elegant. Inside it looked like a fine French whorehouse, rich furniture and drapes from floor to ceiling. Cynthia and I killed two bottles of champagne before dinner. She told me about her social life in New York. High society. Parties, summers in Newport. She dropped all the big names, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller and others. She said they were all a pain in the ass. That’s why she came out here. She had met Alma Spreckels in New York and liked her. ‘Kind of bawdy,’ she commented, smiling.

“I had met Alma Spreckels,” Newt told us, “and knew she was a character with a murky past, but didn’t really know her. I had once mentioned to her that I had a sister named Alma, and she told me to give my sister her sympathy.”

Charles stirred and squirmed impatiently, seeming annoyed at Newt’s digression. “What was this Cynthia really like?” he asked. He turned to me sitting on the step which surrounded the fountain. “I never saw the woman.”

“Did you make love to her that first night?” I asked, coming quickly to the point.

Newt smiled wistfully. “I had her for dessert,” he said, apparently drifting into fond memory.

“Maybe it was Cynthia who had you for dessert,” Charles commented.

“It was mutual,” Newt said, defending himself. “But by morning I knew I had a tiger by the tail.”

“Serves you right,” Charles said.

“She was hotter than anyone in Paris. She might even have been a nymphomaniac.”

“A what?” Charles asked.

“A nymphomaniac,” Newt explained, “is a woman whose sexual desires can’t be satisfied.”

“Never heard of such a thing,” Charles grumped.

Newt continued, “She rode me right off the bed. We went at it until we both collapsed, then slept until morning. She ordered breakfast in bed and had me before the coffee came. I was embarrassed when the butler and the maid came into the bedroom, but Cynthia acted like they weren’t even there. I didn’t know whether they worked for her or the Spreckels. Anyway, she gave them plenty to

talk about.”

Curious, I asked, “Was there anything unusual about her that you noticed?”

Newt smiled. “She had red hair around her pussy. Once I thought it glowed.”

I asked, “What happened next?”

“She asked me to come to dinner. I couldn’t wait. The second performance was as good as the first. I left in the morning with my head spinning. She was wonderful and I thought I was in love. She made me feel important and talked of taking me with her. ‘To hell with Australia,’ she said. ‘Come with me and see the whole world. We can make love in fifty countries.’

“I don’t have that kind of money,” I told her. “She waved her arm saying, ‘I have more money than we can spend. My grandfather left me a fortune, more even than he left my father. When I was a little girl he used to tickle my twat. We both enjoyed it and it made me a very rich woman.’”

“How did her grandfather make his money?” Charles asked.

Newt answered, “Steel, land and banking. She said he cleaned up foreclosing properties after the panic of 1893. He deliberately loaned people too much money, knowing he could foreclose later. Now her family wanted to be respectable like the eastern elite. She said just about all the men she knew made their fortunes fleecing the working class. They were boring. She didn’t like high

society, told them to go to hell and came out here.”

“Were you going to go off with Cynthia?” I asked.

Newt frowned. “I guess I would have. She was powerful medicine.”

“He was digging his grave with his pecker,” Charles said. “He wasn’t worth a damn in the barbershop. He wouldn’t pay attention to my customers and almost cut some throats shaving them. He didn’t care about selling insurance and sat around my pool hall drinking beer like he owned the place.”

“Was that the Unique Billiard Parlor?” I asked, suddenly ing the name of my father’s pool hall.

Charles nodded. “I named it about the time I started my travel agency. I was on the city council, and billiards was a higher-class game than pool, or pocket billiards, as some called the sport.”

“I’m sorry I interrupted you,” I said to Newt. “What happened with you and Cynthia?”

Newt glanced at Charles, looking sheepish. He hesitated. “I found out she was a pervert.

I caught her in bed with another woman… her maid!”

“What did she say?”

“She wanted me to go along with it. Said she had twice as much fun that way. She talked about free love, and that women had as much right as men to have sex. That was too much. And I’ll bet it was even too much for Alma Spreckels. I think Alma found out about Cynthia and her maid and threw them out.”

“Did you ever see Cynthia again?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She disappeared.”

“Good riddance,” Charles said flatly. “With Prohibition starting we had shut down the brewery and could only sell ice and soft drinks. I needed Newt with his head screwed on right and his pecker in his pants to help me with my businesses.”

I asked Newt, “What do you mean, she disappeared?”

“No one saw her leave. A few days after I found her in bed with the maid, a

gardener at Spreckels told me the Rolls Royce was gone. She must have left in the middle of the night, along with the stuffed-shirt butler, or whatever he was. For months I asked around, even asked friends who knew Alma Spreckels well and they told me that Alma had thrown the bitch out.” Newt added, “Something went wrong because a San Francisco cop came up to Sonoma and questioned me. I suspected he was really working for the Spreckels and that they didn’t know what had happened to her. They had traced the butler back to New York, but Cynthia had not shown up. The butler said he had left her in San Francisco and driven the Rolls back across the country with the maid. The cop quoted Alma as saying she hoped Cynthia had taken a slow boat to China. And maybe she did, with or without her lady friend.”

Charles got up, stretched and glanced down at Newt, then looked at me. “Well, some good came out of Newt’s affair with that woman. After that he began to settle down. No more pie-in-the-sky dreams of Australia and consorting with the rich and famous. Maybe he realized that he was just a country boy who had seen Paris, and had returned to his roots. He had a good life here. Then he met Marie, and she must have convinced him he belonged right here.”

“Not really,” Newt said. “Marie had some big ideas. She wanted me to move up in the world. Her father was a successful miner and engineer. She doesn’t think much of some of my friends. She thinks they’re bums who want to hold me back.” How well I ed that. My mother thought many of my father’s lifelong friends were nobodies going nowhere. About every six months when he would have a second beer after work at Steiner’s Tavern, she would light into him. She couldn’t control him, but she could raise hell. She was like the angry manager of a promising prizefighter who had broken training. She believed he could do much more than he was doing in Sonoma and that he was wasting his life with his nothing-ball pals.

I looked at my father and thought of the post-World War I song, How Are You Going To Keep Them Down On the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree? But Marie Murray had tamed him. Newt had done Paree in style with Charles’ patriotic

contributions to his brave, beloved son. Newt had liked the Army, and eventually he was awarded a small partial disability pension for his loss of hearing in one ear. He was quite active in both the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, marched in Armistice Day parades, and never tired of talking about the war.

For a Moment I pondered my father’s life. He had died suddenly at 43, just as my sister and I were about to go to university. He could have fulfilled my mother’s and his late-blooming ambition to rise above being a local businessman in a backwater village. He had the intelligence, experience and personality to become a county supervisor, and possibly rise to the state level politically as a reward for his years of civic and fraternal activities and the friendships he had made. But it was not to be.

Dal Poggetto Building Photo by Melinda Kelley

CHAPTER 8

EAST NAPA STREET AND THE DAL POGGETTO BUILDING

Charles had heard enough. Restless, he stood up and adjusted his necktie.

“I want to see my building,” he said, turning toward the sidewalk. “From here I can see part of it. It looks about the same. Boccoli’s grocery store is gone, but Pete’s building looks good.” I finished mine in 1908, but Pete’s is a little older.”

“Boccoli’s grocery store is now an upscale Mexican restaurant,” I said, “but it’s having a hard time with the competition.”

“A Mexican restaurant in Sonoma?” Charles said. “That’s crazy! The only Mexicans I know around here are the two girls who married Battista Mori and Aldo Todeschini. They’re really old Spanish like Louisa and Dal Emparen. They’re nice ladies but I don’t care for their cooking. Toscano cooking is the best. Even my Mary agrees with me. She cooks Piedmontese with lots of meat, butter and cheese, but now she cooks with more vegetables and olive oil instead of so much butter.”

Newt said, “My Marie cooks French. Alma has taught her some Italian, but she’s having trouble making raviolis… and she can’t fry eggs worth a damn.”

We walked down the sidewalk, then both Charles and Newt jaywalked

obliviously in their bare feet directly across Napa Street to the Boccoli building on the southeast corner. On the way Charles commented, “Hotz’s building looks good, but what’s that in it?”

“It’s a wine-tasting shop.”

“In Prohibition?”

Newt said, “Prohibition was repealed.”

“Good,” Charles said. “Then it’s just like the bar I once had. What happened to the Hotzes?”

“They’re all gone,” I answered.

Newt seemed surprised. “Even Harold? The ladies all loved him. He knew what they should wear better than they did.”

Charles peered into the window of the Maya Restaurant. “It’s true. This is a Mexican restaurant, the awning says so and it says Margaritas. Does Margarita own the place?”

No,” I said. “A margarita is a Mexican cocktail with tequila and lime.”

“What is tequila?”

“It’s made from cactus.”

Charles seemed incredulous. “How can a drink be made from cactus? They’re dry and grow in deserts.”

“It’s a particular kind of cactus,” I explained, “and it’s grown on farms in Mexico, just like we grow grapes.”

Charles argued, “How can people drink cactus juice instead of wine and brandy?”

I explained. “It’s colorless like vodka and has a light flavor.”

“Only Russians drink vodka,” Charles grumped. We don’t have any Russians in Sonoma.”

I tried to bring Charles up to date. “Vodka is now a very popular drink, especially vodka martinis and mixed drinks.”

Newt said, “Vodka is only cheap booze to get drunk on. It’s made from old potatoes and surplus grains.”

Charles still seemed puzzled, but did not respond.

Newt placed his forehead against Maya’s large front window, cupping his hands on the side of his head to eliminate reflections. “Pete Boccoli’s store is now the Maya dining room.” He stood back, glanced up and saw the bronze plaque stating that the Boccoli building was a historical building.

Charles also noticed the plaque and seemed pleased. “Pete and Mary Boccoli are now part of local history. I have been away a long time.” He looked next door and straightened as though shocked. “My God! The barbershop is gone. The sign in the window says they sell old jewelry. And Mosso’s jewelry store next door is now a real estate office.” He stared indignantly at Newt. “Did you sell my building?”

Boccoli and Dal Poggetto Building Photo by Melinda Kelley

“No,” Newt answered, “I don’t know what’s happened.”

I decided not to tell them, since it wasn’t important, and it wouldn’t make them feel any better.

Newt looked at the other store spaces and said, “All my tenants are gone. I don’t know what has happened. The building is the same, but it’s all different.”

“The only constant is change,” I mused aloud.

Both Charles and Newt looked blankly at me.

“What does that mean?” Charles asked me.

“Everything changes all the time.”

“Yeah,” Newt said, “I guess so.”

A new Toyota pickup swerved close to the curb and jerked to a stop. Startled, Charles and Newt stared at it. The window on the enger side suddenly

disappeared down into the door frame. The handsome male driver leaned over and said to me. “I’ve been looking for you. Are you ready for breakfast?”

Not yet,” I said. I leaned toward the truck’s cab to look at my son. He was dressed in an old pair of blue Levis, a dark green polo shirt and a light tan cotton jacket.

Charles and Newt seemed stunned by the sporty truck, its magic window and the back seat. They stepped in for a closer look, staring at the shining white paint, bright chrome trim and stylish body.

My son said cheerfully, “I’ll meet you at the Boulangerie in half an hour. I have to get Bryanna some bread, then we can go to Issa’s. I think it’s the only restaurant that’s open.” He straightened, gunned the engine slightly and quickly pulled away from the curb.

“Who was that?” Newt asked. “He looks vaguely familiar.”

“That’s my bachelor son,” I explained. “He occasionally spends weekends with us.”

“How old is he?” Charles asked.

“He just turned forty-nine.”

He looks much younger,” Newt said. “What kind of truck is a Toyota?”

“Japanese,” I said.

Newt arched his brows in surprise. “The Japs only make junk.”

“Not anymore.”

Newt seemed offended. “Japs are only going to cause us trouble. We’re shipping them all our scrap iron and they’re trying to conquer China. Have you read about the rape of Nanking in the Reader’s Digest?”

“Yes,” I said, ing that I had been about fourteen at the time. “It was awful.”

Newt warned, “They’re going to go after our oil. They don’t have any. That Tojo is just like Hitler and that strutting fool Mussolini. We’re going to war and I’ll be back in the army again.”

Portion of Dal Poggetto building Photo by Melinda Kelley

Charles ignored Newt’s comment and stepped to the next store front. “This was a good shoe store,” he said. Then he looked up and saw the brass plaque, which read “19—C. Dal Poggetto’s—08.” Charles smiled. “Good. They me.” He examined the blocks of stone fondly. “Good hard rock,” he commented. “My building will last for hundreds of years.”

Newt said, “Maybe so, but even after I made the second floor into apartments I couldn’t get the roof to stop leaking.”

Charles moved past the stairway up to the old hospital, which was now apartments, and stopped in front of the two spaces to the east.

Charles seemed dismayed. “Newt, what did you do to the pool hall?”

“Nothing. It’s still there.”

“No, it’s not. Somebody partitioned it off into two stores. One is called ‘Tiddly Winks Vintage 5 & Dime,’ and the other space says ‘Design Jewelers,’ but it’s empty.”

Newt shrugged. “I guess I’ve been away too. And look at that funky shop next door where Martinson’s electric store was.”

“No, Newt,” Charles corrected, “it was Poulson’s meat market.”

I looked up the street and saw my lifelong friend, Don Eraldi. He was jogging toward me dressed in a stylish dark blue sweat suit similar to mine.

He stopped, and I asked him, “What are you doing down here so early?”

Don took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to get more exercise.” Don’s six-footplus body was as trim as it had always been and he still had a full head of brown hair without any noticeable gray. He had always been a fine athlete and an excellent trout fisherman. His father, Dave, and Newt were pals and classmates at the parochial school and in high school. After World War I, Dave opened a quality men’s clothing store in the Bertolotti’s Sonoma French bakery building near where we were standing. I wondered if Don was old enough to it. His older brother, Dave Jr., did, but he had died some years before. Don and his son Dan still operated the men’s store, which was now on the west side of the Plaza. I stepped up to Eraldi’s original space and saw the window display of Chanticleer Books. I peered inside, ing my mother taking me here for my first school clothes. I think Dave Sr. was a fan of the University of California Golden Bears because he presented me with a large round cap with two bright blue and two gold quarters. It sat on my head like a large pie pan and was so bold I was afraid to wear it to school.

Making conversation, I asked Don if he intended to fish the Feather River this year and he said, “No, I’ve given it up. Too many people there. They scare the both the rainbows and the browns. I guess I’ll have to go to Canada or Alaska.” He looked at his watch. “I better get going, got to take Faye down to the City.” He jogged off toward the Plaza at an easy pace.

Newt asked, “Who was that nice man?”

“Don Eraldi.”

“I only know Dave Eraldi,” Newt said. He thought a Moment. “Don? Oh yes, Dave had a boy named Don.” Newt paused and his face clouded. Sadly he said, “I told Dave not to fool around with Henry Lordeaux’s Wife, but he wouldn’t listen. He fell hard for her. I couldn’t blame him; she was an attractive woman. But Sonoma was too small a town for them to have a discreet affair. Everybody knew about it. I think they were truly in love for a long time. Life plays funny tricks on us. It can happen to anyone.”

What happened?” Charles asked.

“There was bad blood between Dave and Henry. One evening they got into an argument outside Dave’s store, which he had moved close to the theater. Dave hit Henry with a baseball bat and Henry shot and killed Dave right in front of his store.”

CHAPTER 9

DUHRING’S AND PINELLI HARDWARE

Charles jaywalked across Napa Street, followed by Newt and me, and stopped in front of the old Granice house, which looked like it was about to be moved. “What’s going on?” Charles asked.

I said, “It looks like the house is being moved off the lot so a driveway can be made to the back of the theater building.”

Charles seemed puzzled. “How can you move a house? It will fall down.”

“Not anymore. Engineers have perfected house-moving so houses can be moved on wheels for many blocks.”

Charles paused a Moment. “Old Harry Granice was pretty tough on his daughter. Celia worked for him on his newspaper. She was a bright girl, graduated from the University of California when very few girls went there. So did our Emily Poppe. Celia came home and fell in love with Walter Murphy, a handsome building contractor from San Rafael. She wanted to marry Walter, but Harry objected. I liked Celia and thought Walter was a very pleasant young man. I loaned Celia a hundred dollars so they could get married and have a honeymoon. Old Harry was furious, but he got over it, and they had a fine marriage.”

Newt said, “Celia was a good person. Later she ran the paper with Walter’s help. Somehow, she didn’t have children. Too bad. But she wrote a book about Old Sonoma.”

Newt stepped up to the La Haye building and tried to peer inside. “Frank La Haye was quite a character. I when he came into town during the Depression. We all wondered what in hell he was up to. Inside, his place looked like a blacksmith shop, but he worked with copper, brass and other metals. He makes fancy copper caskets, cremation urns and other ornamental stuff. He’s an artist. Drinks a lot, funny, has a great sense of humor. He likes boats and sports cars and is a hell of a mechanic. He’s always working on them, but never seems to finish. He’s disorganized, but always busy and willing to show you around. But it’s all gone now. What’s happened?”

Before I could answer, Charles moved ahead. “What happened to the Don Theatre? It was right here.”

“It burned twice,” Newt said. “Sam Sebastiani built the new theater building in l933. Those three shops are where the old Don was. Verbeck, the little French tailor, and others rented those new shops during the Depression.”

Charles seemed only mildly interested as he looked at the brick building to the west. “But Duhring’s is still standing,” he said, stepping toward its side door. “Good brick building, but brick is not as good as stone, like my building and Pete Boccoli’s. We and Augustino Pinelli liked good strong rock. Augustino built a fine building up by the Mission.” Charles looked in the side door of Duhring’s and gasped. “The hardware store is gone, and it looks like they sell wine in there. It looks like a saloon, but it’s different, full of chinaware and knickknacks.”

Newt looked over Charles’ shoulder. “They sell wine in there all right, but it also looks like a bar. But only wine, not booze. That’s ridiculous. You can’t make a living just selling wine. August Pinelli and Jep Valente would never do that. They had a damn good hardware store there and so did the Duhrings. August’s only problem was that he sold too much on credit. Everybody in town owed them money.”

Charles asked, “You’re talking about Augustino’s son? And who is Jep Valente?”

“His partner,” Newt said. “Each of them served as councilman and mayor.”

Charles seemed satisfied with this explanation and walked to the corner. He looked in the window, which was decorated with a display of wines. “Who’s Mayo?” Charles asked.

“Henry Mayo,” I said. “And there he is!” I pointed to the grizzled gray-bearded man who was coming out of the store.

“That’s me,” Henry Mayo said. “Who in hell are you talking to, Dal?” Henry seemed puzzled, but shrugged. “I guess you know my son needed a job, so I built him a winery, and put him in business. But the winery’s in Glen Ellen, too far from Sonoma to catch enough tourists. I needed a place here on the Plaza to snag them. And goddamn, it works.”

Charles asked me, “How can that man sell wine like this in Prohibition?” Then he caught himself, apparently ing that Newt had told him Prohibition had been repealed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been away a long time.”

Henry Mayo didn’t seem to notice my pause and said, “Come on in and have a few samples. My son makes damn good wine. I even drink it myself.”

I liked Henry. “Retirement and good wine seem to agree with you,” I said, moving into the store. “August Pinelli would never believe this. It’s all tourist oriented.”

“That’s the name of the game,” Henry said. “Hell, let’s face it. We’re now a tourist destination. We’re in the new Wine Country.”

“What does he mean, destination?” Charles asked me, while Newt said, “What in hell is he talking about, new Wine Country?”

Henry moved up to the fine mahogany bar, which was tended by a balding middle-aged man. With his pleasant smile, he quickly made me feel comfortable.

Henry explained to the bartender, “Dal’s an old native. I think he’s even older than me.

He knows where the bodies are buried, but as a good lawyer, he can’t say a word. And he’s still practicing!”

“I do it as a health measure,” I said defensively.

“Sure,” Henry agreed, “and to see and be with other people.”

“And to save my marriage,” I added. “Too much togetherness kills.”

The bartender seemed slightly puzzled, but was too polite to inquire. He simply smiled and set a tulip glass in front of me.

Henry said to the bartender, “Pour him some of our best stuff. He knows the difference.”

The bartender nodded.

Henry leaned close to me saying, “I’ve got to get out of here. Even on Easter damn tourists will be sticking their noses in. They’re the early birds who don’t drink much, but buy the other stuff like they forgot to do it yesterday. I only have the bartender here to set things up early. Later it’s going to be a big day.” Henry patted my shoulder, nodded to the bartender and left.

“I guess I’ll have an eye opener,” I said to the bartender.

“Why not”? The bartender answered. “How about a good Zin?”

Augustino Pinelli Building on First Street East Photo by Melinda Kelley

CHAPTER 10

COFFEE AT THE BOULANGERIE

Charles looked up First Street East and shrugged. “I don’t recognize anything beyond Duhring’s. All the old buildings are gone.”

“Not quite,” Newt said. “Dave Eraldi moved his menswear store into that building next to Duhring’s.”

“Look again,” I said. “It’s the same building, but it’s been split in half.”

Newt nodded agreement. “I guess Annie Eraldi moved the store after Dave was shot right there in front.”

Charles ignored Newt’s comment. “The Sonoma Hotel is gone,” Charles said, ing the two-story building. “Now it’s something called Ledson’s.”

“Looks like a tourist trap,” Newt said. “We’re still in a depression and a war’s coming on. Who in hell would build a little hotel and dinner house there now?”

Newt looked at the menu on a stand in front of the outside cocktail seating area. “My God, look at those prices! Not even dumb tourists will pay that much.”

“Times have changed,” I said. “Things are more than ten times as expensive now.”

“There must have been a terrible inflation,” Newt said. “Did our country go broke like in ?”

“No, I explained. “It’s been gradual over the past sixty-five years. Just saving money is a losing proposition. But real property has increased in value. Perhaps twenty times.”

“That’s good,” Charles said. “I put my money in property. Buy, don’t sell.”

“Yeah,” Newt said, “that’s very Italian. Just look at Sam Sebastiani. He put all his legal bootlegging money into property, starting with that old Sonoma Hotel. Then there were the other old buildings, which he bought for a song and tore down to put up his theater building.”

Charles peeked into the Town Square bar. “Looks like a workingman’s t,” he commented. “It’s open so early. And on Easter Sunday!”

Newt said, “I think people started drinking more during Prohibition.”

“That’s stupid,” Charles said. “Drinking in the morning isn’t good for us, not even coffee royals.”

He walked on past the entrance to the theater and the real estate office, then asked, “What happened to Poppe’s general store?”

Newt filled him in. “Robert Poppe’s daughter, Emily, persuaded her father to build a nice office building for himself and her new lawyer husband, Allen Ray Grinstead.”

“Emily was a fine teacher,” Charles added. “I was afraid she would never get married, just like my Alma.”

Charles turned and sat on the high fender of a large new pickup truck parked at the curb. The great new truck seemed beyond his comprehension.

“Newt stood next to Charles and said, “There weren’t enough good strong men in Sonoma.”

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “Almost all the strong, bright ones leave the Valley to make their fortune.”

“Yeah, Dad, just like you did,” Newt said. “You left a whole damn continent.”

“I left as soon as I could,” Charles said. “And I never looked back. Italy was a hopeless place for almost all of the people. We had no opportunity, even with Garibaldi unifying the country. And little freedom. Between the church and the kings we were all helpless… unless you were born rich—centuries-old rich!”

He shrugged. “My grandfather was a rich merchant in Lucca. He exported olive oil and wine, but he cut my father off when he left the seminary and married his secret love.”

Newt seemed stunned. “Dad, neither you nor Ma ever told me about that, or how bad it was to live in Europe.”

“I guess we just wanted to forget it. Mary came from a rich mountain family, but it was a hard life. We had both left the old country behind; we only looked ahead. I suppose we should have told you, but we left it to the schoolteachers to tell you about Europe.”

“And they told us very little,” Newt said. “We had a lot of local history, but no European history.”

Suddenly, Charles became indignant. “That’s because you took a business course, quit high school after two years, and never took European or world history. You were a stupido!”

“I guess so,” Newt itted.

“I didn’t know much until Professor Golton came,” Charles continued. “Newt was in high school before then. Professor Golton told me all about Europe and Italy. He lectured me, and I loved it, but he said young people didn’t care about history. So,” he scolded Newt, “you missed out on the lessons the world teaches us.”

Politely rebuked, Newt nodded. “I realize that now,” he said, bowing his head sadly. “I know it’s all laid out in the books in the libraries. I should have known better, but I didn’t. It was all dead stuff, didn’t seem to have anything to do with the here and now. It had nothing to do with what I had to face as a young man. I had to be a success quickly and didn’t have time for history.”

Charles huffed, “If you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re going.” He grimaced. “I knew where I began and where my family and friends had been. I knew it by the time I was fourteen, seeing poverty all around me, and I didn’t want any part of it. I suppose I didn’t need history. But you had it so much better. You needed history to know how much people have suffered, and how we can avoid the mistakes of the past.”

Newt agreed obliquely, saying to me, “I began to learn my lessons in when I realized how stupid the war was and how much all Europe suffered just so kings and other rulers could grab something, claiming it was for their people. They just didn’t seem to understand they were sowing the seeds for it all to happen again. And we Americans didn’t really understand how they thought.”

“It’s all water under the bridge,” Charles said, as he walked away from us and peered into the Poppe building. He turned and finished his thought. “We saved the world for democracy, and we will teach it to Europe, despite what their rulers believe. The kings and dictators will fail. Perhaps not right away, but they will fail, just like the Kaiser and the Sultan in Turkey.”

“What about Hitler?” Newt asked.

“Who’s Hitler?” Charles queried, snapping his head around and looking

curiously at Newt.

“Hitler is the German dictator. He’s taken over Austria and Czechoslovakia, captured Poland, Denmark and Norway, and is about to charge into Belgium, Holland and .”

“I’m not surprised,” Charles said. “ and England put the screws to the German people, didn’t consider them as suffering human beings. So they found a leader, and this is what happens. They are a smart, brutal people. And arrogant! It was bound to happen.”

“I’ll be damned,” Newt said. “You saw this coming?”

“History told us it would happen.”

“I can’t argue that,” Newt said. “But I’ll bet Ray Grinstead could. This is his office,” he said, peering into the window. “It looks the same. I wonder where Ray is?”

“I don’t know Ray Grinstead,” Charles said, “only Robert Poppe. He’s a pretty good country lawyer.”

Newt ignored Charles’ comment and filled him in. “Ray started in Rio Vista as a high school teacher. When law practice got better he married Robert Poppe’s daughter. He went in with him and finally took over his practice, mainly probate of estates.”

I hung back and let Newt step ahead. He looked down the alley, which had a sign saying “Place des Pyrénées.” They both drew a blank. “Hell,” Newt said, “that was just an empty old alley alongside the post office. I have Box 264, and my phone number is 107.” His mind was still in 1940. “Now look at our post office! It’s a French Basque bakery. The Boulangerie,” Newt said to me. “That means bakery in French. I wonder how long those Basques have been there, and what happened to the Bertolottis?”

Charles sighed and rubbed his chin. “Things change. Look how nice it is that people can sit outside with their dogs.”

“Just like in ,” Newt added.

“And Italy, “Charles said defensively.

“You know,” Charles said stopping and looking at me, “I think the war and spoiled Newt with the Italians. He likes French food and women better than ours. He’s even going to marry a French girl. And a city girl at that.”

“But you like her, Dad,” Newt said.

Charles agreed. “She’s a big improvement over the local girls you’ve been running around with. I think she’s smarter than you are.”

Newt took instant offense. “I took her away from Pete Boccoli,” he said proudly.

“You betrayed your friend,” Charles snapped.

“All’s fair in love and war.” He became pensive. “It was tough when my best friend and I fell in love with the same girl. But I just had to have Marie.”

Charles shook his head wearily. “I’m glad that never happened to me.”

Newt looked inside the Boulangerie, then asked Charles and me, “Would you like a cup of coffee? It smells good.” Newt didn’t seem to be aware that he didn’t have a body.

“Sure,” I said, going along with it. “Let’s sit out here. There’s a vacant table next to that old woman with the big black and white dog.” I was curious to see what Newt would do.

Newt sat at the small vacant table waiting to be served. He leaned back, taking in the scene as though he came here regularly. Charles seemed more hesitant, but he sat in the second chair while I went inside to get the coffees. I returned with two, set them in front of them and went back inside for mine. I sat in the remaining green plastic chair and waited to see what would happen.

ersby who wanted to sit in the vacant chairs didn’t, when they saw the steaming cups of coffee, so I remained alone while the adjacent three tables were full.

Bob Kruljac, who is unfailingly courteous and always in a hurry, skipped across the curb onto the sidewalk and nodded to me. “Enjoying an early cup, I see,” he said, pausing for a Moment.

“Do you miss being our high school principal?” I asked.

“Not at all. I’m too busy with other things. Retirement’s great. Happy Easter!” With that, Bob went inside to stand in line and make his regular Sunday purchase of a large loaf of French bread.

I turned to my coffee and took a sip, looking up in time to see John Holden, our semi-retired large-animal veterinarian. He now lived part-time on his small ranch in his native Missouri. John is a tall, well built handsome fellow with a thick shock of silver hair and a perpetual earnest look. He exuded a genuine appearance of caring, and I imagined cows and horses loved him. He exemplified calm, while Bob Kruljac vibrated with kinetic energy.

“I’m glad to see you’re out jogging,” John said, “it’s good for you. Eat bread, just lay off the butter.” John went inside to sit at a table along the north wall and gab with his friends. Both Newt and Charles had looked at Kruljac and Holden without any sign of recognition and said nothing.

For a Moment I watched Charles as he digested the ing scene, then he burst out. “How crazy these people dress! It’s Easter Sunday and most are dressed like tramps. Don’t they honor the Lord?”

Newt agreed. “Some guys are even wearing shorts. What kind of jerks are they?”

“People dress very informally now,” I said lamely, “especially early in the morning.”

This seemed to satisfy Newt, but Charles still looked somewhat dismayed.

Suddenly Newt exclaimed, “Here comes a game warden!” He looked wary. “They’re real pains in the ass.”

I turned to see Dan Augney, a local semi-retired dentist. He was wearing his Fish and Game warden’s cap along with dark green twill slacks and a dark windbreaker. He was tall, slender and imposing and looked the part of a warden. He had approached from the south, politely acknowledging those he knew sitting at the other tables. Dan said to me, “I’m always glad to see another fisherman up early in the morning.”

I nodded.

Dan smiled impishly. “Enjoying your early morning coffee, I see. It’s too bad we’ve had such high water, especially in the South Fork of the Eel River. All of the steelhead have spawned and moved downstream.”

“Oh well,” I said. “You’ve caught so damn many, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Dan shrugged. “I guess you’re right. Let’s go out for stripers as soon as it gets a

little warmer. I’ll even go down to that fishing whorehouse that you belong to near Vallejo.”

“What whorehouse?” Newt asked as Dan stepped inside. “Do you belong to a whorehouse, and take a game warden there?”

“No,” I explained, “it’s a striped bass fishing and duck hunting club in a former Leslie salt pond. Twelve hundred acres and full of stripers. I’ve belonged for over forty years. I’ve caught so many fish my Wife won’t cook them anymore, and now I can’t get anyone to go with me. We only have a clubhouse, not a whorehouse.”

“I’d go in a minute,” Newt said. “And you’ve got ducks too?”

“Yeah, canvasbacks, redheads, bluebills and a few others.”

“Shooting ducks is a rich man’s sport,” Charles said.

Newt disagreed. “Hell, here you don’t have to be rich to shoot ’em. I’ve shot hundreds, and quail and robins too.”

“And jackrabbits and tree squirrels,” Charles said to Newt. “I think you’ll shoot anything that moves. That’s why we don’t have deer here anymore.”

Newt became thoughtful. He itted to Charles, “You’re right. We killed most

of ’em by the time I was a teenager. Now the only things left in our hills are tree squirrels and varmints like coons and skunks.”

Rich coffee smells wafted up from the three cups, but neither Charles nor Newt seemed to notice the fragrance. Charles looked out into the street, watching the sleek automobiles cruising by and filling the parking spaces. “Where do all these people come from?”

“Yeah,” Newt added. “How come there are so many damn people in little old Sonoma?”

“It’s early yet,” I answered. “Wait until eleven o’clock, when the people from the Bay Area arrive in their cars, rented limousines and SUVs. The sidewalks will be full of tourists with cameras and small children.”

“This is crazy,” Charles responded quickly, then on second thought said, “I guess we knew this would happen sooner or later. We all tried to get people to come here, first by railroad, then by car, so we could make money from them. Little did we know how well our efforts would eventually pay off.”

“The Chamber of Commerce should help our businesses, not create a plague of locusts,” Newt said indignantly. He stood up and began walking toward the Mission. After taking a few steps, then waiting for Charles and me, he peered into the window of a fancy-looking art store and asked, “What happened to the roller rink? I don’t know why Sam ever built it, but it seemed to work. Gave the kids something to do.”

“Roller rink?” Charles asked. “Is that like an ice skating rink, only with roller

skates?”

“Yes,” Newt said. “It’s getting popular. Keeps the kids from skating so much on the sidewalks. It’s good to have something for them to do.”

“It can’t make any money,” Charles said.

“Sam can afford it,” Newt said. “That’s one of the benefits of legal bootlegging.”

“Ah, yes!” Charles said. “The Church adapts. Here it is marvelously corrupt. Just like in Europe. But compared to the Vatican we are amateurs. The U.S. Constitution protects us, though most people don’t realize it. It’s so good not to be afraid of the Church.” He paused, then added firmly, “But why shouldn’t it take advantage of an unjust law? Sam was smart enough to figure that out, and the Church was happy to oblige… for a price.”

Newt nodded, but before he could speak, Charles went on. “But the Church keeps selling fear, and claims to have divine knowledge. And again, why not? It’s worked for almost two thousand years. So it’s a very powerful force.”

Newt agreed. “But they’re running out of gas.”

Charles cautioned, “So it will take a while. I can see that education will eventually expose them. If we weren’t such a fearful people it wouldn’t take so long.”

I wondered, do the two of them really know what’s on the other side, but they aren’t telling me? Do they know, and for the Moment they have assumed their minds and bodies as they existed on the day they died? Do they have a message for me? If so, what is it? Why are they talking about religion as though they were still alive?

Newt interrupted my thoughts, saying, “I think I can talk to God just as easily while fishing for stripers at Wingo as in church.”

Charles agreed. “And, since God knows everything, you will be heard.”

Did Charles know that from personal experience? Or was he only speaking from his earthly mind? I turned toward him as he stood by the window of the art shop, hoping he would say more. He did, and I listened.

“It makes sense,” Charles said. “My Mary feels that way too. She talks to God in her garden, just as much as I do on my knees in a pew.”

Newt ignored Charles’ comment and walked up the street only glancing at the new building which had a wine shop in it, but he looked inside. He seemed puzzled. “How can anyone make a living just selling wine and the doodads that go with it?”

Charles guessed, “Maybe it’s the tourists. They must be very foolish people. What’s happened? Is everyone rich?”

“That’s a beautiful thought, Dad. But then how did the Depression disappear? Roosevelt is good, but he can’t be that good.”

Charles apparently didn’t know who Roosevelt was, so he said, “No matter. Just look! Right here in Sonoma. America is even greater than I it.”

Newt moved on without responding. Then, apparently ing, he stopped. “Beretta’s ice house is gone and someone’s built a white office building where it was. Now some lawyers are there, with an ant in the back.”

Charles said, “But Augustino Pinelli’s brick building is still there, and so is his stone building next to it.”

“That white stucco building?” Newt asked. “Is that where Angelo Beretta’s ice house was?”

“Angelo was gruff, but hard working,” Charles said. “He was stocky, heavier than me, but about my height. He married my Mary’s niece Angelina. And he was one of the founders and directors of our brewery. Angelina is a good soul, but she drinks too much. She should have children. Mary talks to her, but it doesn’t do any good.”

Newt ignored Charles and me and peered inside the restaurant now called the Bistro. “Emil Pinelli had his New Deal bar in there. He liked Roosevelt.”

Charles said, “Augustino had a good bar there before his son Emil did, and he

had a lot of good brandy and red wine. I guess he will have to close it up now that Prohibition is here.”

Newt turned into the walkway under the stone second floor. “What in hell is all of this? There’s a bunch of shops in there?”

Charles took a few steps inside and said, “They are quite different. I wonder how they make a living.”

“With difficulty,” I answered, recalling that the current landlord had a reputation for charging steep rents.

“Everything looks so prosperous,” Newt said. “I wonder if the owners the Depression?”

“I doubt it,” I replied. We’ve come a long way.”

Newt shook his head. “That’s what I said in 1929… just before the crash. We had come a long way, beat the Germans, overcome the flu and moved into the Roaring Twenties. We were all getting rich in the stock market.”

“On paper,” I added. “Then the bottom fell out.”

“Did it ever!” Newt exclaimed. “I was wiped out! And so were most of my friends. We couldn’t believe it.”

“Some of my generation do,” I said. But we’re on the way out. Our kids don’t believe it can happen, and our grandkids think I’m nuts.”

Charles acknowledged this sad truth. “That’s what happens when you don’t know history. Human beings don’t change.”

They strolled past the old Mission Creamery and stood on the corner in front of its closed doors. Charles looked longingly at the Mission. “Mary and I were married there in 1890. I’m glad to see it looks much better now.”

Newt said, “I when the southwest wall collapsed after the earthquake. I was just a kid. Our only real landmark was going to hell, and most people didn’t give a damn.”

“I cared,” Charles said, “but most immigrants didn’t. The American pioneers and the few native Californios had faded away. We were a small town and had no money for anything but our own needs.”

Augustino Pinelli, Old Creamery building and Mission Photo by Melinda Kelley

CHAPTER 11

SONOMA MISSION

Charles seemed puzzled as he stood on the corner in front of the closed La Spuntino, formerly the Sonoma Mission Creamery which dated from my childhood almost to the turn of the century. He frowned, trying to what was there in l921.

“This street, Spain Street, was the dividing line, but no one mentions it anymore.”

“What dividing line?” Newt asked.

“The line between us Italians and the rest of the landowners. I think it was a city ordinance. No Italians were allowed to own property or build south of Spain Street.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Newt exclaimed.

“See,” Charles said. “You don’t know your history, even local history that’s not very old.”

Charles enlightened us. “It all began with Solomon Schocken, who had his general store catty-corner over there in the old barracks building. He was a smart Jew, and brought in the first Italian stonemasons and workers for his quarry up on the hill behind the Mission. We called it Schocken’s Hill, I suppose because he owned the hill and the rock.” He pointed. “It’s that hill with the large white cross east of the cemetery.”

Newt brightened. “I’ve been up to the quarry and ridden the mining cars on the tracks. It’s been closed for years.”

Charles ignored Newt. “The city fathers didn’t like Schocken or his immigrant Italians. The paisanos quarried the rock for San Francisco’s cobblestone streets and the stone for Sonoma’s buildings, including mine. They worked hard, saved their money and began to buy property. So the city ed an ordinance limiting the Italians to owning property only north of Spain Street and close to the quarry.”

“That was stupid,” Newt huffed.

Charles nodded. “Schocken was disliked because he was a successful Jewish businessman and made wealth out of rock the locals had failed to recognize as valuable. To make matters worse, the Italians began buying property, which threatened the less hard-working locals. By the end of the war they owned a good part of the town.”

I recalled that no one had ever talked or written about this. I had wondered how the Italians had found Sonoma Valley. Neither the few native whites of Spanish descent nor the American invaders were very good businessmen. The Germans, then the Italians and a few French, bought them out. The original Americans didn’t know what they had here, and the Californios, except for General Vallejo,

sold out early; Vallejo slowly lost everything but a little land, all of which he had gotten for nothing.

Both my father and John Steiner were like the original Americans in that respect. They loved Sonoma, but neither had Charles’ business sense and vision of the future. As young men they enjoyed being privileged sons. They were goodlooking local boys who didn’t “shoot pool,” but rather “played billiards” at Charles’ Unique Billiard Parlor, which was, after all, a beer-and-pretzel pool hall. I ed the place well, with its life-sized publicity pictures of promoter Louis Parente’s fighters and others plastered on the walls, including heavyweight champions Max Baer and Primo Carnera. I looked at Charles and Newt, then across at the silent Mission, now a sterile state park, and thought of its mixed human history.

What had happened to the Indians, who were really slaves of the Catholic Church? The priests had called them acolytes, altar boys, or followers of the religion. Even then in tiny Sonoma Valley, the Church’s public relations was superb, deceptive and totally misleading. Amazingly, the Church enslaved the hapless Indians by offering hope of an afterlife better than their Happy Hunting Grounds.

I thought of all those who had stood there before me. Thousands of years of Indians, now more accurately called Native Americans. But they were really ancient Mongols.

I suppose that in some way the Mission represented the promise of an endless happy afterlife. In the bright Easter morning sunlight, the unique building struck me as a strong, silent spiritual symbol. Looking at it, I sensed that in time we all on, and that aging should be embraced, not feared. We are all going to cross into the unknown, leaving our worn bodies, like chrysalises, to turn to dust and become part of the earth. Then parts of us will become grass, trees and flowers, and eventually perhaps, humans yet unborn. And so the mystery of life

continues.

Charles and Newt seemed content and none the worse for having died. Probably neither was in a traditional Catholic state of grace at the Moment of his death. Nor was it likely I would be; I doubted it would make any difference.

I heard Charles say, “Mary and I were married in the Mission before it was secularized again—1890. That was a fine year for me… and for us. She had been the postmistress and seamstress in Pete Boccoli’s building alongside his store. She spoke good English, and had filled herself with our new country. This was not her Swiss-Italian Alps, but it was much like my Tuscany with its hills, valleys, vineyards and the fruits of the earth.”

Newt added, “How great it is here without kings, nobles, dictators, and the Church.” He looked at Charles and smiled. “I never thought to thank you and Ma for having me here.”

“It was easy,” Charles replied. “Mary had grown up with ranch animals and eight brothers. She was not a romantic. Mating came naturally as one of life’s functions. Nothing fancy about it like with your generation, chasing girls all over, here and in .”

Newt smiled. “But I enjoyed the hunt and the chase.”

I suggested to Charles, “I suppose you had a handsome boy.”

“In looks and coloring, Newt takes after his mother,” Charles said. “Swiss blue eyes and sandy hair, and taller than me. I’m a real Toscano, brown-eyed with an olive complexion, and so is my first born, Alma. But Newt and Giglia are blond, blue-eyed with light skin.

“Americans are a real mix,” I said, “Mainly European, but I think we are getting a little darker and more Asian.”

Charles shrugged. “That’s good. Here we seem to mix up the best of the world’s people.”

“Even the Chinese?” Newt asked.

“Everyone,” Charles said. “They are all God’s children.”

Newt seemed shocked. “Isn’t that going too far?”

“No,” Charles said. “Nothing forbids the mixing of the races and colors. We are all human beings, made by God. So what’s the difference?”

Newt seemed annoyed. “Chinks are different.”

“We are all God’s children,” Charles repeated.

“I’ll bet Professor Golton told you that,” Newt huffed.

“No,” Charles said, “I figured it out for myself.”

I asked Charles and Newt, “Would you like to go into the Mission?”

“No,” Charles said, “I prefer my memories, but I would like to see the Blue Wing.”

“It’s still there,” I said. “The state kicked out all the tenants a few years ago, to fix it up, but nothing has happened.”

Newt chimed in saying, “I see the government is still the same. I’ll bet no one its responsibility for this little boondoggle.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Nothing’s changed.”

“I thought not,” Newt said. “What is the state doing owning the Mission? Why doesn’t the Church own it? They should own all the Missions. They’re California history. But I want to know more about the people living here now. And by the way, who are you?”

I could have told him then that I was his son, but I decided to wait a while, so I said, “I’m just an old native Sonoman.”

Charles and Newt strolled on the sidewalk to the old adobe Blue Wing building. Charles said, “I don’t a concrete sidewalk being along here, just good old adobe dirt. Then he seemed to understand the state’s failure to renovate the Blue Wing, saying, “All democratic governments are inefficient, and they never have enough money; I found that out on the city council. The Church and monarchies are more efficient at first, but they always deteriorate into dictatorships and tyrannies which exploit the people.” He spoke with a refreshing finality which suggested wisdom. Then, as he looked into the dirty window of the Blue Wing, he changed the subject. “How are the local people getting along, besides looking so rich?”

“Quite well,” I answered. I was about to say more when I noticed that Newt seemed dismayed.

“Then why doesn’t the state have the money to fix up this old wreck?” he asked.

The Swiss Hotel, Spain Street Photo by Wendy Kruljac

CHAPTER 12

Swiss Hotel and Beyond

Both Charles and Newt gazed at the Swiss Hotel.

“It looks just the same,” Charles observed.

“Yeah,” Newt agreed. “It looks good: old Spanish California style. The Marionis have really kept it up. He looked up at the covered balcony. “I guess there are still some rooms up there.”

“Four,” I said. “They look fine, sort of modern old-fashioned. They rent for a hundred fifty dollars a night, if Hank hasn’t raised the price.”

Charles was astonished. “Two dollars should be enough. What’s happened?”

“Inflation,” I explained.

Newt said, “Five dollars should be tops, even with inflation. We had inflation before the Depression, but it stopped, and went the other way.” He seemed to think a Moment. “But a hundred and fifty dollars a night is unbelievable! The country has gone to hell!”

“Not yet,” I assured him. “Everything has increased at least twenty times since 1940, some things much more, especially hotel rooms around the Plaza. But we have managed to keep it under control.”

Charles shook his head. “Inflation is terrible! Then saving money at little interest is stupid.”

Newt nodded. “But it makes it much easier to pay off mortgages. I haven’t had any money to save for over ten years.” He paused a Moment, then said, “That’s one way to get back at the robber barons and the Wall Street capitalists who steal us blind. And have all the money. But what the hell.” He pointed toward a large door. “Let’s go inside. That door should be unlocked; it’s the hotel entrance.”

I followed them as they climbed the four steps and entered a small hallway alongside the staircase. Charles’ eyes widened and fixed on an old enlarged photograph on the wall. “That’s the same picture of the San Francisco earthquake! I it!”

“So do I,” Newt said. “That’s great! I wonder what else is inside.”

Charles seemed to relax in a familiar building as he looked around. “Henry Marioni must be working very hard, fixing this old place up. He’s doing a good job.” Then he said to me, “Henry’s a cattleman from up in Siskiyou County, near the Oregon border. He tells me it’s all mountains like in his native Switzerland, but it’s tough to make a living there. So he sold out and came down here with his pregnant Wife and a little girl.”

“That’s right,” Newt said, “Henry runs a good bar. He’s a very friendly man.” He looked through the glass pane of the doors separating the lobby and added, “And his Wife’s a good cook. She runs the kitchen. Their daughter, Helen, works hard too, here and at the beauty parlor she runs.” He straightened and smiled at his next thought. “Their son, Dario, went to college at Cal Aggies in Davis. I never thought he would make it. And now he’s at Colorado State, wherever that is. I think he wants to be a vet. And he can be, if he ever stops chasing girls long enough to go to class.”

They stepped into the combination hotel and dining room lobby and saw Henry’s youngest grandson sitting behind the counter in the corner. Of course, they didn’t recognize him as a Marioni, even though there is a family resemblance.

“Hi, Hank,” I said to Henry Marioni II.

He looked up. “Hi, Dal. What are you doing in here so early?”

“I’m here for a little research, I guess. I was having coffee at the Boulangerie when I thought about those fifty-year-old photographs you have of the merchants around the Plaza. I’ve never had the time to take a good look at them, and I may want to write something about them and the Valley as it was then.”

“Hank” was close enough to “Henry” to give Newt pause. He looked carefully at the man behind the counter, but said nothing.

Hank seemed pleased about my interest and smiled. “Go right ahead. I guess you knew all of them.”

“I did,” I answered, “but they’re all gone. This place has become a gallery of local history. It’s full of good memories for me.”

Hank agreed. “Yeah, I grew up here. It’s a great place.” He stood up and placed a handful of menus on the counter. “I think all the old pictures add some appeal to the place.”

“They do,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons I enjoy coming here.”

“Well, take your time,” Hank said, dismissing me in his pleasant, business-like manner. “The bar’s closed, but it’ll be busy later.”

I stepped into the bar and stopped at the collection of pictures framed against the corner wall near the front door. They had been taken over fifty years ago in 1953; I was a new judge then and just about to turn thirty-one. I ed all these smiling local businessmen as representatives of a quiet, peaceful time, when the Valley was slowly adjusting to the post-war era. Now, one by one, they had all left us.

Charles and Newt crowded around me and looked at the pictures. Charles looked up at the top row and exclaimed softly, “There’s Lou Green! He looks old. He’s a good man, lives across the street next to Henry Bates’ duck pond.”

I said, “Lou became the city treasurer.”

Newt leaned over Charles for a better look at the photos. “I know almost all of those guys.” He glanced down and saw a much older Tony Cereghino. “My God! There’s Tony, still looking good. The years have been good to him. He was a damn good butcher and had a great sense of humor, one of my best friends.”

Charles didn’t seem to recognize any of the others and turned to examine the room. “Henry’s fixed up the saloon just fine. I tried to get Mary to come up here for a drink and dinner, but she never would. She would ride in my cars on Sunday afternoons to visit our friends, but otherwise she didn’t like going out.” He looked at the back bar and at the labels on the bottles, then said to me, “Mary was always an Alpine country girl. She worked hard in her big garden and her hothouse. She had a lot of coleuses and other indoor plants. Outside, she liked to make cheese and trap birds, but she didn’t like going out for dinner, or even coming up to the Plaza. So I had to come in here and talk to Henry by myself.”

Newt said, “My Marie likes going out to dinner here on Sundays. She likes Henry. We always have a Manhattan at the bar before going into the dining room with the kids. Almost every Sunday we’d have lunch here, or at the El Dorado or the Sonoma Grove. That was during the Depression and we didn’t have much money to spend. After the Don Theater burned down, we’d go to the movie matinees in Napa, Petaluma or Santa Rosa in my Essex.” Newt moved closer to the photographs and smiled. “These guys are my friends. They just look a little older. Good Sonomans. But like me, I guess they weren’t going anywhere.”

“Maybe they are already where they want to go,” Charles said softly. He looked around the bar. “We called this a saloon. Henry bought this place about the time Prohibition started and he didn’t know whether he could make it. It was a fine saloon, but Prohibition was changing everything. All of us Europeans thought the Americans were crazy.”

“Damn fools,” Newt said. “They tried to legislate morals but it didn’t work. And we still had Kate Lombard’s out in El Verano.” Then he looked at me. “What

happened to Kate?”

“She’s gone,” I said, “and so is her whorehouse. They closed her down years ago.”

Newt hung his head and looked like he had just lost a dear, dear friend. “Kate was okay. She liked to be called Spanish Kitty, and Ray Grinstead was her lawyer. He kept her out of trouble. You know she was the pocket billiards champion of the Barbary Coast? And quite a looker when she was young.”

“Yes,” I replied, “I her. It’s too bad prostitution has been driven underground in California. But in Nevada, it’s flourishing.”

Newt smiled. “They must be more sensible people in Nevada.”

“It’s the same old stuff,” I explained, “but there’s a new disease that’s made it extremely dangerous for the girls.”

“What disease?” Newt asked, looking surprised.

“AIDS.”

“What’s that?”

I tried to explain, but neither of them even knew what a virus was.

Newt said, “We had syphilis, clap, and crotch crickets, but it wasn’t a big deal. Our girls were clean and inspected. Hell, if they hadn’t been, half the men in town would have come down with something, and there would have been hell to pay with their wives.”

Charles said, “You went for those girls, didn’t you?”

“Sure,” Newt itted, “but only before I met Marie. After that, I never saw a whore again.”

“It was the same with me and my Mary,” Charles said. He looked at Newt. “But I wasn’t as interested in women as you were.” Then he turned to me. “I was so intent on becoming an American and getting ahead, I didn’t have time for chasing girls.” I thought he was going to say something else, but then he shrugged and said, “I guess it was just time to settle down.”

Newt moved onto a barstool “I like it in here. It feels as though I never left.”

“But we did,” Charles said. He looked around at the pictures on the east wall and noticed Henry and Antonietta Marioni. He broke into a gentle smile, then said, “It’s time to move on.”

I opened the saloon door and we went down the steps. Newt pointed to the corner where the Swiss Hotel abutted the Sebastiani Apartments. “Sam built

over the boundary line. When Henry objected, Sam got nasty, hollered at him and kept on building. Henry should have sued him, but he didn’t. He just refused to speak to him. Henry was well liked, and Sam was Sam.” As we ed the apartment building, Newt said to Charles, “This next building is Sam’s bus depot, but now I see it’s a couple of stores. The buses used to drive through from around the back. The bus company put up a red neon sign calling the place the Greyhound Bus Depot. That made Sam mad and he built a big archway at the rear of the building, facing First Street West, that said ‘Sebastiani Depot.’ The rest of us thought that was pretty funny, but Sam didn’t see the humor.”

Charles seemed puzzled as he contemplated the remodeled Sebastiani Hotel. “That was the old Weyl Hall, but Sam bought it and turned it into a hotel.”

“Yeah, “Newt said, “It was a three-story firetrap. I used to be a volunteer fireman and we all wondered when it would burn.”

Charles observed, “Now it’s called the Sonoma Hotel. It must compete with the El Dorado across the street. They both look almost like new.”

“The town’s in good shape,” Newt said. He suddenly seemed tired of the tour. “I think I’ve seen enough for a while.”

Charles nodded his head. “I suppose so. Everything’s fine.” He glanced up at the dark clouds coming in from the upper Valley. “It’s time to go.” He looked up at me. “Thank you so much for showing me around.”

“Yeah,” Newt said, “I’ve enjoyed it. I’m glad to see the town’s so prosperous.” He stepped up close to me and looked piercingly into my eyes as if he were

trying to identify me.

I stood still as he looked and then slowly shook his head. “For a Moment I thought I recognized you, but I guess not. But somehow I feel I know you. Anyway, I would like to see you again.”

“We both would,” Charles said. Then he stepped into the street and turned to his right as I felt the first drops of a cold spring rain. Newt followed and caught up to him, then they moved into the center of the empty street, oblivious to the raindrops from the fast-approaching low cloud. A chill wind swept over us and obscured the bright morning sun. They didn’t seem to notice the cold either, as they talked to each other and walked down the middle of the street toward the cemetery.

As I watched Charles and Newt approach the bike path on the old railroad right of way, my mind went blank. Suddenly I ed a piece of family history that Aunt Alma had related about forty years ago. I was incredulous then, and even after doing some research in Lucca and Porcari, I couldn’t believe it was true. I cursed myself for wasting the opportunity to ask Charles about it, but he and Newt were now beyond shouting distance.

I ed Aunt Alma emphatically telling me that Pasquale Dal Poggetto, Charles’ grandfather, had been a prosperous and prominent importer-exporter in Lucca in the early nineteenth century, and that Michele, Pasquale’s youngest son and Charles’ father, had defied and betrayed him. Pasquale was a domineering patriarch with three sons and no daughters. He expanded his thriving business into England and , eventually appointing his eldest son company manager in London, and his second son branch manager in Marseille. As was the custom among the wealthy, he gave his third son, Michele, to the Catholic Church.

Young Michele grew up in the seminary and was about to be ordained as a priest when he eloped with Teresa Benvenuti, the daughter of another prosperous merchant. Furious, Pasquale cast Michele out of his family and into poverty; Teresa’s family did the same to her.

Alma had told me that Michele and Teresa lived in Porcari, a rural village about three miles from Lucca on the way to Florence. They had twenty-seven children, and Teresa gave birth to all of them. This I could not believe, but Alma insisted it was true. And Charles was the youngest.

Two older brothers and a sister emigrated to California, but the brothers did not marry and eventually returned to Porcari. But Charles had been only fourteen when he left for California. So, I wondered, would he have known about his grandfather? And if not, where did Alma get her facts?

A chill wind blew raindrops into my eyes and I rubbed them to clear the moisture. When I opened them, I saw a dark gray cloud rumbling in from Vallejo’s Lachryma Montis, sweeping a ground-hugging mist before it. Charles and Newt, still oblivious to the rain, continued talking and waving their arms as they walked barefoot in the street. They ed the Veteran’s Memorial Building and vanished in the direction of the cemetery.

Dal Poggetto Crypt Photo by Melinda Kelley

Author Newton Dal Poggetto Photo by Melinda Kelley

Chapter 13

The downpour soaked me. Staring into the mist, I shivered as the chill wind penetrated my thin warm-up suit. Rain soaked my jacket and trickled down my chest and arms. I stood transfixed. Then a blast of even colder air roused me, and I found myself standing in the middle of the street.

I turned and walked toward the Swiss Hotel. I climbed the four steps into the old saloon and saw the bartender, Dan Dolan, holding a full five-gallon bucket of ice cubes which he was about to pour into the stainless steel container behind the bar. Surprised, he looked up at me and said, “It looks like you need a drink.”

“It’s too early, but you’re right.”

“You should have a coffee royal… with a good cognac.”

“Fine,” I said, as I stepped to the corner table and sat down.

Dan reached to the top shelf of the back bar, and stretching to his full six feet four inches, took down a bottle of Hennessy. He poured about two ounces into a sturdy mug, then went into the kitchen. He returned with the brimming mug and set it down before me. Like the wise bartender that he is, he didn’t ask why I was there sitting at my customary corner table, in the chair facing the outside saloon door. He glanced down at my dark green warm-up suit, made even darker by the soaking, and without comment returned to his work behind the bar.

I sipped my coffee royal, then took a good swallow. The smooth liquid warmed me and I stopped shivering.

I glanced up at the photographs on the wall beside me and looked at the ones of Henry and Antonietta Marioni alongside their fine cook and friend, Freddie Wing. All the people pictured were smiling happily and looking vibrantly alive. Most had died years ago. All but two of them, Presidents Truman and Kennedy, had been in this room and enjoyed its ambiance and the camaraderie of their friends and acquaintances. As the cognac did its magic, I was among friends. Here my father, and my grandfather, had been among their friends. We were all on our way somewhere. But where?

Charles and Newt had crossed over long ago, but they were just here. They were spirits, but they were real. They spoke of their lives up to the time they had left, but nothing else. They knew each other and had no awareness of earthly time.

I sipped again, then asked myself: “Were Charles and Newt telling me something?”

I had seen that they were content, not particularly curious about what had happened since their ing, and seemed to assume that the civilization they had known continued much as before. Human nature didn’t change. They gave no hint of their present situation, but seemed willing to return to it. Was this experience meant to be some sort of epiphany for me?

I saw only their personal contentment. They knew each other, but didn’t know me. They had no awareness of earthly time. They were telling me that living human beings were barred from knowing what is beyond life. Was I simply to be

comforted by the fact that billions of people had ed on before us, and their situation was all right?

I finished my coffee royal. I placed the mug on the table, satisfied that they had shown me not to fear death. Then I got up and left.

Epilogue

For seven years now I have come at dawn each Easter Sunday morning to look for my Grandfather walking down Second Street East from the cemetery. Parking at the former Sonoma Ice and Brewing Company (now Vella’s Cheeses Factory). I have stepped onto the bike path as it crosses the pavement and peered up the empty street as it rises to the white cross on Shocken’s Hill near the entrance to the cemetery. I have waited, but Charles hasn’t come.

So now I continue to wonder if I had hallucinated. Was it a biblical-like vision, a revelation? If so, what was the meaning?

I can only speculate what my father and grandfather meant by their conduct, and what they said to me and to each other, because they said nothing about where they had been.

My initial impression was that they had been curious about Sonoma, but were otherwise satisfied and content. The years have reinforced that impression, and I am satisfied now and grateful.

It is 2012. I am telling this because I’m in my ninetieth year. However, despite my excellent health, in time I will Charles and Newt. And I will be seen with the others of my time only as a photograph on the wall in the saloon of the Swiss Hotel.