Archive for category: Sonoma

Why didn’t they build the steps ALL the down to the river? That’s what I asked myself after renting the five bedroom cabin which was built alongside the Russian River. That was in June… two years later in January I learned first hand the reason why.

On the 17th the river hit 39.5 feet, the Flood Stage is 32.0 feet. At 32 feet the Old Bohemian Highway at Monte Rio (Pink Elephant) is flooded. At 33 feet a couple of the intersections in Guerneville are flooded along with the Mirabel Trailer Park in Forestville. 34 feet floods Riverside Park, Johnson’s Resort, and the Creekside Resort. Add another foot and the list now includes Parker’s Resort. 36 feet floods the lower cabins in Fern Grove…and 39 feet begins to close the Hacienda Bridge and portions of River Road. Once that happens many residents are basically cut off from travel into Santa Rosa.

I worked in Santa Rosa along with another “river rat”. We’d monitor the flood reports to see if there was a need to head home early or if we could get home at all. She, (Shirley) lived in Rio Nido which was further out River Road than where I lived, but was at the same flood stage of 39 feet. Interesting how the river works; she lived back up in a canyon and I lived in a two story house on stilts at the rivers edge. However, when the river hit 39 feet, we both were stuck. Those who live or have lived in the area may be thinking they’ve seen worse…and rightly so. The river hit 48.8 feet in 1986 and has often hit flood stages of 45 feet or more. In January 1995 the river hit 48 feet only to recede and hit another high in March at 41.5 ft. But at 39.5 it had it’s exciting moments.

For the few of us who lived year long out in Summer Home Park, canoes had been left for us to use in order to get out to River Road. There was a fire road that traversed some of the canyons and acreage owned by Summer Home Park, but you had to have a four-wheel drive, some luck, and a pair of mudders. Walk along Summerhome Park Road as far as you could, grab a canoe to get across the flooded section, along Old River Road and you’re at River Road just before the Hacienda Bridge. The sound of the river rushing below the house is almost as incredible as the image of it during the day. From my living room windows I could look down at the river directly below. What was once a calm, slow move to the sea was now a torrent containing trees and assorted debris from lower cabins. I looked out once to watch a refrigerator bobbing up and down on it’s way to Bodega Bay. I even saw a kayaker, but can’t recall if he was ahead of or behind the refrigerator. Not that he was after it by any means, nor would he have been able to enjoy a cold beverage from it in the unlikely event that he could catch up with it.

 

The Ass-to-Ass Run

Back then the Brass Ass translated to fun. Actually, it was the Brass Asses, a pair of pizza places located in Cotati (near what is now Oliver’s Market) and Santa Rosa (in the Montgomery Village shopping center) way back in the ’70s and early ’80s.

Some are still praying for a Brass Ass resurrection, almost 20 years after the last Ass shut its doors. The Ass is missed for several reasons, who didn’t enjoy saying “Brass Ass.” And two, the pizza.

But best of all was the Ass-to-Ass race, an annual marathon that began at the Cotati Ass, stretched over to the Santa Rosa Ass, and back again. (that’s one big ass). An immensely popular event, it reveled in the sheer weird-ass outlandishness of its own name. Those lacking in motivation were permitted to participate in a shortened version of the run called the Half-Ass, in which runners stopped for beer and pizza in Santa Rosa and never bothered to run back to the starting line. It was a time when folks were never more proud of their Asses.

1979: Say What?

Local law enforcement officials turn over to the FBI a printed note found next to the body of Roy William Dale, who died of an apparent suicide in a 1974 Chevy Camaro parked at a Fort Ross Road turnout. The cryptic note implicates Dale in the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, stating that the hit had been conducted under the command of “the Big H” and alludes to a connection between the fatal 1968 shooting of Sen. Robert Kennedy and a plan to kill his brother Edward (“Two down, one to go”). Strangely, Dale’s hands and feet were tied. A hose from the car exhaust ran into the interior of the vehicle, and (even stranger) the windows were taped tight-inside and outside.

Yep, suicide. Very similar to Texas Law Enforcement officials who determined that the man laying in the field, shot five times in the chest by a single action .22 calibur rifle found near the body, was indeed a suicide. If you’ve ever fired a single action .22 calibur rifle, as I did often as a youngster hunting in Oklahoma, you know that you must draw back the bolt, insert the bullett (one only), close the bolt, but seeing how you are intending to shoot yourself…you must position the barrel against your chest and somehow reach the trigger located way down at the other end of the rifle. The rifle is over 43 inches long and the trigger would be nearly a 36 inch reach. The impact would certainly knock you down, but in the case of this particular man, he gets up, picks up the fallen rifle, and repeats the process four more times until he has successfully shot himself dead.

Texas State Trooper: “Yep, suicide. Case closed, let’s go get us some lunch Buford.”

Expanding twenty-four and a half miles between Sonoma and Marin Counties, Running Fence was completed on September 10, 1976. The fence was an 18 feet high cable covered with over 2 million square feet of white nylon fabric which illuminated in the sunlight and seemed to absorb and reflect the sunsets.
As an art student at California State University, Sonoma, studying under William Morehouse, an offer to work on the fence as art credit was presented. The work day began early and the rewards really never were clear until many years later as I look back and realize I happened to be in the right place at the right time in order to get the opportunity to not only witness but participate in this event.

Dismantling the fence began just 14 days following it’s completion. All materials were given to the residents and landowners who allowed the fence to be constructed on their property.

Technical: Running Fence, 5.5 meters (eighteen feet) high, 40 kilometers (twenty-four and half miles) long, extending East-West near Freeway 101, north of San Francisco, on the private properties of fifty-nine ranchers, following rolling hills and dropping down to the Pacific Ocean at Bodega Bay, was completed on September 10, 1976.

The art project consisted of: forty-two months of collaborative efforts, the ranchers’ participation, eighteen public hearings, three sessions at the Superior Courts of California, the drafting of a four-hundred and fifty page Environmental Impact Report and the temporary use of hills, the sky and the Ocean.

All expenses for the temporary work of art were paid by Christo and Jeanne-Claude through the sale of studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models and original lithographs.

Running Fence was made of 200,000 square meters (2,222,222 square feet) of heavy woven white nylon fabric, hung from a steel cable strung between 2,050 steel poles (each: 6.4 meters / 21 feet long, 9 centimeters / 3 1/2 inches in diameter) embedded 1 meter (3 feet) into the ground, using no concrete and braced laterally with guy wires (145 kilometers (90 miles) of steel cable) and 14,000 earth anchors.

The top and bottom edges of the 2050 fabric panels were secured to the upper and lower cables by 350,000 hooks.

All parts of Running Fence’s structure were designed for complete removal and no visible evidence of Running Fence remains on the hills of Sonoma and Marin Counties.

As it had been agreed with the ranchers and with the County, State and Federal Agencies, the removal of Running Fence started fourteen days after its completion and all materials were given to the ranchers.

Running Fence crossed fourteen roads and the town of Valley Ford, leaving passage for cars, cattle and wildlife, and was designed to be viewed by following 65 kilometers (forty miles) of public roads, in Sonoma and Marin Counties.