Calistoga

My parents, leaving their wedding reception at Mt. Home Ranch.  It burned to the ground yesterday.

My parents started their marriage in debt.  They were married in May of 1964, in a ceremony in the church where my mother had been baptized 19 years earlier.  They set up their first home on a quiet street in a duplex.  A first for my Mom, sharing a wall was weird. They also bought/franchised the local Shell gas station on the corner of Lincoln Ave. and Foothill Blvd. The road out of town, south towards St. Helena and Napa.  They were inexperienced business people, but hard workers and well known in the community.  Four months after they married the Hanley fire threatened Calistoga, the town was evacuated.  There was a never ending line of people at the gas pumps. My parents did the best they could eventually just opening the pumps to who ever needed gas without charge.  When the tanks were empty they evacuated, following my grandparents and Uncle to Napa. In the 1964 fire much of Calistoga was spared, there were many lost homes and ranches but the center of town survived. When they returned to town some people came forward to pay for gas that they had used in the evacuation, but not everyone.  My parents were left with a crippling debt and very bad credit. The debt and the credit followed them for the rest of their marriage.  They gave up the gas station and my Dad went back into the U.S Navy, going immediately to Vietnam. My Mom raised me and worked at the family restaurant. She paid on that debt until it was finally discharged with my fathers death in 1982. She never had a gas station credit card, never bought gas at  a Shell station and cursed the old station on Foothill Blvd every time we drove by.  Their home, my grandparents home, the family ranch, Creamery and Restaurant all survived the 1964 Calistoga fire.


Calistoga is in my blood.  My mother's family lived there for generations, running a successful family restaurant and famous local ice cream counter for decades.  Tourists came all the way from San Francisco for the chowder and ice cream.  The building itself is on the National Register of Historic Places. My great grandparents were civic leaders. My great grandfather was, for a time, the county sheriff. My Granny was born there, met my grandfather there, raised her family there. Ran the restaurant, "Reeders" until she  just couldn't do it.  They were local socialites.  My mother was baptized and married in the same church, by the same priest. I spent many summer there, mostly playing in the creek in Pioneer Park, or wandering the shops on Lincoln ave spending my allowance, while my Mom waited tables at Reeders.  Reeders employed the local kids and the local characters.  They were all my friends.  It was my place.  It is still one of the places that feels like home to me.  Even though I have not been back in years, and my family is all gone from there, it is still a special pace in my heart.  I could walk the streets and point out the house my Granny was born in.  The fancy mansion where my Grandfather was the families "ward" Not quite family, not quite servant. The tiny duplex where my parents started their marriage.  Even after my Grandparents  had moved up the road to St. Helena before I was born,  they still worked and socialized in Calistoga.  It was still their place.

The fires this week in Napa and Sonoma counties have really thrown me for a loop. Calistoga evacuated again this morning.  It has been years since I have been the the Valley at all.  It's not my place anymore.  But I feel a visceral fear that those places that I count on in my head as home are disappearing.   Specifically the thought of the little green house with the gingerbread trim, where my Granny was born,  burning to the ground scares me in a way that is unfamiliar. It is like one more strand that keeps me connected to the people that are gone is in danger of being snapped.  Like I might become unmoored.  Lost.   It's not true of course.  All of this lives in my brain and my heart and sometimes here on this blog.  But the feeling is real.  I don't really have a home to go back to, so any semblance of one is cherished.  Real people that I know are losing their homes and businesses and communities right now.  It is selfish of me to wrap myself up in this.

Like so many people I am kind of numb to the series of natural disasters, mass shootings, tire fires and general bad news.  Somehow this one punched through.  I'd like to think that in part it is a cosmic push from my ancestors to get my head out of the sand and do something.  Help someone.  Make a difference.  Get out of my head.  I am trying.  And I am praying for Calistoga.