I was born at Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa, a catholic hospital, on the 4th of July 1960. Santa Rosa was my birthplace because Memorial was the closest hospital to my family home in Rohnert Park.
In 1948 a Paul Golis, born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a graduate of Duke Law School came to Santa Rosa, followed by a Maurice Fredericks in 1951 after he graduated from the University of Santa Clara Law School. Golis and Fredericks began representing builders in the Sonoma Valley from Petaluma up through Santa Rosa. They decided the only way to develop the vast county was to draw up a master plan for an entire area at the outset. This was how the City of Rohnert Park was born in 1954. The town I was coming home to as a baby was only 6 years older than me.
Golis had copied the idea of Pennsylvania's Levittown wanting each neighborhood to consist of 250 homes centered on a 10 acre school site and a 5 acre pool-park site. No child would have to walk more than 1/3 mile to school, this became the great joke, as later the city planners would stick the high school so far out of town that kids had to be bused to this single high school "in town".
He believed that a commercial and industrial development would be large enough and diverse enough to support the entire community. What actually happened is most everyones parents commuted to work. There were few jobs in this suburbia town of identical houses, unless you worked for the city mowing the park lawns or tending the two pools. We were the first new town of latch-key kids.
Golis and Fredericks planned for 8 such subdivisions that could make up a city of 30,000 people. With planned pools, parks, and services the city would be a "country club for the working class". This was the founding base to the tiny white-bread, bland commuter city with no downtown, I was brought home to the summer of 1960.
It is said that Rohnert Park was once part of a seed farm started by an Irish man from Dublin in the 1800's, thus causing great suffering with the late afternoon winds. Allergies all year long were the norm. I found it ironic that an irishman would be responsible for me being stuck in a town I was so far apart from I may as well have been a martian trying to create a life on the sun.
All the houses were constructed exactly the same. If you weren't careful you could easily walk into the wrong house thinking it was your own. Golis in his infinate wisdom, thought each set of 250 homes, should come with their own street names to ease the confusion of what part of this small town you were in. Thus the "A" section was born, where all street names started with an A, and the "B" section where all streets started with a B and so on. No, I am not making this up. I think they are up to M now, but I don't keep track of the town I slept in for 18 years.
The problem with a new town is like the new rich, it has no class, no sense of self. Not to mention the city of Santa Rosa disliked newcomers and Rohnert Park topped that list. It was a minor league town surrounded by major league towns - towns with a deep history.
There were no beautiful interesting buildings, no great works of architecture, no aging pieces of art, and few too little of other cultures. No interesting little neighborhoods, with an ethnic market and the hustle and bussle of city life. Since everyone worked outside the home, people rarely left their living rooms.
Except my dad.
He loved to meet people and talk with the neighbors, especially our neighbor Bob. He took pride in the fact that his family was safely tucked away in a boring place, free from the dramas of his own youth. The neighbors loved him, and between his larger than life personality and my mother insisting on ballet lessons, music lessons, top grades, a rich literary library, and travel ...lots of travel... I survived.
I also survived due to the interesting Aunts and Uncles who managed to pop up, at odd times, and turn the house upside down. My favorite visits came with my Aunt Colleen, my dad's oldest redheaded sister. Aunt Margene, the yougest was not far behind. Having them both arrive together was pure bliss. Those were the times they would take my bed - the same bed I sleep in today - the bed I've had since having it passed to me at age three. My dad would set up a cot for me at the foot of the bed, stare at the three redheads, and stop at me "Please try and get some sleep" he would say. My Aunts would laugh that 'like-hell-we-will' laugh. I never wanted them to leave my little room.
All kinds of essentric, electrifingly wonderful relatives stayed in my room on Alta Avenue, and slept in that bed. Sitting on the cot, it was like one great theatrical play unfolding right before my very eyes - and I was related to these people! Add in my parents wonderful friends, all of who spoiled me rotton and there began the life I loved compared to the life I lived. I preferred these adults to my dull, boring neighborhoods and immature school mates.
Luckily for me, my ballet classes were in Petaluma and my ice skating was in Santa Rosa, so I was able to spend hug blocks of time away from Rohnert Park. When I wasn't dancing, I was ice skating and when I wasn't ice skating I was doing homework, and when I wasn't doing homework I was talking on the phone to my best friend (and still my friend today) Laura.
Laura made living in Rohnert Park bearable, and since she lived on the Two Rock Coast Guard base way out at two rock, she felt equally as isolated. We made a good team for creating some happiness and fun in our teenage years and those years before my father died.
This story will continue...
C
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