This time each year the Bohemian Grove is in full swing and the Sonoma County Fair opens with the Champagne Preview of the Flower Show. My mother calls her children to gather around her...one would think to take in the amazing display of delicate floral beauty that abounds ... but mostly it is a mother's desire to have her children near.
My brother brings his girlfriend Terry and I invite Stephanie, as McYummy is in Ashland Oregon and I share a common spirit with this friend: we both have mothers who are Gemini. Forgive me KB, but it's true...
In sweltering heat that touched 110 and felt like the surface of the sun, we drank champagne and dripped sweat. The humidity filled the showroom floor and the flowers stood at attention. I am thinking the contestants should have filled their landscape entries with flowers of a tropical nature, because I wonder how the flower show exhibit will last the length of the fair.
Sonoma County is rapidly changing. It is readily apparent in this local fair. It used to be the Flower Show Preview was hosted by the Welfare League. The Welfare League was a local volunteer organization - a virtual who's who of old Santa Rosa money. It was a honor to be a volunteer associated with this charity group. We used to joke that you had to have a foundation in your honor just to be a member. Each year the Flower Show preview was their grand ball of events.
Local caterers prepared the hor d'eovers in some secret back room. The Welfare League volunteers served the paying patrons in full-length black tuxedos and ball gowns. Diamonds dripped like the tulips that bare their namesake. The Flower Show Preview sold out every year and you were lucky if you made it into this grand event. And, of course, my mother invited me back then too. I think she loved seeing what kind of gown I was going to wear and hoped I'd marry a doctor's son. Unfortunately for her I always liked the guys that got their hands dirty for a living.
The Flower Show Preview was one of those events where you couldn't walk three feet without seeing someone you knew, in the packed crowd of 1400 and it could take 30 minutes to move 25 feet. It was wicked fun. Sometime back in the early 90s the Fair Director changed and a fight broke out between this Director and the Welfare League. The Welfare League stopped hosting the event, and since then it has never been the same.
The flowers are always beautiful of course. But, the original designer of this Hall of Flowers died some years back. His designs were breathtaking. He like to suspend art from the ceiling and make it the backdrop to the floral gardens. One year, he built a replica of the Golden Gate bridge that hung across the ceiling from one end of the building to the other. His water falls were legendary. You'd swear you were entering Niagara Falls when your feet touched the ground at the enterence to the Hall of Flowers.
Now patrons wear shorts and jeans, there are lines for the food and no one walks around in a tux filling your glass with champagne over the roar of laughter, chatting and the famous water fall. The exhibits are pretty, but don't take your breath away, or force a gasp and "wow!" from your mouth.
The back room off the floral showroom floor used to be filled with ammetuer entries from local gardens. Now, it only carries a small assortment of succulents. The room was once filled with roses of all varieties. I guess there are no more women (or men) raising roses for competition at the fair. Is this now a lost art? The caterer use this room as an overflow, so the presentation of having a treat served to you from a plate from somewhere unseen is now gone. People stand in line like cattle waiting for a feeding. Now, I usually eat dinner before I attend, as I have no desire to stand in line for food.
The local wineries know what they are doing and step away from their serving tables to pour you a glass as you stand admiring a local landscape entry. I don't know many people. I am now among a few hundred strangers. It is fun to be with family and friends among the smell of flowers. But, I miss the endless stream of old Santa Rosans stopping to say hello, introducing you to someone new. Sonoma County was a tight knit community. Everyone helped each other, everyone liked each other. It was a forgiving place.
My family was always one of the last to leave every year...walking along with employees from Rosenburgs. Mr. McNeany's voice bellowing somewhere in the distance. It is just the ghost of memories past that remind me of the days we were all friends in this community. There was a sense of grace, trust and the feeling of being a part of a town that embraced and supported you - through all the stupid things we do growing up.
Like the Vegas of old, with it's dress codes and style the Preview of the Flower show has changed its grandeur to appeal to the masses. Funny, it has never once sold out since they changed it...
Until next time-
C
