The Mortuary

There's one mortuary in town, Anker-Lucier, located on the corner of Commercial and School Streets. The red tile roof with white stucco is rare in this county, and reminds me of the Spanish Colonial Revival style found in more southerly parts of the state. There were a couple of Mexican land grants in Mendocino, but the Spanish era missions came no further north than Sonoma county.

I did not personally know Dave Tiller, but earlier this week he lost his long battle with pancreatic cancer. I do know that he was a police officer who touched many lives here in Willits, and his memorial will be this Saturday. Photos of a barbecue to raise funds for his treatment trips to San Francisco were posted here last June.

Water Feature

This big vacant lot is smack-dab in the middle of "old" Willits, and is right next to the Deco house on the Hiram Willits property seen yesterday. To the south is the Van Hotel. To the west is St Francis in the Redwoods church, at the intersection of Main and Commercial Streets. I've been in Willits since 2001, and this is how it has always looked - puddles in the winter, dry potholes in the summer. It would be great to keep it open with a vast food and medicine producing garden, with all the Highway 101 traffic lumbering by, but maybe the owner has other plans. Right now, it serves as a sort of downtown art installation, with random amoeba shapes dispersed all across it. A sea of holes.

The deeper history is that the Willits Hotel used to stand here. It had over a hundred rooms, and included all sorts of traveler's amenities, but was torn down more than fifty years ago. I would have thought anything else built here since then would still be standing, but I don't have more information about it. It catches rain. Hurray for rain!

Deco in Blue

Moving away from the Craftsman Challenge set forth by Laurie in South Pasadena, this house is a rarity in Willits. Although it's without much of the embellishment associated with Art Deco, this building includes many of the elements that followed on from the post-Craftsman era. Extremely simple and lean in comparison to the woody struts and and natural materials of Craftsman design, and even further removed from the lacy Victorians, the glass brick flanking the front door was a huge leap in visual ideas. Also note the oval curve of the front step overhang. This is located across the street from the Van Hotel, under several big redwood trees. The booklet that told me about Churchill staying at the Van tells me this was constructed on the site of the old Hiram Willits farmstead in 1936. That must have been a shock. The former Willits house was a two-story Victorian dating back to the pioneer's settlement of 1857. Now, in its turn, this house is historic as well.

Lichen With Rust

A collection of valves and other parts rest on a yet-to-be restored open rail car in the work yard of Roots of Motive Power, punctuated by a spontaneous primitive garden. I kept this in my secret stash for a few months, so the dry sunshine is misleading. The blessed rain still falls these days.

Happy belated 200th birthday to President Abraham Lincoln, celebrated along with the birthday of President George Washington, together designated a holiday today in the US.

Such A Name

Seeking new vistas on my territory, I went to Willits Cemetery, on acreage rising from Highway 20 just west of town. My first time here, I wandered a bit to see the names and artful monuments. There were a couple of areas with these standard military veteran's grave markers, with surviving vets and casualties of the 20th century wars indicated on the inscriptions. This one stopped me short.

George J DeBourbon-Habsburg, California, PVT [Private], Army Air Forces, World War II

Notice that he was born in 1901 and died in 1973. That's pretty old to be a lowly soldier in that war. How did someone with such a bombastically historic name from two royal houses of Europe end up in Willits?

I could have held this one back until I could do some more research, but the mystery itself appeals to my inner novelist/screenwriter, and there may be no information to be found. I did check the county phone book, and the names don't appear to continue here. Do any local readers know his real story? Or should I continue to imagine one of my own?

Muir Lane

Muir Lane is actually an alley running behind business properties from the Van Hotel on Commercial Street, south to the Henry Baker Muir department store property now occupied by J.D. Redhouse. Reading a biographical sketch of the man from 1914, Muir was a shrewd businessman with his hand in lumbering, milling, retailing, banking, energy development, telecommunications, and land brokering. There's no mention of any relationship to John Muir, the noted conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club.

Unforgettable

Today is Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day wherever Jewish people live. The systematic gathering up and execution of millions of European Jews, by the Nazi Party of Germany and collaborators in their occupied countries during World War II, was based on the ethnicity of the victims, not their degree of religious practice. In fact, ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity and married Christians were hunted and killed as well. Having just one Jewish grandparent was enough to "qualify" for the death camps. This "genetic" component of the Holocaust is what made it a "genocide". The other ethnic group targeted for death were the Roma (gypsies). (It was also the biological origins of Tutsis in Rwanda that subjected them to massacre by extremist Hutus in the 1990s which made that a genocide as well.)

In addition to the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime, they rounded up and executed political dissidents like union organizers and Communist Partisans, and a notable religious minority, the Jehovah's Witnesses. These victims were killed for their personal beliefs, not their genetic makeup. It was through the Witnesses' own communications network that they first got word out from Germany what was happening in the internment camps. But then, as today, "peculiar" people were not taken seriously, and those very early warnings were ignored. On this Day of Remembrance, I remember them too.

Translated from a poem by German Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

See an academic's research on the origins of the oft quoted and variable poem.

For further information about genocide in modern times, and US policy decisions in various case studies, see "A Problem From Hell" by Samantha Power.

Churchill Slept Here

According to the Willits News, Winston Churchill stayed at the Van Hotel on September 13, 1929 with some other associates on their way from Canada to San Francisco. Are we strategically placed? Or just a celebrity magnet?

VanHotelDetail Jigsaw Puzzle

Cracks and Jack

It's so rare to see custom tile work like this any more, that I grieve to see it drilled into for a pointless railing dividing two shop entrances. The "Colonial" must have been a hotel or apartment building long ago. The crack suggests it could have endured a fairly strong earthquake, and the upper facade, seen in the photo below, shows such evidence as well. When the 1906 quake hit this area, the only fatality happened when a brick hotel collapsed on the proprietor. Residential chimneys fell down all over the area, but the wooden framed houses themselves endured pretty well, being able to flex with the earth. I don't know if the Colonial was around for those events. It seems unlikely with all its brickwork still standing.

Few people realize the epicenter of that shaker was closer to Santa Rosa than San Francisco, and the rupture continued quite strongly up the fault line north. Writer Jack London toured these areas with his wife, Charmian, soon after, and wrote about his observations for Collier's magazine. In her diary (held by the Huntington Library in San Marino), Charmian mentions Jack writing part of "White Fang" while they stayed at a hotel nearer to the railroad depot in Willits.



As Melodee pointed out in the comments, the Colonial name applied to the cinema once operated in part of this building. Thanks Melodee!

Public History Mural: The Persico Boys

Dated 1994, a series of "snapshot" images mimic a large photo album mounted on some walls downtown, probably organized by the county museum staff of that time. Various local painters were given photographs of local personalities of note to create these large boards for display. This one shows two of the Persico men in their childhood on trick ponies they rode in parades and at rodeos. The Persico family has been in Little Lake Valley for many generations.

The spirit of this public art project exemplifies the movement to "public history" that arose around the 1970s and 80s. By engaging local artists, expressing the life of local individuals, and placing the results in high foot traffic locations out in the community, it is definitive of people presenting their own history stories to tell one another, and is strongly influenced by Studs Terkel and his interest in the lives of everyday people rather than just the generals and senators and captains of industry.

Crochet

I was surprised to see all these crocheted doilies at one of the recent Christmas crafts fairs. I didn't think anyone did this kind of handwork anymore, and they were very reasonably priced. Did I buy any? Well, no. I happen to have more of these (in these same patterns) than I will ever have any use for.

I remember some of them draped on the tops of the easy chairs at my grandparents' house. And under vases on the mantle. I rarely use them myself, but they remind me of my mother's stories of going to San Francisco every Christmas, where her Danish grandparents lived and my grandmother grew up. Christmas Eve was the time for the main festivities, and smatterings of the old language were sprinkled in the conversations of the elders, surrounded by dark wood floors and oriental carpets and pipesmoke. Souvenirs of the sea captain's travels to every continent were displayed here and there. Woven paper hearts and real candles were on the tree. Is it possible to inherit memories?

I'll be away from my computer soon, making more memories with Mom.

Only a Memory

A run-down Skunk Motel (it was named for the well known excursion train operating here, not the animal) was finally demolished several years ago, and the empty lot served as some overflow parking for the Mariposa Market. Then temporary fences went up and the heavy equipment moved in, pushing, digging, grading. Soon, construction will be complete on a new building for the market.

There are a few other things that have been pictured on Willits Daily Photo that are no longer to be seen in the real world of today:

1. The Lion of Judah shop has been clearing out of its space. I don't know if it's going somewhere else.

2. The abandoned service station office is now not only vacant, but torn down.

3. Three miniature mares were torn apart and killed by two wandering pitbull dogs last week. The paper says a fourth was maimed, but may recover.

4. The Princess Parking Only sign at the Community Center/City Hall has been removed, following a letter of snarky complaint by someone to the local newspaper. The killjoy claimed such nonsense that it must have cost her tax dollars or similar. She made it clear that some issue had not gone well for her at the city offices, so denying the humanity of public employees was her revenge. One less reason to move to Willits after all.

5. Many abandoned railcars (including the manzanita bush) on the unused NCRA railroad sidings have been scrapped and removed. The few that remain are consolidated behind a fence, apparently waiting for transport elsewhere by their owners.

Old Highway Route

Barbed wire blocks passage to the trailing end of the old Highway 101 roadbed at the south end of the valley. The current highway at this point is up where the line of passing traffic is just visible at the top left of the picture. From there, south to just below Ukiah, the highway is four lanes, bypassing the winding path of generations of road trips; families or newlyweds off to explore the pastoral ranches and towering redwood forests in lovingly maintained open roadsters or sedans. With more widespread ownership of automobiles after World War I, daytrips and camping trips brought city-dwellers out to lands of natural splendor with ease and independence. With the travelers came new economic opportunities to serve tourism locally. Such business benefits fueled the interest of north coast counties to contribute to the Redwood Empire Association, and the subsequent building of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s.

Street Names

Way back in the early days of Willits, the settlers/developers decided to name many of their streets after some counties in the region. So we have Mendocino, Humboldt, Marin, Alameda, and San Francisco Avenues mixed among more generically named Valley, Redwood, State, Commercial, School and Main Streets, to name just a few. Over in Mendocino village on the coast, the streets are named after various towns in the county, so they have Ukiah, Covelo, Albion, and Little Lake Streets (Little Lake was absorbed into the Willits[ville] charter). But it seems to me that this could have been confusing for postal delivery, back when handwritten envelopes may not have followed a completely standardized format, and may not have been clearly written, or been water smudged. I can only imagine it could be something like the famous Abbott and Costello routine, "Who's On First?". Thank goodness for postal codes.

Craftsmanship

I love the looks of this "craftsman style" building. It has a small plaque saying it was build in 1905, one year before the massive earthquake that shook not only San Francisco, but Santa Rosa, Ukiah, and Willits. The brick facade of a hotel in town collapsed and killed a man, the temblor was so strong. Many brick chimneys fell down as well. But this office building must have weathered the shake, probably with some repair. I'm told it started out as quarters for Northwestern Redwood Company, not to be confused with the railroad company, and is located at the intersection of Commercial Street and the railroad line, diagonally across from the train station. It still seems to be in use, but I don't know who occupies it now.



For information about the Craftsman era of architecture, check out what Laurie said on her blog, Glimpses of South Pasadena

Subject to Control

The trouble had been going on for years, apparently. She had a restraining order against him, and he was prohibited from possessing firearms. She had broken off their relationship long ago, and had moved on with the man she married. But there can be a madness among men, in many cultures around the world, that insists on owning women.

Willits is a small city with a small staff, and she was the municipal payroll officer. The first responder on the scene was the fire chief, who just happened to be going to the bank when she was shot to death in her car, in this parking lot. The gunman had killed himself immediately. Someone called 911. Try as he might, with his calming competence, the fire chief could not save this woman, this colleague, with his bare hands. He was able to rescue her girlfriend, in the car seat beside her, badly bleeding from two bullets that may have passed through her friend. The police chief arrived, and saw this woman he had gone to high school with, now dead. It happened last November. I did not know her, but this event grieved many, many people, and she will not be forgotten. The shock echoed through all of us.

Such madness is never, ever about love. It is about property, and about control.

Al's Redwood Room

As you can see from yesterday's photo, Al's Redwood Room is currently a stand-alone establishment and serves American and Thai food along with a full bar (meaning every kind of alcohol, not just beer and wine). The business originated in the ground floor of either the Willits Hotel or the Van Hotel, I don't remember which, further up the street. Al was Al Greenberg, who was friends of Dr. Raymond Babcock and Ridgewood Ranch owner Charles S. Howard, and often served up drinks to Red Pollard, the famous jockey of Seabiscuit, during his recuperative stay in the area. The current establishment retains the ornate carved wood bar from the old hotel days. This sign was recently refurbished, and is presented by request of Palm Axis.

Widowmakers

Redwoods make very attractive landscaping trees, and are suited to the dry summer, wet winter cycle of their home territory. As they grow skyward, they put out a lot of branches to collect as much sunlight for energy as they can. As they grow further on up, the abundant branches now lower on the tree can't all catch as much sunlight as before, so some of them wither and die, while others grow stronger and spread out further from the trunk. It's a way for the tree to focus its growth near the top where it brings the most return, and this self-pruning is natural for a healthy tree. However, when a stout wind comes up, or even if a butterfly lands as a final "straw," these dead branches will fall to the ground. When the early loggers worked in these woods, they discovered that cutting activities around the base of the tree would also shake down dead branches that may have hung up on still living branches overhead. In a day without hardhats or other safety procedures, these projectiles earned the name "widowmakers". It's something to know about if you're going to live this close to a redwood.

I have added some pictures of the "widowmaker" that inspired this post on my Overflow blog.

Hotel Van

Here's the way I heard it. A young crewman on a ship in the Mediterranean met a young woman from one of the "better" Willits families on a cruise. The two married. He came with her to live in Willits. They bought the Hotel Van, one of the swank accommodations in town at the time. She died at some point, and he moved away. But he kept the hotel, the upstairs all vacant, and has it maintained only just barely up to code standards, so it can't be condemned. It is rumored he always felt snubbed by the people in his wife's circle, the white gloves and hats set. On just about the most prominent corner in town, this empty shell of a building was how he responded, apparently. He must be nearly a century old, somewhere, if he still lives. If this happened, it was a very long time ago. I wonder about such old stories, and how many embellishments have been added over time, since this one sounds so much like Romeo and Juliet. It seems to be the handy answer whenever conversations come up like, "Wouldn't that make a great International Youth Hostel?" or culinary school, or elder housing, or... But after all, it might just have earthquake problems. Who knows?

The few shop spaces that are currently occupied, at street level, are now, finally, all leased by immigrants. Thankfully for the town, because they all have fine businesses.

Garden Heritage

Spuria irises grow well in this area; so well, that they often outlast the houses they were originally planted with. They were typical of homes, cabins, and stagecoach stops more than one hundred years ago, so clumps of these graceful flowers can sometimes be found near meadows and fields where buildings once stood. They also persist in town by some of the older homes, and along with flowering quince and climbing roses, Greening apple orchards and mock orange bowers, they hark back to an earlier time in garden fashion. A few more images are in my Overflow blog, linked here.