SEARCHING FOR HISTORIC HOUSES

THE LARSEN HOUSE

Today was the first seriously hot day, so even Amber was just as glad not to be chasing rabbits. Instead we pursued houses. With Historic Houses of the Sacramento River Delta as a guide, I set the aim of finding three houses that were close to Rio Vista. The first, the Larsen House, is on the corner of Second and Bruning Streets in town. It was built in 1897 by Lars Larsen, an enterprising Danish immigrant who arrived in California in 1877 when he was 22 years old. He became Captain of a lumber schooner on the delta's rivers, then a lumber dealer, and one of the founders of the Bank of Rio Vista.

THE CHURCH HOUSE

We continued out of town on Second Street after taking a short detour into Sandy Beach Park to see if we could cool off in the river. A great many other people had the same idea and the beach was brightly crowded with picnicking families, fishermen, swimmers, all very charming but not conducive to a good off-leash run of the sort that had been Amber's previous experiences at the park before summertime arrived. So we continued out Second Street, having been advised that this was the best route into the Montezuma Hills area that Historic Houses referred to. Second Street became Montezuma Hills Road, and one of the houses from the book soon appeared on high ground to the left of the road. There is some confusion about which house it was, since evidently two (or more?) of the pictures in the book have been switched and do not correspond to the historical facts printed next to them.

It seems reasonable to assume that this is the Church House, which was built in the 1880's, a good ten years before the ornate Victorian embellishments of houses like the Larsen House became fashionable. Also, its location on high ground would have seemed prudent to builders who could remember the flood that completely destroyed the first town of Rio Vista in 1862.
In 1902 another Danish immigrant, Perry Anderson, bought the property and his family continued to farm the surrounding land for several generations.

THE ANDERSON HOUSE

We continued our drive through Montezuma Hills taking side roads that led through huge wind farms, past a herd of more than fifty beautiful black horses, over hundreds and hundreds of acres of golden hills high above the delta's rivers and sloughs. At the junction of Montezuma Hills and Birds Landing Roads we came upon the Anderson House, which was referred to as the Robert Donald House in the Historic Houses book. Robert Donald was an Irish immigrant who built the house in 1891 and lived there until about 1918 when he leased the property to yet another Danish immigrant, Neil Anderson, whose family subsequently purchased it and has been farming it for five generations.

Ian Anderson walked up to our car when we pulled into the broad lane leading to the house and outbuildings. With the civility typical of delta natives, he asked if he could help us with anything. I told him I was searching for the houses in the book, showing him the ancient volume. He looked through it, pointing out that the pictures didn't match the information for the two houses that had sheltered generations of Anderson families from Denmark. It was he who had recently completed restoring his family home. He gave me permission to walk up closer to the house to take pictures, and on the way I met his father, who was sitting in a pickup truck next to the barn.

When we left the Anderson farm, we took the Birds Landing road to see where it went, which was to Highway 12 west of Rio Vista. On our way back to town we passed Trilogy where we could see the Andersons' rootless contemporaries puttering about in their little golf carts.

THE ROAD BY THE FERRY DOCK

It was hot today, and a good place to go in the heat is down the road that goes straight ahead where 84 curves to the ferry dock. Ancient eucalyptus trees provide shade on both sides, helped out by cottonwoods, willows, blackberry thickets, and dense undergrowth. Between the road and the river is a cherry orchard. We were there for most of the afternoon since Amber discovered that many rabbits live in the wildest growth. I left her there for a while and visited the Rio Vista town hall to find what I could about the phantom development, which again wasn't much. Nearly 200 acres were allotted to the project. The developer evidently put in the streets and utilities, but they did not pass the city's inspection (many of the streets have buckled and warped). This was only one of the problems--the major one was the collapse of the economy, particularly the matter of unsavory mortgages.

By the time I got back to the ferry dock to collect Amber, she seemed to have gotten herself stuck somewhere. I could hear her respond when I called--and the bark did not sound like her rabbit-trailing baying--but she didn't appear and it didn't sound as though she was moving. I finally called Nellie and Nick to come help look for her, but of course by the time they arrived she had come bounding out of the woods. She was completely covered with mud. My theory is that she got into one of the irrigation canals and couldn't get out. Anyway, a bath took care of the mud and all is well. Or nearly well. Again, after hours of waiting for her, I ponder our relationship. Those who know us well, my three adult children particularly, contend that she is "spoiled." I wonder about this term and about all it implies, and most particularly about the whole "alpha leader" concept of relating to dogs. I am reading a book that takes this on: Dog Sense by John Bradshaw. I will be discussing it when I've finished.

I have rather overwhelmed myself with books and other materials, primarily about the delta. And more are on the way by inter library loan. Soon, I like to think, I will get organized and focused. Or not. The delta becomes more and more interesting the more I find out. Early Years to Golden Years in Rio Vista, written and published by Steven Martin Shine is not so much a book as a compilation of lists with an occasional nugget of history. Historic Houses of the Sacramento River Delta, published by the Sacramento River Delta Historical Society in Walnut Grove is a bit more promising. The houses, presented in drawings, are wonderful and their histories interesting...alas, the locations are not clearly presented. I am going to set off in search of many of them.

Meanwhile I am making some progress with tech difficulties. Amazingly, my cell phone charger also will charge the battery in the video camera. Hardly ever do technical matters solve themselves so effortlessly, and without the condescending intervention of some young techie.
I have also contracted for a good Internet connection, which will be hooked up this Thursday. Then there will be videos aplenty. Or so I imagine. They will not either upload or download with the weak signal I am freeloading on.

Amber Investigates Rio Vista's Drouin Park

SUNDAY SCENES

It's not just me thinking so: Amber really is beautiful. Today as we were getting into the car a young man pulled up next to us. "What kind of dog is that?" he asked. "It's beautiful." And yesterday a lady came running out of her office on main street with a treat for Amber. "I saw you go by," she said, "and wanted to catch you when you came back."

After leaving Amber's fan club behind today, we went out to the jack rabbits. It was hot, and for a change there wasn't much wind. Even so I had to tack like a small sailboat when heading into the wind on my bicycle. The sloughs are nearly dried up completely now--only a few mud wallows remain, in which Amber splashed and rolled to cool off, encasing herself in drying mud. There were a lot of rabbits running, and she was after them until exhausted.

When we left the phantom development we drove out to Trilogy, which is a gated enclave for senior living, quite a large one, off Highway 12. The horror...the horror. It needs no picture. You have seen them everywhere, houses clustered around a golf course, manicured lawns and fairways and greens, ponds and fountains, golf carts carting old geezers and their bags. Not the sort of place I would go were it not that Trilogy is a division of Shea Homes, and I had been advised by the Chamber of Commerce that they might have information about the phantom development. As it turns out, they didn't. No one seems to want to discuss the matter. I'll try City Hall tomorrow.

I hate old people. They are wrinkled and saggy and slow. They clog doorways with their tentative steps, eyes blinking through the haze of light or shadow, depending on whether they are going in or out. On a crowded sidewalk one pair of tottering seniors can slow half a block of pedestrian traffic. At a checkout counter they dodder and dither, unable to find the coupon they are sure they had, realizing they picked up salted rather than unsalted butter so that someone has to be sent to get the right kind, baffled by the machine that records debit cards. And the menace old people provide when behind the wheel of a car is legendary. Why anyone would choose to live in a whole community of rotting flesh completely baffles me. But Trilogy is obviously thriving, a kind of monument to everything wrong with American culture. The age segregation, the self satisfied conspicuous consumption, the gatedness to cordon themselves off from the rest of the world.

They did have lovely clean ponds and fountains, however, which we found useful. As I said, Amber was caked with mud from the sloughs, so I threw a stick in a Trilogy pond for her and she cheerfully plunged in and swam out to fetch it a couple of times. Voila! Clean wet dog. Then we went into their sales office. We got no information about the abandoned houses, but we did walk around and look at some of the model homes. We went by ourselves, which surprised me. I don't think I would have allowed two such disreputable characters loose in those lavishly decorated interiors.

In the evening we found another of Rio Vista's parks, Drouin Park. It isn't as large as Val De Flores, and also is not completely secure since some sections of fence are missing. Still it is a pleasant place.

PAINTING FINISHED

Jacob and Nellie, my son and his lady, painted the walls and ceiling in the living room of the cottage while Amber and I were in Oregon. There was a bit of trim to finish, which I did this evening. The bedroom walls were painted by the three of us a couple of weeks ago: bright turquoise that goes better with the lavender trim than the previous blue did, or so I think. At any rate all the rooms are colorful, which is quite a change from the stark white walls I have insisted upon for many a long year. Now begins the process of finding furnishings that live up to the walls.

Otherwise the day was given over to chasing rabbits (Amber's department). I got the best sighting yet of a jack rabbit running directly in front of me with beagle in hot pursuit. Alas, the video camera is currently not working, and even when it is the videos won't post because the internet connection (freeloaded from some neighbor's wireless) isn't strong enough. Nonetheless, I am determined to master all this tech business eventually. The rabbits show every sign of lasting until then. Also in undiminished vitality are the ticks. For a while they seemed to have disappeared, but today I found about a half dozen on the two of us, more on me.

My errands included checking out books on local history from the Rio Vista Library, and getting maps of the delta from the chamber of commerce and a local travel agency. Insofar as I have any plan, it is to start out concentrating on Rio Vista, since I find it a very interesting town. If I were to select only one characteristic that contributes to this interest, it would be the absence of franchises and chains. There are only two exceptions to this that I have noticed, both along Highway 12: a McDonald's and a Subway. Otherwise all of the restaurants, stores, and other businesses are locally owned and managed. The effect of this is the feeling of a time warp of about 50 to 75 years that occurs as you cross the bridge over the Sacramento River and enter the town.

546 MONTEZUMA

Amber and I begin our day's explorations from this cottage at the corner of Montezuma and 6th Streets in Rio Vista. We have lived here for nearly two months. I came here from Oxnard on a blustery gray weekend in March, having already given notice that I would be leaving the townhouse I was renting in Oxnard by the 15th of April but without any clear idea of where we would be moving to. It had only recently dawned on me that I could live wherever I chose, that what tied me to any given location was my job. And I no longer had one. Hard times had come to the ed biz in California, and Oxnard College was laying off part time faculty, including me.

I had spoken with several real estate agents before arriving, and it seemed that there were many rental properties available in Rio Vista. Indeed there were. Over the weekend I looked at over a dozen places, at least half of them inside as well as out. In each instance there was one deal breaker: either the landlord did not want pets, or there was no access to the yard from the house, or no fenced yard, or a forbidding flight of steep stairs. Nellie, my significant-other-in-law, and I trudged around in the rain spotting rental signs and peering in windows. The rain fell and the wind blew and it was cold and by Sunday night I was thoroughly discouraged and thought that Rio Vista was not going to be our destination after all.

I had planned to stay over on Monday to see two more properties, although I didn't hold out much hope for either one. But I had made an appointment with Sam Richards at Richards Real Estate, so I waited. One of the two properties was a generic three room apartment, totally without redeeming characteristics. Nellie and I had looked in the windows at the empty-box rooms. The other one, this one, my son Jacob had seen the previous week and pronounced it to be "a dump." To cheer myself up I thought that Nellie and I could paint the interior in bright colors and do Sunset magazine sorts of things.

When I walked into the cottage on Monday I saw that the previous residents, a gay couple, had already done exactly the decorating I had thought about, and that the house had new windows and old wainscotting, a storage shed in back, a dog door leading from a separate laundry room with gas hookup just waiting for my new washer and dryer, a thoroughly fenced yard...in short it was perfect for our purposes.

It has taken some painting--not all of the color combinations worked and some walls were grimy--and is definitely a work in progress. But the many little advantages far outweigh the little problems. What Amber likes best is that the many windows are all low enough that she can see out and keep track of everything going on in the 'hood. It is her job to monitor the comings and goings of all the cats and dogs, many of which need a good barking at, but only if they intrude on our personal sidewalk.

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PHANTOM DEVELOPMENT, RIO VISTA

One of our favorite places in Rio Vista is the surreal remnants of a failed housing development, which I have heard is the largest such disaster in Northern California. What remains are 13 boarded up houses amid acres and acres of completely installed streets, wires and pipes for utilities, sidewalks and curbs and potential driveway entrances, stop signs, street signs, bike lanes, street lights--all in readiness for the hundreds and hundreds of houses that never happened. The only inhabitants, and there are plenty, are jack rabbits, ticks, and sundry birds.
Our main interest is the jack rabbits.

I have stowed my bike in a covered area under a flight of outside stairs on the rear of one of the abandoned houses. Since the blocks and blocks of streets are flat, the area is great for cycling, and I can keep up with, or at least keep track of, Amber as she pursues rabbits, in full cry, until she is so exhausted she can barely stagger back to the housing area to find some shade to collapse in. After catching her breath she is off again in search of more rabbits. She is not a particularly good tracker. She's as likely to hit a trail and take off eagerly in the opposite direction from that taken by the rabbit, but what she lacks in talent she more than makes up for in enthusiasm.

On the outskirts of the acres of phantom city blocks are open fields and occasional sloughs drying in the increasing heat. A week or so ago I saw an American Avocet in one of the larger ponds. My Audubon Field Guide says this bird is becoming rare. It is certainly beautiful with a russet colored head, flashing black and white on wings and body, long curved bill.

I am going to try to find out some more about the history of the phantom development. Chances are the city of Rio Vista took a bath along with (or perhaps independent of) the developer, which was the ubiquitous Shea Homes. It is clearly a symptom of the larger pattern of economic collapse. Meanwhile, rabbits and beagles prosper.

BACK ON THE DELTA: A NEW FRIEND AT RIO VISTA'S PARK

MORNING AT DUNSMUIR PARK

We're back on the Delta. We started the morning by packing up our belongings at Cave Springs Motel in Dunsmuir, the most comfort and class at the best bargain price we encountered in our week's rambles. We went back to the city park for a walk along the river trail before starting the drive home, and Amber found some creatures to trail through the underbrush, probably not rabbits from the sound of her baying, but something of interest.

And then onto I-5 where it occurred to me that the verb "to drive" is a general term, much like "to cook" in that it covers many different activities. As cooking includes roasting and grilling and simmering and braising and so forth, so driving includes meandering along winding scenic routes at 30 mph, following pilot cars past road construction sites, puzzling out confusing directions in strange cities, and--today at last and for the first time in a week--getting onto a major freeway and averaging 70 mph. Hooray. It's my favorite type of driving and we were home in four hours.

Amber recognized that we were back on the delta as soon as we turned off I-5 onto Twin Cities Road heading for Locke and Ryde, Isleton, and Rio Vista. It was great to be back to our little cottage. After unloading the car and resting a bit, we went to our favorite city park where we met some new friends, three dachshunds and an energetic terrier mix named Bandito.