RIO VISTA MUSEUM

The Rio Vista Museum is on Front Street between Main and Sacramento Streets.  The museum is open on Saturdays and Sundays between 1:30 and 4:30.  Today was warm (the local residents have assured me that it has not even begun to get HOT even though I have already begun whining) so after a brief romp near the boat launch and the public dock, Amber and I were glad to take refuge in the museum's cool interior and browse among the extensive collection of artifacts from earlier times. I had spoken with museum curator and local historian Philip Pezzaglia earlier in the week.  He emphasized that the museum changes exhibits often because they have so much material.  In fact while we were speaking a woman came in with a box of items to donate to the collection.
 

In the museum's kitchen exhibit Amber recognized the stove even though it was an earlier model than ours, and checked it out for edible spills.

But even though the old tools and implements and household items are charming, the real strength of the museum's collection is in the archives of photographs, letters, and newspapers.  Drawing on this collection, his own private collection, and other private collections, Pezzaglia wrote Rio Vista, a book in the "Images of America" series.  Many of the old photographs in this book show houses and other buildings constructed in the late Nineteenth Century that are still occupied and in excellent condition today.

ISLETON CAJUN FESTIVAL

To get to Isleton, a little river town that is a sister town to Rio Vista (sharing a school district and a newspaper and a lot of history), you cross the Rio Vista bridge and turn upriver on the levee road, which is highway 160.  This weekend Isleton is having their Cajun Festival, which was formerly called a Crayfish Festival, or maybe it was a Crawdad Festival.  At any rate, these little crustaceans are the thematic focus for Isleton's festival. I wanted to try some, but the quantities in which they were sold was daunting, so I settled on catfish and chips.  Maybe next year for the crawdads.
                                                                             

The festival business is not appealing to me.  In fact this was the first one I have been to. The notion of milling around with large masses of boisterous others is not my idea of a good time, and booths full of tacky tourist items are not appealing either.  Such was my notion of what festivals were like, and I still think most of them are.  They are evidently the way small to mid-sized communities try to bring in revenue.  In Oxnard there were several every year: the Strawberry Festival, the Salsa Festival, and I think there was a Chocolate Festival.  But I never attended any of them.

Nellie and Jacob and I drove over to Isleton in the late afternoon.  The weather was about perfect, warm
but with a cool breeze.  The main attractions were
three bands, each good and each drawing an appreciative audience of listeners and dancers.There
was blues, bluegrass, country swing, jazz, rock, soul-- the group that played bluegrass had a good fiddler. They also had a large tent covered dance floor. The third band was at the far end of the street and attracted some enthusiastic street dancers...








And Jacob and Nellie.

                                                   

WATER

WATER

Someone observed that “geography is history,” so it’s not surprising to learn that calamities in Rio Vista’s history have been related to water, primarily flooding.  In fact the first effort of establishing a town was completely washed away. The original settlement was started at the juncture of Cache Slough, Steamboat Slough, and the old river, about a mile from the town’s current location, in spite of warnings from an early navigator that there had been flooding there.  With the typical pig-headedness of humans, enterprising people began building a general store, butcher shop, post office, livery stable, drug store, hotel, cannery, and undoubtedly a saloon.  This was in 1858.  Three years later, in December of 1861 the rains started and continued until January of 1862.

According to Shine’s  Early Years to Golden Years in Rio Vista: “Every one of the forty-seven buildings in the town was washed away…All of the town’s population was saved when they swam to a high mound and were rescued by the crew of the steamer Antelope.”  It’s a good idea to be a strong swimmer here even today, as the spring run offs can combine with unusually heavy rains to set the river lapping into the nearest streets while residents talk bravely about how solid the levees are.

AMBER AT THE RIO VISTA CITY BOAT LAUNCH

Ironically the current difficulties with water in Rio Vista have to do with how much it costs.  A lot.  For one very small cottage, mine, the bill is nearly $150 per month.  This has caused a great deal of acrimony and dissent among the citizenry.  A special election was  just held to force the city to lower the rates, but failed. Why water costs so much when there is so much of it evidently has to do with poor planning of treatment facilities in the past and not-much-better planning in the present.

Meanwhile, the local waterways draw visitors who fish and sail and water ski and jet ski and wind surf or just pull their RVs around to campgrounds on the Delta Loop, which, during the summer, has a transient population which rivals Manhattan.

RIVERS AND SLOUGHS AND ISLANDS

RYER ISLAND FERRY CROSSES CACHE SLOUGH

My recently acquired map of the delta shows more than 20 islands and nearly as many "tracts."  How these tracts differ from islands is not clear since both appear to be areas of land surrounded by water.  The reason for so many areas surrounded by water is the large number of rivers and sloughs that cross and recross each other on their way to the sea.  A slough is an alternate channel of a river.  How anyone can tell which is a slough and which is a river is a mystery to me as yet.  

It is easy to get lost on the delta. Logic suggests that if you are driving next to what appears to be a river, and you drive across a bridge to the other side and continue driving in the same direction and later cross back on another bridge, that you should be on the same side of the same river that you started out on.  Usually, in my experience, that doesn't work out too well. Most of the time I end up somewhere else entirely than wherever it was I was trying to go.  And this is with land vehicles.  I suspect that there are boaters who have disappeared entirely, leaving nary a trace.

Bridges are not the only possibility for getting from island to island.  If you leave Rio Vista and drive north on the road along the Sacramento River, in a couple of miles you will come to an abrupt turn after which the road ends at the Ryer Island Ferry dock.  The ferry runs 24 hours a day on the days that it runs (not predictable).

According to the ferryman I spoke with, he makes about 80 crossings in a 12 hour shift.  If you take the ferry across, you find that the road, which is Highway 84, continues north on Ryer Island.  Oh, and if you thought the ferry had taken you across the Sacramento River, you were wrong.  It crosses Cache Slough.  On the other side of Ryer Island is Steamboat Slough.  I have no idea what happened to the Sacramento River.

AMBER COOLS OFF IN THE INLET NEXT TO THE FERRY DOCK

RULES FOR THE DOG

1. The dog is NOT allowed in the house.

2. Okay, the dog is allowed in the house, but only in certain rooms.

3. All right, the dog is allowed in all rooms, but has to stay off of the furniture.

4. Well, okay, the dog can get on the OLD furniture only.

5. Fine, the dog is allowed on all the furniture, but is not allowed to sleep on the bed.

6. Okay, the dog is allowed on the bed, but only by invitation.

7. The dog can sleep on the bed anytime, but not under the covers.

8. Okay, the dog can sleep under the covers, but by invitation only.

9. Fine, the dog can sleep under the covers every night.

10. Humans must ask permission to sleep under the covers with the dog.

I found the above list of rules for the dog in the examining room at the Rio Vista Veterinary Office. It is of course for fun. The following list, presented by John Bradshaw in his book Dog Sense, is a perfectly serious list of rules, or commandments, proposed by trainers who espouse the dominance method of teaching obedience:

1. Do not allow your dog to eat its meal until you (the top dog) have eaten first.
2. Do not allow your dog to leave the house (den) before you (the top dog) have passed through the doorway first.
3. Do not allow your dog to climb onto the sofa or bed (only top dogs are allowed to rest in the cosiest places).
4. Do not allow your dog to climb the stairs, or to peer at you from the top of the staircase.
5. Do not allow your dog to peer into your eyes.
6. Do not cuddle or stroke your dog.
7. Do not interact with your dog unless you are involved in some kind of training.
8. Do not greet your dog when you come home from work or from the shops, etc.
9. Do not greet your dog first thing in the morning; it should be the one to greet you (the top dog)
10. Do not allow your dog to keep the toy at the end of a game; it will interpret this as winning.

Bradshaw's reason for presenting the above list of horrors--which were seriously advised by a trainer committed to the dominance theory of dog behavior--is to demonstrate exactly why they are harmful.
Bradshaw observes, "It has become abundantly clear that the model upon which many people are training, managing, and simply interacting with their dogs is fundamentally wrong." His book details the scientific evidence that conclusively demonstrates that the dominance theory of dog behavior is a lot of hooey, and most competent and educated trainers now agree. Unfortunately, the dominance theory is the one which has the most entertainment value on television and other mass media because of the innate conflict it supposes. Shows like "The Dog Whisperer" are popular because Cesar Millan's weekly contests with problem dogs have a satisfying dramatic structure, not because they provide valid approaches to good relationships between humans and dogs.

Which brings me to the question of Amber being spoiled. What is assumed about the individual creature that is considered to be spoiled? I would contend that it is inferior status. Children are considered spoiled, husbands or wives are considered spoiled, animals are considered spoiled, if they are indulged by a more powerful parent, spouse, or owner. If we consider, in all the above instances, that the healthiest and most rewarding relationships exist between those who relate to each other as equal animals, we have a different way of viewing the way they interact.

If Amber behaves in ways that cause me distress--and she does, most particularly when she will not come with me when it is time to end a free roaming rabbit chasing session, or when there is some danger such as traffic or dangerous currents in the river and she will not come to me--then the distress is my problem to deal with. If I behave in ways that cause her distress--and I do, on those occasions when I have to leave her alone--then the distress is her problem to deal with. In other words I do not see our relationship as essentially different than any other kind of relationship. Language and an opposing thumb did not make me a more valuable sort of animal than she is. I do not consider that "teaching obedience" is a concept that has any validity in a relationship between equal creatures.

What does have validity for me is working towards solutions to those problems which cause either of us distress, or which cause distress to the others in our lives whose friendship and relationships we value. In this area I was quite amazed by how Amber behaved when we visited friends of mine whom she had not met before, and stayed the night in their home. She acted like some flawlessly trained obedience champion, sitting quietly at my feet while we had dinner, going to her bed (which I had brought with us and put in the room we were staying in) without being told, greeting my friends calmly with tail wagging but without excessive display. What to make of this? I don't know.

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.