The following snippets of history are drawn from the pages of the Healdsburg Tribune, the Healdsburg Enterprise and the Sotoyome Scimitar, and are prepared by the volunteers at the Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society. Admission is always free at the museum, open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
100 years ago – October 10, 1918
Over the top with peach pits
If you knew that you had caused one American lad over there to die needlessly, because of your thoughtlessness or your indifference, wouldn’t your heart always ache because of it? If one pair of big brown eyes, or blue eyes, or gray eyes, were forever closed upon this world, even if the body lived on, just because you didn’t do your share, wouldn’t your life always hold a guilty regret? So make that boy in France, as well as yourself, sure of a happy future. How? Why, out there in your back yard, or in your cannery yard, or in your hotel or your restaurant, is a box full of peach pits, or perhaps a big heap of them, and those can save a boy or a boy’s eyesight. It takes only 50 peach pits to make one gas mask, only 50 peach pits to save that lad’s name from going on to that lengthening list in the papers. Surely you’ll bring in your peach pits to the Salvage Shop for the Red Cross is collecting them, and yours are needed. Walnut shucks are just as good: so are prune, plum, cherry and apricot pits.
50 years ago – October 10, 1968
A bird, a plane or clock?
First National Bank’s application for a combination clock and thermometer reader, submitted to the city planning commission last week as an adjunct to an identifying name sign, got down to the question of whether the clock-thermometer was advertising or a public service. “Well,” said Jack Grove, a commission member, “when I go through Ukiah, I always look at the same clock-thermometer that’s been hanging there for years. And I can’t tell you the name of the business.” Added commissioner Ernie Nissen, “When we frequently come back from Bodega Bay on Sundays I always look at the clock-thermometer for the readings. And I can’t tell you right now what the name of that bank is.” (Editor — the clock-thermometer device was approved as a public service; and the application for a name sign was not … withdrawn. It was also approved).
25 years ago – October 17, 1993
Police station breaks ground
The first shoveled, or at least earth mover load, of dirt for the city’s new $2 million police station was turned last week right next door to the current station. The station is being constructed on the site of the former fire house. Construction is expected to continue through next summer and the building should be finished in August or September. The police station is the second phase of the city’s $6 million civic buildings project approved by voters in 1989. The first phase was the fire station and the third phase will be a new city hall.
