Neighbors

These three siblings grew up during Healdsburg’s Golden Era of the 1940s and 1950s. Their memories include running wild and loose on a Saturday night in the Plaza, coveting 20 cent tickets for an all-day matinee at the Aven Theater, huge Italian dinners with homemade ravioli and shopping in Garrett Hardware for bulk rope which unraveled right out of the floor.
Grandparents Giacomo and Agnese Giorgi, like many Healdsburg Italians, came here from Lucca, Italy, settling on Limerick Lane, where Marie Louise Giorgi was born in 1906 and graduated from Healdsburg High School in 1923. Basilio Dal Colletto met young Marie at an Italian dance in San Francisco and soon moved here too. Their three children were born in 1935 (Pete), 1938 (Leon) and 1941 (Ramona) in Healdsburg’s recently torn down hospital on Johnson Street.
“Dad got hurt on the ranch, so our parents moved into town in 1942,” Ramona tells me. “Mom couldn’t drive so we had to live close in for her to walk everywhere. She rose at 4 a.m. and did ironing for two hours without complaint before we got up. She didn’t have any social life at all until she was in her 70s.”
“And Dad shouldn’t have even lived in town,” Leon adds. “He cleaned Dr. Oakleaf’s office and had a shop in the back of the house. He brought his still for making grappa into town, but Mom wouldn’t let him set it up. He did make this terrible wine in our backyard, though. At the ranch he stored gallons of it behind the hay during Prohibition. The only way anyone got caught was if they were squealed on.”
“Healdsburg was only service stations, churches and bars when we kids were growing up,” Pete recalls. “Our family never went anywhere. Going to the JC was a whole new way of life for me.”
“All the kids met on the big front porch of our house at 444 North Street,” Ramona adds. “Mom made pies and we picked prunes. I loved Saturday nights at the Plaza with Owen Sweeten conducting the music while our parents sat in their cars listening and blowing their horns to applaud.”
“I was bat boy for the Oddfellows team,” Pete recalls. “I miss those Sunday afternoon baseball games when the Yakima Bears did spring training here.”
“We used to hide in the orchard near the Boys Club and whenever we caught a foul ball we’d run home with it. Bob Palmer, the old constable, would try to catch up with us, but couldn’t!” Leon adds. “Pete got bats too, so we could have our own ball games out in the streets till dark.”
“And we used to break into the HES gym. I think the janitor always left the door unlocked for us kids,” Pete laughs.
The siblings recall Healdsburg icons such as Frenchie Revel (Healdsburg’s favorite motorcycle cop), Rosa “Grandma” Rotlisberger (the beloved HES cafeteria lady) and Mr. Mallon, a candy/ice cream vendor, with his white horse.
Leon begins a Healdsburg Halloween story:  “There were four or five of us tipping over something at (teacher) Miss Meisner’s house. We saw the cops and ran through a wire fence towards town.”
“Frenchie got upset over loud pipes on cars,” Pete adds. “Since he lived so close to our house, he’d watch Leon and me from the front yard. Once when I was burning rubber, he yelled, ‘Come here, you SOB, I wanna talk to you!’”
“Frenchie walked to work,” Leon continues. “Being Italian, Dad shot neighborhood robins for polenta. Fido, our dog, would retrieve a bird and carry it to the backyard where Dad waited. Frenchie would follow the dog into the back and chew Dad out!”
“And Fido chased Frenchie’s motorcycle,” Pete recalls. “Frenchie got mad and threw his billy club at Fido!”
These three remember waterskiing on the river and picking prunes at age eight or nine.
“We mostly picked at cousin Norman Taeuffer’s ranch,” Leon says. “We were paid 25 cents per box to buy school clothes. I got my first car, a 1932 Plymouth Roadster, in eighth grade and my driver’s license at age 15.
“The best thing ever was when prunes left,” he adds. “When we were teens, it was dead here, so we went to Santa Rosa every night to Gordon’s Drive Inn, where College and Fourth connect.”
I expected the trio to be disappointed with the Healdsburg of today, but I was wrong. “I have nothing against the changes,” Pete tells me.
“I feel the same,” Leon adds.
“I don’t mind the tourism,” Ramona ponders. “I’m just sad the housing is so out of whack. I hate that young families can’t afford to live here now.”
True Healdsburgers, Ramona Le Brett-Barbieri spent only 13 years of her life out of town, Leon has lived here all his life (except for military service) and Pete remains in the original house he purchased on Pordon Lane in 1960.
Shonnie Brown is a local author and memoirist who is interested in fostering connections between people and their community. Shonnie writes personal and family histories through her business, Sonoma LifeStories, and is also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She can be reached by e-mail at sh*****@so***.net or on the web at www.sonomalifestories.com.