sonora2sonoma

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

By
Tim Konrad

Few things in life have the power to evoke long-forgotten memories than the plaintive sound of a lonely train whistle. Thanks to the recent return of rail travel to Sonoma County, this sound is now heard several times each day in my community and, each time I hear it I am brought back to the comforting wail emanating from the Sierra Railroad’s locomotive every afternoon as it wound its way up to the train station at the south end of Sonora. I recall accompanying my father as he went to the train station to receive the paint shipments that enabled him to provide for our family while I was growing up.

As a small boy, I remember the guilt-tinged fascination with which I would steal glimpses of the calendar girl pinups lining the walls inside the freight-receiving section of the train station. Pictures of scantily-clad women, a novelty for an 8-year-old boy unaccustomed to such things, became something to look forward to when going to pick up paint with my father.

The rail line played a big part in meeting the area’s freight needs at that time.  The freight depot, located where the post office sits today, was a handsome building with a deck on the receiving side whose height was just right for off-loading freight onto awaiting trucks.

The train had been reduced to a freight- hauling line by the time I came along. In an earlier age, before a bigger and more ambitious train station had fallen victim to fire, the rail line had ferried passengers bound for the foothills and beyond. Today, most of the passengers riding the rails in these parts are  tourists, visitors to the area who arrive in Jamestown by automobile to board trains for short excursions on summer weekends and special occasions.

In reflecting on the ability of sounds, such as that of a train whistle, to summon long forgotten memories, another sound familiar from childhood comes to mind—the once familiar sound of a rooster crowing to herald the arrival of the new day. When I was little, John Antonini, an old man who lived uphill from us, kept chickens in a pen lorded over by a rooster. Each morning, the rooster would proclaim the coming of the dawn with unfailing regularity. Anyone who doubts that roosters are early risers is someone who has never lived close enough to one to be relieved of such nonsensical thinking!

Many were the times I cursed that bird as a teenager after having stayed up partying half the previous night! It was sheer folly to cling to the belief I could sleep in late and recapture lost hours of rest! My mother used to remind me of this often, saying “you can’t burn the candle at both ends.” But alas, motherly advice has the staying power of snowflakes vaporizing before the morning sun, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I sought sleep only to find folly instead.

Indifferent to my dilemma, the infernal fowl pursued his instinctive impulse with insouciance, functioning like a biological alarm clock signaling the spreading light with the dependability of a Swiss watch and the forceful assertiveness of a foghorn. 

When I was younger, there was no going back to sleep once I was awakened, no matter  how late I’d been up the night before. Had I been bolder back then, I might have consoled myself when the bird awakened me with thoughts of its demise. Had I been more confident in myself, I might have even considered various courses of action to hasten such an outcome. Fortunately, I’ve recently learned a new phrase from listening to senators evade questions during tv interviews that works well when confronted with dodgy questions of this nature: “I don’t do hypotheticals!”

I eventually learned to accept the sound of the rooster’s crowing and even, in time, to appreciate it. One of the blessings of the passage of time is its ability to promote acceptance of that which is beyond one’s ability to change—a life lesson whose applicability has extended far beyond the confines of the conditions which, in this case, as in many others, nourished it into being!  I hear no such morning delights these days in Petaluma. Alas, the freedom to raise farm animals is not commonly regarded as compatible with the dictates of urban living.

***

There was interest on the part of Caltrans in the 1970’s to construct a bypass of Highway 108 around Sonora. The downtown merchants at the time mounted a concerted effort to prevent this from occurring for fear their businesses would suffer. There was another effort back then to re-route Highway 49 around Sonora in the hills to the east of town, but this effort was struck down largely thanks to the efforts of a politically-savvy retired high school teacher whose house, perched on a hill high above town, lay in the middle of the proposed right of way.

As time passed, traffic worsened considerably in the town, intensified by the two state highways running through the heart of it. The more congested it became, the more clamor there was to revive the 108-bypass idea, but by that time, whatever funding sources had existed when the route was first proposed were no longer available. The project lay in stasis for years while the traffic problems continued to worsen.

At one point during that period, the downtown intersection of Washington Street and Stockton Road was declared the most polluted urban intersection in the entire state. I remember applying white paint to the windowsills of the Harden home on the corner opposite the Red Church one day during that time. When I returned the following morning, I discovered so much diesel soot had accumulated on the windowsills that I was able to write my name in it legibly with my finger.   

Matters finally became so dire that necessity overcame inertia and, in the early 1990s, the bypass was finally completed. The new route eased the vehicle flow considerably for traffic headed eastbound on Highway 108, but did nothing to lessen the Highway 49 northbound traffic routed along  the town’s main thoroughfare, Washington Street. Because of this, significant problems remain that an extension of Highway 49 would go a long way toward correcting.

As was feared, Sonora’s downtown businesses did suffer following the completion of the bypass, but the exodus of businesses relocating to East Sonora had already begun prior to its construction. Similar to how the rush to modernize downtown Sonora in the 1950s had also been taking place in towns across the nation back then, the transfer of downtown businesses to the shopping centers east of town mirrored a nation-wide trend of strip malls being erected from Maui to Massachusetts.

Missing most of the merchants that formerly met the needs of the community, downtown Sonora these days has become a tourism-oriented conglomeration of antique stores, curio shops, art galleries and other largely non-essential establishments. Following the trend of companies relocating to the suburbs, most of the enterprises designed to meet the needs of Sonora’s residents, with the exception of certain restaurants, have now moved outside town. About the only kinds of businesses remaining besides the eateries are the town’s ubiquitous taverns and saloons, although they, too, are fewer in number than in years past.

***

Sometime in the late 60s or early 70s, Tuolumne County’s first traffic light was installed at the intersection of Washington and Stockton Streets.

The new addition, not surprisingly, slowed the flow of traffic along both streets. A number of months passed until, one day, a power outage rendered the light inoperable while PG&E labored to restore power.

For several hours, motorists were forced to resort to the old-fashioned way of taking turns stopping and going. A highway patrolman stood by, directing traffic with hand signals like is done when routing traffic around the scenes of accidents.

As might be expected, the flow of traffic improved while the light was out of commission. Once power was restored and the light was back in service, the traffic flow resumed its more sluggish pace, adding to the body of evidence suggesting that progress,  highly vaunted yet deeply flawed, does not automatically connote improvement.

One of the charms afforded by rural living is the relative absence of the traffic signals that have come to largely define urban living. A necessary evil, such devices arguably do little to improve quality of life issues and in fact are more likely to have a negative impact on them than, say, the serenity afforded by hearing the wind whisper through the pines.

To be continued: