Susan Dlugach was a reporter for the Las Vegas Daily Optic in New Mexico before turning to a career teaching English in New Mexico and California. These days she spends her time folk dancing, doing yoga, and dreaming up stories.
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This Farm-to-Fork City of Trees Is Home
This Farm-to-Fork City of Trees Is Home
When we told friends in Santa Rosa we were moving to Sacramento, they moaned, “It’s such a cow town.”
So I expected dusty streets and perhaps some livestock mooing nearby on that sun-blasting summer day we first rolled into the capital city. After all, we’d relocated from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Santa Rosa the year before and understood the sound and smell of cow towns. Not that Albuquerque was a cow town, but the edges of the city qualified.
Instead, I was greeted by palm trees standing guard as we wound around from Highway 80 east to 99 south. We found all sorts of trees arching their leafy branches over paved streets, the branches waving various shades of green leaves. I later realized that the diversity of trees here parallels the diversity of languages and peoples who also live here. Rather than livestock, we found dogs on leashes, cats wandering the yards, and later heard a rooster crow from a neighbor’s yard.
But it wasn’t love at first sight. Or sound. It was, “Well, here we are. I wonder how long we’ll stay.”
It puzzled me the first few times someone told me they were going to “the City” when what they meant was that they were going to San Francisco. After all, we lived in Sacramento, the capital city of a very large and famous state. When I lived in Texas, no one called Houston “the City.”
New to California, I was only vaguely familiar with its history and none of the details. What I knew came from cowboy shows like “Bonanza” and “Death Valley Days” that I watched as a kid. I also knew that gold had been found in them thar hills. Once when telling my dad, who still lived in Texas, that we were going skiing at Donner, he was quizzical.
“Isn’t that where people on a wagon train got stuck in the mountains during a blizzard and ate other people?”
Oh yeah. I knew that.
As a proud Texan, I thought our capitol building in Austin had to be the biggest and most beautiful. Then I toured the newly remodeled state capitol at 10th and L. What a rotunda! And such beautiful mosaic floors! Maybe this building was just as grand as the one I remembered in Austin.
Our family fell in love with Old Town. We’d walk along the wood-plank sidewalks and stop in an old-time store with barrels of individually wrapped candies that used to sell at two for a penny. We’d let the kids pick out their favorites, then stroll down the street leading to Evangeline’s, a quirky novelty shop back then. My son especially loved gag gifts like the brown plastic poop he put near his aunt’s suitcase, giggling as he waited to hear her screech when she discovered it.
The main treasure of Old Town is the Sacramento River where the Delta King riverboat is permanently moored. Our first year here, my husband and I watched Mark Twain, or rather an actor impersonating the Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer author, share pearls of wisdom and tell his stories of life traveling along the Mississippi River.
But there’s not just one river. There’s also the American River, a place to splash around and cool off during the sizzling season, maybe catch a raft trip in the foothills for a refreshing ride downstream.
Growing up on the Gulf coast, I thought I knew fog. When my mom drove me to school those dreary mornings, I could pretend the building, wrapped in a damp grey cocoon, had been lifted off by aliens, at least until we were within a couple of blocks of the building.
But that was nothing compared to the snot-thick tule fog winter brings to this valley. During our first chilled season here, I learned that my car’s headlights were not sufficient to keep me from missing streets I needed to find. I then understood how ghost stories arise from this shrouded atmosphere.
Greta Gerwig, of Lady Bird fame, is the same age as my daughter, and both grew up here. Gerwig wrote and directed the coming-of-age story that takes place in Sacramento. There are scenes in the film, like the Tower Bridge and Club Raven, familiar to local residents.
Joan Didion, pioneer of New Journalism, was also a native. Lovable Tom Hanks and baseball icon Dusty Baker have deep ties to this city of trees.
A Kings fan through thick and thin, not only do I remember the clanging cowbells, but I still lament the controversial 2002 playoff loss to the LA Lakers.
I can’t imagine New England in autumn any more beautiful than our own bejeweled November when orange-rust-yellow-gold-red-brown leaves flutter and cover the ground like a coat of many colors.
Roots have quietly taken hold in the decades that have passed since first setting foot in this farm-to-fork community. Though not the sexiest of cities in the Golden State, I’m happy to have landed here. This is home.
~ Susan Dlugach
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