LeBaron: No predictions yet, just decades of remembering

I wonder what ever happened to the Procrastinators’ Club.

It’s been almost 30 years since we heard of the spoof group that was enormously proud of its ability to predict the events of a new year.

The club’s record was nothing short of remarkable - 100 percent correct about everything they predicted.

I stumbled on that important organization in 1985, when the predictions included President Ronald Reagan’s second term, Pete Rose breaking Ty Cobb’s hitting record and the 49ers losing to the New York Giants in the playoffs.

Right as rain on these matters, and all others listed. Amazing. Well, not really. You see, the Procrastinators didn’t get around to announcing their predictions for ’85 to the national press until New Year’s Eve of that very year.

True to their purpose, they were 100 percent accurate. Just late.

I thought back then it was a fine idea and, in fact, just one year later, I declared myself the chairman pro tem of the North Coast Section of the Procrastinators of America and predicted, on the eve of ’87, that Santa Rosa activist Nina Arrabit’s campaign to designate Luther Burbank’s Shasta daisy the national flower would lose in a committee of the Congress; that the Coddingtown sign, in grave danger of being stopped forever by city ordinance, would continue to turn in perpetuity; that Clint Eastwood would be elected mayor of Carmel. Stuff like that. All accurate. Just late.

I could try that again, predicting that, in 2014, December rains would moisten our drought, that our streets and many others would be filled with protesters, that cyberterrorism would make us feel we were living in a galaxy far, far away, that the Giants would win a third World Series.

You’ll have to agree that these are spot-on. Just late.

Ahh, yes, the year-end column - the one where we sum up all the significant, humorous, outrageous and downright stupid events of the past 12 months. It’s a media tradition.

I was going to say “a newspaper tradition,” but that would put it into the category of Old and Older. Which, come to think of it, isn’t such a bad idea. It’s what we might call Walking Backward into the New Year - just another way to play that game.

You can add a twist, should you choose to participate, by attempting to name the decade when each of these historic, semi-historic and absolutely meaningless events occurred. To make it harder, let’s not say which is old and what is older. You decide. Answers at the end.

1. Hard-top races every Saturday at the track at the north end of Santa Rosa and wrestling at the fairgrounds on Friday nights.

2. Pat Paulsen’s elevation to mayor of Asti.

3. Bumper stickers inviting tree-huggers to “Kiss My Axe.”

4. The deaths of two familiar figures - Pepper Dardon and Candy Bar Charlie Solomon - leave Santa Rosa’s downtown bereft.

5. A flagpole sitter in Montgomery Village.

6. Harmonic Convergence.

7. The grand opening of the Highway 101 bypass around Santa Rosa, called a “freeway” despite seven stoplights.

8. Newsweek magazine designates Guerneville as the “New Gay Boom Town.”

9.Tanner Hospital closes the day Memorial Hospital opens.

10. The solemn farewell to the 50-cent drink at the Topaz Room.

11. Santa Rosa’s “holiday” teacher’s strike.

12. Foreign films at the Tower Theater.

13. Sebastopol’s Karen Valentine becomes Miss Teenage America.

14. Jone Pederson is Miss California and runner-up to Miss America.

15. Drag races on the old Navy airstrip in Cotati.

16. Thousands turn out for Santa Rosa’s First Night.

17. The familiar voice of “Col. Potter,” is heard around town when “M*A*S*H” actor Harry Morgan is in residence.

18. Christian Life Center morphs to Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, which has since morphed to Wells Fargo. Or just “Fargo” as the hipsters say.

19. East and West Windsor come together to incorporate into, well, not exactly a city, but the county’s newest official town.

20. Santa Rosa’s City Council grows from five to seven members, guaranteeing increased verbiage and, apparently, acrimony.

21. The Prince Memorial Greenway opens from downtown to Railroad Square.

22. Mr. Benincasa’s ice cream truck roams the parks in summer.

23. Kate Wolf and Don Coffin, as The Wildwood Flower, sing in concert at the west county’s O’Connell’s Grove.

24. The World War I cannon is removed from the lawn of the courthouse.

25. The courthouse is removed.

26. Spring Lake Park opens.

27. Howarth Park is built.

28. Lou Gottlieb deeds Morningstar Ranch to God.

29. There are horses, to be fed apples and have noses rubbed by school kids, on both Humboldt Street and Montecito Avenue.

30. Doyle Park is home field for a Pittsburgh Pirates’ farm team. Part-owner Bing Crosby comes to watch.

OK. Enough of this. Time to move on to 2015. It’s going to be a fine year.

We procrastinators know this. We can hardly wait to make our predictions. Once they happen.

HHHHHH

Answers for those who took the quiz far too seriously:

1940s: 7, 10, 14, 24, 30.

1950s: 1, 5, 9, 12, 15, 22, 27.

1960s: 13, 25, 29.

1970s: 3, 8, 10, 23, 26, 28.

1980s: 2, 6, 11, 17, 18.

1990s: 4, 16, 19.

2000s: 20, 21.