Believe it or not, the church returns

It's stranger than fiction that tourists hoping to visit one of Santa Rosa's most famous buildings are lucky to find it and, if they do, they can't get in.

For nine years now, the Church Built from One Tree has stood idle on the northern fringe of Juilliard Park.

But something good is coming for the 1873 structure, which was just another pretty Baptist Church until Santa Rosa-born Robert Ripley told the world in his "Believe It or Not" newspaper cartoon that it was constructed entirely of lumber from a single Guerneville redwood.

City Hall just gave its blessing to reopening the church, once home to a Ripley museum, as soon as city workers and volunteers spruce it up and make it handicapped accessible.

It might be next summer or later before the work is done. But whenever that happens, the city will rent the place for meetings, weddings, recitals, art shows, talks, small performances, literary readings, you name it.

There's still a grander scheme: to thoroughly renovate the church to the tune of $1.5 million and move it to a spot not far from the Burbank Home and Gardens and across the street from City Hall.

In the meantime, though, this new development will bring the church back from the dead. Believe it or not.

WHAT A HOWL: As ABC prepares for the 40th anniversary screening of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," Jeannie Schulz and her family are reading, laughing and shaking their heads.

They're helping to judge a nationwide Snoopy.com essay contest that asked folks to describe their worst-ever Halloween. Of the

10 finalists, one will win a trip to our Schulz Museum.

There's some great stuff here. In one tale, a Cincinnati fellow recalls that in 1967 he followed Linus' cue and lugged a sleeping bag out into a pumpkin field.

The encamped kid heard footsteps and expected to spy the benevolent Great Pumpkin himself. But it was the pumpkin farmer - with "a shotgun pointed straight at me!"

The one local finalist, Michele Samuels of Mill Valley, reports that on her ninth Halloween she set out in the fluffy white cotton-candy costume her mom made. Soon Michele was itching horribly, and covered with bright red blotches.

"My dear mother," she wrote, "had wrapped me in fiberglass!"

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: Chief booster Rich Abazia and the other Montgomery High parents who raised $300,000 for stadium lights flipped them on for the first time the other night.

Awesome. The focused beams impressed even some of the leery neighbors who, truth be known, never worried so much about the lights as the amplified noise, traffic and mischief that can accompany night games.

School board member Noreen Carvolth floats an idea for smoothing school-neighborhood relations: free tickets for those neighbors who fear that game nights will be lame nights. Couldn't hurt.

BETTER WASN'T: When Bill Katsaros Jr. relocated his late father's humble beer bar, The Trophy Room, a skip 'n' jump down Montgomery Drive last year, he also made a major upgrade.

Colorful decor. Fancy drinks. Bouncers dressed all in black.

Maybe the Trophy Room just wasn't meant to be shiny and bright. Forty-four years after Bill Sr. opened his joint and let patrons grill their own steaks on an indoor BBQ, the locked door wears a thanks-for-the- memories sign.

NOT MUCH HUMOR sneaks into the newspaper. So the other day some folks really appreciated seeing the headline, "Surprising Brain Activity in Vegetative Patient" two inches above a photo of Paris Hilton.