Smith: Clara learns again to drive the ‘37

Something pretty special will happen in a big parking lot in Santa Rosa. I hope to watch, from a sensible distance.

Clara Blasingame of Rohnert Park is 91 and a half years old and looking forward to fulfilling a wish on her bucket list.

The retired schoolteacher is eager to drive a particular car, a 1937 Ford coupe.

“She learned to drive in it when she was 13,” said son Ron Blasingame of Santa Rosa.

At the time, Clara was living in Knoxville, Tenn., and the black coupe was new and owned by her aunt.

The Ford was later handed down to Clara and she drove to Florida, where she lived and taught for many years. Son Ron said it seems to him it was 20 to 25 years ago that the coupe quit running.

Just a few years ago, Ron and his brother, Kenneth, who lives in Concord, trailered the Ford to California. They’ve intended to restore it, but that demanding and costly project hasn’t quite gotten traction.

But their mom had decided she really wants to drive it one more time. She’s put the screws to her boys to get it running before she grows much older.

Ron said they’ve just recently managed to create enough compression in the engine to get the Ford going. “I wouldn’t take it out on the freeway or anything,” he said.

The family’s shooting to get Clara back behind the wheel the day before Thanksgiving. Ron Blasingame is scouting large parking lots.

SHE’S ON THE RADIO every Monday from 11 a.m. to noon, and now community activist and 40-year Santa Rosa resident Elaine Holtz will have all the more to talk about.

Supervisor Mike McGuire has appointed Holtz, host of “Women’s Spaces” on bilingual FM station KBBF, to the county Commission on Human Rights.

She’ll take her oath Tuesday afternoon.

CARNEGIE HALL beckons the band at Rancho Cotate High School

Directed by Tim Decker, the Cougars’ band is one of just six in the nation invited to go to New York next March and perform in the 2015 New York Wind Band Festival.

It promises to be the trip of the students’ young lives, but it will cost about a ton of money. To help with expenses, The Ranch’s boosters and Pasta King Art Ibleto will host a musical meal Friday at the Rohnert Park Community Center on Snyder Lane.

The great, if slightly seedy, Rotten Tomatoes band will perform. The fun starts at 7 p.m.

CAT IN COMMON: Brothers Iain Mitchell, a fifth-grader at Sebastopol Charter School, and first-grader Isak, hadn’t been their old selves.

For months they pined for Jasper, their missing cat. They and their folks had posted LOST CAT posters around their neighborhood off Fulton Road, west of Santa Rosa, and done everything else they could think of. But no Jasper.

A week ago today, Veterans Day and also the birthday of the Mitchell boys’ mom, Sandra, the More family of westside Sebastopol found a stray cat. They had him checked for a microchip, which he has. It identified him as Jasper and listed the Mitchells’ contact information.

It was old home week when the Mores met the Mitchells to hand off the cat. Iain Mitchell and Adalin More aren’t only buds since preschool, they’re desk mates at Sebastopol Charter.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.