Roberto Catania sells Trattoria Lupo and makes a second bid at retirement

Robert Catania tried some years back to retire from his long adored restaurant in Rincon Valley.

He sold Roberto’s on Sonoma Highway but bought it back as business evaporated like pasta-pot steam. He renamed the place Trattoria Lupo.

Older now, Catania is determined to do better at retirement this time.

“I’ve been in the restaurant business for almost 22 years. I’m almost 60,” he said. “It’s time for me to go.”

Catania has sold the business to Dennis and Malena Hernandez of Petaluma’s savored Cucina Paradiso. His last day in the restaurant will be Sept. 14.

He’d love to see you, too.

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GRATEFUL FOR SNIPER’S MISS:

The film “American Sniper” and the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II have Marty Wise, who’s 89 and lives in Petaluma, shaking his head.

He knows that in 1945 he came close to dying without even knowing what him hit at Hitler’s Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria. Wise was 18 and he’d experienced combat for all of 36 days with the 3rd Army platoon tasked with liberating the ghastly camp.

He remembers his patrol rolling along one side of the camp, railroad tracks to the left and a forest to the right, when word came that the lead jeep driver had been shot in the wrist.

“We spread out between our vehicles, waiting for orders to resume,” said Wise, now a retired bank officer. He was looking out at the forest when something buzzed by his left ear.

There was no sound of gunfire. It simply didn’t occur to the young soldier that what whized by was a bullet.

Then came another, also near his left ear. “I realized it was a sniper and warned my buddies to take cover,” the Petaluman said.

“The American Sniper film indicated how difficult a head shot was to a full body shot. I was lucky.”

The danger passed and the liberation of Mauthausen continued. Seven decades later, Marty Wise ponders how the bulk of his life wouldn’t have happened and how his five grown children would not have been born had the unseen sniper not missed.

The grateful old soldier aches for the many who weren’t as fortunate.

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THERE GOES JOHNNY: Gad, it was after 3 a.m. when seasoned Sebastopol newsman Larry Chiaroni pulled into Bill’s Deli on Gravenstein Highway South. He’d finished his night shift at KCBS radio and needed to fill his tank.

“There’s this guy with an old truck at another pump piled high with boxes of apples,” Larry shared. Breathing in the familiar fragrance, he asked if they were Gravensteins.

“Yes, organic,” the fellow with the truck replied. He said he was taking them to the San Francisco produce market.

The two fellows at the pumps spoke a bit more about the prized Gravenstein and the crisply awake grower told the half-asleep radio anchorman that he’s Johnny Appleseed. Larry figured out the stranger’s real name is John Kolling and he runs Solana Gold Organics.

The laden truck lumbered off to market and Larry felt he’d met an especially happy someone, an evangelist for the apple that’s the pride of Sebastopol.

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GABE JOINS THE ROYALS: Life just gets better for Gabe Cramer, the 2012 Santa Rosa High grad whose mind and pitching arm won him a scholarship to study and play at Stanford.

Now three years into college, Gabe was over the moon to be picked to play this summer in the esteemed Cape Cod League. His parents, Corky Cramer and Paige Sobel, happened to be visiting from Santa Rosa weeks ago when a senior scout with Kansas City Royals came to see him pitch with the collegiate league’s Yarmouth-Dennis team.

Post-game, the family was at a restaurant in Hyannis when the scout approached and asked Gabe if they might speak. The two of them stepped out to the parking lot.

And right there they cut a free-agent deal. Gabe will one day finish up at Stanford, but at present he’s pitching with the Arizona League Royals, Kansas City’s farm team in Surprise, Ariz.

Said Gabe’s nearly bursting dad and first coach, “He’s worked very hard and he deserves anything he gets.”

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.