Smith: George Fiori, top hotels and an ode to spring

George Fiori, who’s been in the restaurant business in Sonoma County since before he could tie an apron, has for a bit over a year had a good thing cookin’ in Montgomery Village.

But he’s decided to sell his Fiori’s Grill. The last day of business is Sunday.

George, whose grandparents opened Fiori’s Restaurant in Occidental in 1935 and who was a partner in the fabled Fiori & Grace in north Santa Rosa, is 71 now. That’s only a year older than he was when he opened Fiori’s Grill, but he has found it a challenge to run both it and his Big Boys Buns & Burgers in Larkfield.

He’s selling the business in the Village to another guy who grew up working in the local restaurant trade: Gus Lopez, who along with his siblings took over their parents’ landmark Old Mexico restaurant until its sale a year ago.

Gus has been looking for the ideal place to expand his barbecue catering business into a restaurant. He and George cut a deal.

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ONLY FOUR HOTELS in all of California made the current Hot List by Condé Nast Traveler. And two are in Sonoma County.

They are: Healdsburg’s elegant, new Single Thread Farm-Restaurant-Inn, and the nearly historic but newly reimagined Timber Cove Inn on Highway 1.

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SOME FAIRLY OLD GUYS play golf at Oakmont. But Paul Lawler and his pals issue an open challenge to anyone who claims to be in an older foursome.

Every Monday, Lawler, who’s 92 and a retired deputy chief of the San Francisco Police Department, plays nine holes with Bob Marotto, Gordon Hopper and Bob Thorson.

Marotto is the group’s kid, at 91. Thorsen is 97 and Hooper is 98.

That’s a combined 378 years.

The four friends don’t play just for fun. “It’s always competitive,” Lawler said.

And which guy do you suppose is the toughest to beat? Hooper, the most senior.

“You can’t believe it,” Lawler said. “He hits it down the middle consistently.”

If you’ve got an older foursome, let’s hear about it.

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A BELL RANG inside John Sawyer’s head when the Santa Rosa native and member of the City Council read that 88-year-old Memorial Hospital telephone operator Marilyn Goodwin took her first call at the switchboard in 1958.

Sawyer had wondered now and then for decades, “How does Memorial keep finding operators who sound alike?”

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A POEM in praise of the single greatest gift of spring:

The green-green hillsides,

exuberant blooms.

All the nestlings

unaware they’ll

soon sing.

These were for,

I would say,

most of my life

what I loved most

about the spring.

But at this stage

the ‘Amount Now Due’

delights me far more

than seedlings a-burst

on the sills.

Just now, the sprinklers

are off

The furnace, too. and the AC.

And briefly we’re sprung

from cruelly intemperate

utility bills.

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