Smith: Wilma sees your nickel, raises a dime

One hundred years ago Friday, Wilma Cabito was born in San Francisco. How’s she doing now?

She’s whip-sharp, she lives independently in Santa Rosa and she meets with a table full of pals each week to play poker.

“Oh, it’s so much fun,” she said after this week’s games. “I only won a dollar, but last week I won 12.”

One of the many parts of her life Wilma enjoyed was the dozen-plus years she sold Avon products.

“Want to buy some?” she asked. “I’ve got a basement full.”

TREES AREN’T CHEAP. Coach Paige Dumont is well aware of that.

So as Dumont and the baseball team at Santa Rosa High raise money for their sport by selling Christmas trees from Oregon, they’re glad to keep some aside to give to families unable to afford to buy one.

Most of the Panthers’ trees are pre-purchased, but there will be one or two still for sale. The three dozen or so available at no cost will be given away first-come, first-serve.

Anyone interested in having one can contact Dumont at baseketball21@mail.com, or show up between noon and 3 p.m. Saturday at the SRHS playing fields on Ridgway Avenue, near the pool.

AT BURBANK’S PLACE this weekend, early birds to an annual Holiday Open House will find unique wooden gifts made by a master craftsman from a most unusual, squirrel-doomed tree.

Among the delights on sale at the two-day event at Luther Burbank Home & Gardens are petite bowls, pepper grinders, oil lamps and wine corks made by wood turner Jerry Kermode of Sebastopol.

He received some of the wood when the Camperdown elm grafted onto a Scots elm had to be removed late last year from the courtyard of the historic home there at Santa Rosa and Sonoma avenues, across from Santa Rosa City Hall.

The joined trees were decades old and their demise was hastened by the squirrels that refused to be deterred from peeling back the bark.

The idea to have gifts made of the wood came from the same resourceful volunteers who years ago generated support dollars for the home and gardens by selling beautiful benches made from Burbank’s beloved Cedar of Lebanon, which succumbed to root fungus in 1989.

Volunteers will greet folks to the first day of the Open House at 10 a.m. Saturday.

GUERNEVILLE KNOWS how to kick off the holidays.

What other town hosts a three-day extravaganza that starts with this evening’s tree-lighting and merchant open house, moves to Friday’s crowning of the Holiday Prince & Princess and concludes by merrily swarming Main Street for Saturday night’s Parade of Lights?

And Stumptown sweetly invites us all to come on out.

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