Smith: High school kids hardly ever make oxcarts anymore

Amid all the high-tech goings-on at Santa Rosa High School, a collaboration has produced a handsome replica of one of mankind’s earliest conveyances.

It‘s an honest-to-goodness oxcart.

It was inspired by those that transported the belongings and children of Santa Rosa pioneer Doña Maria Ignacia Lopez y Carrillo on her family’s journey from San Diego to Sonoma in or about 1836.

Maria Carrillo received a vast land grant, and her clan built and occupied the first nonnative home in what would become the city of Santa Rosa.

A desire to keep alive the story and legacy of Maria Carrillo is what prompted Riccardo Gaudino of the Golden State History Curriculum Task Force to locate someone who would build an oxcart.

Gaudino reached out to Kevin Costello, the Santa Rosa High woodshop teacher. Costello liked the concept, and he recruited to the project not only students but also colleagues who teach auto shop, manufacturing and art.

The result is a festively painted oxcart that’s already begun to appear at historical events in the region.

Something to look forward to: Watching as a pair of beasts of burden arrive with the cart at the dedication of a new park at the ruins of the long forlorn and neglected Carrillo Adobe on Montgomery Drive.

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THE TRAIN GOES TO: Windsor’s Steve and Suzan Lewis watched their sweet and sentimental scale railroad go out the door the other day.

They’re feeling good about the fellow they gave their Old Town layout to.

Several people, including some fire survivors, had expressed interest in taking the train landscape that features miniatures of the houses Suzan and Steve have lived in, and other 3D memories of their 50 years together. The couple put the layout up for adoption to reclaim the dining table beneath it.

The Lewises granted Old Town to Walter Koretsky of Sebastopol. He’s a collector of Playmobil structures and people and vehicles and critters. A serious collector.

“I probably have one of the top 10 collections in the world,” Koretsky said. He figures that if he set out all of the Playmobil pieces he first began to amass when his three kids were small, they’d cover a space as large as a football field.

He told the Lewises he includes an electric train in the Playmobil layouts he creates for public events at museums, conventions, home shows and such, and he’d enjoy including Old Town from now on.

“It’s going to be shown off for thousands and thousands of people,” he said.

Koretsky will tell me when he first creates a public display of the train town Steve Lewis built along with some of his Playmobil pieces, and I’ll tell you.

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COAST GUARD families pinched by the just-ended government shutdown will eat well Wednesday at a community meal outside of Petaluma.

Organizer Sara Little is hosting the dinner at Two Rock Union School, near the Coast Guard Training Center.

There’s to be delicacies from The Bodega and Jam’s Joy Bungalow food trucks, Buddies Pizza, Coastal Catering and Kona Ice, and also live music and face-painting. Party, Tent and Event Rentals is pitching in, too.

Bon appétit.

You can reach columnist Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.