Gaye LeBaron: A pair of Sonoma County books chase away the winter cold blues

What we have here today is the sort of column one writes in the third week of the annual post-holiday head cold when the eyes are blurred and the mind is blurrier. It’s a classic example of the subject of my mother’s favorite joke, aimed at drawing a smile from a coughing kid. It’s about the man who went to a doctor with a long complaint. The doctor asked: “Have you had this before?” When the man answered in the affirmative, his trusted physician said: “Well, you’ve got it again.”

At any rate, I’ve got it again, and it is difficult, maybe even impossible (we’ll see…) to choose a topic my menthol-muddled mind finds interesting enough to last 1,400 words.

I have a list, of course, all columnists have a “just in case” list; but, just like the contents of my refrigerator, nothing looks good.

Then I realized that the obvious was right under my nose. Because if there’s one good thing a bad cold does for you, it is that it gives you the option of sitting still and reading. And there were the books that have been waiting on the barrister’s bookcase under the reading lamp since before “the holiday.” (That vague time period I would mark as Thanksgiving week to Jan. 2, with a couple of odd days at the end to take down the tree, pack up the Santa Claus collection and make sure all the leftovers in the freezer are clearly labeled and dated.)

So … I not only reread “Little Women” for the umpteenth time because I had seen Greta Gerwig’s take on the old classic before I caught the plague; I read two exceedingly local new books from cover to cover. One is Bob Jones’s “Proud to be a River Rat” the other is John Crevelli’s “Historical Travels Through Sonoma County.”

When I finished them, I realized these two very different books make important contributions to the very thing I aspire to. And that would be keeping the back-stories of Sonoma County alive for retelling when the proper occasion arises.

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Looking first at Jones’ anthology published in early November, we find it, marked as Volume I, predicated at the outset by a promise of more stories to come. And that’s a happy thought.

If you don’t know Bob Jones … well, you should.

The Rev. Mr. Jones has been a resident of Guerneville since 1966 when he signed on as pastor for two Community Church congregations, one in Guerneville and one in Monte Rio. He kept that job 20 years, served as chaplain at Santa Rosa’s Spring Lake Village for another two decades and got his doctorate in literature in the meantime.

In 1972, he began writing a column for a river-area weekly. When it died, he went to another and, through three publications, has endured, still publishing regularly in Rollie Atkinson’s Sonoma West Times and News.

He estimates he has composed somewhere north of 2,000 columns - so far. And he has chosen a scant 52 among them to produce his first book, taking up the question of what being a “River Rat” entails.

Jones offers a local touch of the same gentle humor of the 20th century storytellers such as the New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell and his “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon,” or Leo Rosen’s “People I have Known Loved and Admired.”

There are short pieces about people you may well remember, like John McKenzie, the longtime head ranger and undisputed historian of Fort Ross; or Dr. Bill Ellison, the town’s only physician for most of the 40 years he practiced there. And Bill Byrd, who ran against Ronald Reagan on the presidential ballot in 1980. He was roundly defeated, but his candidacy was remarkable, offers Jones, not only because he financed his own campaign but also because, according to Jones’ research, “he is the only resident of the lower Russian River ever to run for President of the United States.”

And there are some you never, ever heard of, including the old ladies - lots of old ladies - each with their own special story and specialty.

I’m not going to give away the “plot” of Bob’s book. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Let me just say there are all of the above and a whole bunch in between. It’s a must-read - whether you have a River Rat in your family tree, only pass through G’ville on your way to Bohemian Grove, or just like to read sweet stories.

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JOHN CREVELLI’S BOOK is the purist sort of local history and considerably more. Crevelli had a vested interest in Sonoma County. Born in Healdsburg to Italian immigrant parents, he grew up on a Santa Rosa chicken ranch and could tell you what it was like to deliver, at age 14, Western Union telegrams from Sonoma County library to the War Department or, on a happier note, extol the virtues of the legendary Dagny Juell, Santa Rosa’s children’s librarian and her influence on a kid who loved to read.

I’m sure Miss Juell knew she had a scholar on her hands. And John was. He earned his master’s from UC Berkeley, with honors, and came right back home to teach history, first at Santa Rosa High, where he had been a student, and then for three decades at Santa Rosa Junior College.

Active in environmental causes he was a founding member of COAAST and the author of a book about his activist friend Bill Kortum.

When he died in the spring of 2015 at age 84, John had one more chapter to write - about a favorite topic, the environmental movement, starting with the ’60s fight to save Bodega Head.

His wife, Debra, and his daughters Renee and Monica saw his unpublished work as a tribute as well as an important volume of local history, unlike any others.

Four years later, they added, as the final chapter, a speech he had given at a Sonoma County Museum dinner honoring his friend Kortum, then they published his Historical Travels Through Sonoma County.

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LIKE A true scholar, John had a unique view of his “territory.” He used his knowledge of local history and drew on previous works, asking readers to consider where the hometown stories fit into the spectrum of America’s story.

The last sentence of his preface tells us that a story of Sonoma County’s past is “not a phenomenon isolated in space and time.” Then he sets out to prove it.

In his 10 chapters he tells familiar stories - of the area’s Native Americans and their own “Trail of Tears,” of the Squatters Wars and the lynchings and the attempts to create alternative societies. Each account is slipped neatly into the patterns of The History of the United States, a subject he taught with the enthusiasm and knowledge that made him a favorite on the SRJC campus.

A Depression-era story about a 70-year old Forestville apple rancher facing foreclosure at the height of the Great Depression is wrapped into brief accounts of how and why it was happening here – and everywhere else in the sad 1930s.

And that’s just one of 10 such episodes - showing just where we were in the overall scheme of things.

This is a scholarly art. Read it aloud.

As a much younger friend of mine suggests, if you were one of the many students who were privileged to hear him lecture about the county - and the country - he loved, “You will find it nice to hear his voice.”

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YOU’LL HAVE TO look for these books in smaller stores. That’s the way it is now with booksellers. “River Rats,” is easy to find on its home turf, from the Five and Dime to the art gallery and the golf course - and Corrick’s in Santa Rosa.

Crevelli’s is a bit tougher to locate. But some of his companions in the search for truth abut the past will gather on Wednesday evening at the Healdsburg Library to read from his “Travels.”

Both, of course, are available on Amazon. Isn’t everything?