Fred Stoke, Santa Rosa collector of car, farm memorabilia, asks that you look, but please don't stop

Fred Stoke understands why many of us would love to pull off of Old Redwood Highway north of Santa Rosa and into his personal museum for a look-see.

He hopes we’ll understand why he’d rather that we savor the sight as we drive on by.

Having just turned 80, Stoke, a long-retired building contractor with a boggling repertoire of interests and abilities, isn’t ready to dry up and blow away. But, even though he has always relished meeting and jawboning with people, he has grown rather weary of walking out of his house or auto shop every time an unfamiliar car threads the gate.

“It gets to be too much,” he said at the 7.5-acre ranch he and his late wife, Joyce, bought in 1997. He transformed an eyesore into a roadside attraction with his collection of antique tractors and other farm paraphernalia, a miniature church, a firehouse sheltering a vintage engine, what looks like a small-town general store and a long, long periphery fence adorned with classic gas-station signs.

Over the years, Stoke has hosted all manner of public, semi-public and private events at the place. Just the other day, a couple hundred Santa Rosa-area members of the Jokers car club met there to share a meal, show off their Detroit beauties and celebrate Stoke’s 80th birthday.

And this Saturday, all are welcome to a swap meet and gas bash, a sale-or-trade of collectibles from old gas stations and auto-repair shops. It starts at 7 a.m.

But day in and day out, Stoke said, his collections and his tiny town amount, really, to “just a hobby shop in the back yard.” And it wears on him for understandably intrigued strangers to drop in to see it.

His creation reflects a lifetime fascination with all things automotive.

“My dad had a garage in Santa Venetia,” just north of San Rafael, Stoke said. “I learned the grease when I was really young, maybe 10 years old.”

He built a roadster while studying with the San Rafael High School Class of 1953. Not long after graduation, he built his first long, low, fundamentally dangerous dragster.

“A lot of my (drag-racing) buddies are dead,” he said solemnly.

For several years, into the mid-’60s, he raced his cars professionally on the drag strips at Cotati, Lodi, Vacaville, Half Moon Bay and Fremont. Feeling fortunate to have survived, he walked away and opened Stoke Construction in San Rafael, specializing in commercial projects.

He worked hard, did well, retired young and moved to Lakeport, where he and Joyce and their four kids delighted at going onto Clear Lake in boats that, not surprisingly, tended to have large engines and go quite fast.

Stoke began collecting things in earnest while in Lake County: old farm implements, a world-class assortment of oil cans, fuel pumps and any sort of signage or memorabilia from fuel stations of yesteryear.

After 18 years on the lake, the kids were grown and their parents were finding it a chore to make the long drive to Santa Rosa for medical appointments and shopping and such. On a trip to town in 1997, the couple noticed that the former home of Newton’s Well Drilling on Old Redwood Highway was for sale.

“This place was really run down,” Stoke said. “But I could see the potential.”

He and Joyce bought it and set to work.

Refurbishing old structures and erecting new ones, Fred Stoke made himself a large shop for building hot rods and hot pickups, and helping friends with their car projects.

The tiny Stoke Family Church came about because the Stokes’ younger daughter, Shari, asked to be wed on the property.

Recalled her dad, “I told her the only way she’d get married here was if there was a church.”

Shari Russell said her vows outside the church, though as many as about 20 people could sit inside if they cozy up.

Several years back, Joyce Stoke died of breast cancer. For quite some time, her husband kept a pink fire truck on the ranch in her memory. “It was in a lot of parades,” Fred Stoke said.

Without Joyce at his side, it became less fun for him to step outside and chat with the passers-by who drive in hoping for a look around.

Today, Stoke shares the ranch with his sweetheart, Lynn Bayona. He said that at 80 he’s no longer actively acquiring additions to his collections, though if someone stops by to offer him an aged hay rake or plow or some such thing at a good price, he’ll listen.

“I don’t get anything out of this,” he said, surveying his eye-catching spread. “I just let people look at it.”

Ideally, no offense intended, as they roll slowly by.

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