Posts published by “Steve Sparks”

Wallen Summers becomes our third guest from the Valley who was born outside the US. He ‘arrived’ in Shanghai, China, in 1932, the second child of Sarci Chen and his American wife, Ann Summers. “My father was a sophisticated, modern guy of the 1920s who had been educated at Worcester Tech in Massachusetts and upon his return to China he became an electrical engineer with his own business. My older sister and I grew up in a middle class house­hold and we were very close. She is a retired psychia­trist in San Francisco who has hung on to her Chinese roots far more than I have. She even changed her name from June back to Mai Long and to this day continues to have very negative feelings towards the Japanese after our experiences in the Second World War, perhaps because she is four years older than me and was a teenager at that time."

With Fred living at one end of the Valley and myself at the other, and no obvious quiet spot in town to meet, we decided…

I met with Tom at The Boonville Lodge in the heart of Anderson Valley, the bar/restaurant he has owned and operated for the past four…

I met Bob at his home on Ornbaun Road in Boonville and as we sat down to talk, his wife Sandra offered us some delicious…

I drove into the Rancho Navarro subdivision north of Navarro and turned into the driveway of the home of Judy and Garth Long, the one…

I drove to the south end of Boonville on Highway 128 and turned into a driveway before the Brewery to the home of Bo and…

I met with Bud at his home on Anderson Valley Way, just north of Boonville, and as I drove up he was practicing his roping…

I met with Kay a couple of weeks ago and the first thing we sorted out was her first name. “It is Finnish and we…