Someone asked me recently what I liked most about Lake County, and after tossing out the usual answers ? I have friends and family here, it”s not as congested as other places where I”ve lived, etc. ? it dawned on me what makes Lake County particularly appealing.
I like Lake County because it”s big.
I spent my first eight years in San Francisco, which was really small back then ? too small for a kid to go outside and play. There wasn”t any room to play. Living in a two-bedroom flat, there wasn”t any room to do anything.
A couple times a month, we used to drive a few blocks to Dolores Park, where we”d toss a baseball or football around, or play on the slide and swings. But I don”t remember Dolores Park being very big. It was so small, you had to wait in line to go down the slide.
Otherwise, we”d play ball on the sidewalk, which was too small for ball. There wasn”t any room on the street to play ? not without getting run over by a car. The Mission District was too small to have any fun.
Of course, I didn”t realize how small San Francisco was until I moved Santa Rosa.
I was 8 when we moved out of San Francisco ? and into the biggest town I”d ever seen.
In the late ”50s and early ”60s, Santa Rosa was paradise. We played baseball and football in the street. We played basketball in our driveways. (We didn”t even have driveways in San Francisco.)
My Santa Rosa neighborhood, which was called the Grace Tract, was once a big walnut orchard, and there were as many vacant lots as there were homes. Every lot had a couple of trees to climb. Down the block, at the foot of the mountain, there were apple orchards, which meant we”d have apple fights on a regular basis. We built our tree forts with this in mind ? to defend against a bombardment of apples.
There were trails that snaked up the mountain, which we got to know intimately. There were hardly any houses up there. There were plenty of deer and jackrabbits and snakes. Once I saw a wild pig, which turned and snorted at me, and I started running down the hill and didn”t stop until I got home.
But then Santa Rosa started getting smaller and smaller, and by the time I was in high school, most of the vacant lots were gone and the mountain had houses on it.
I remember when people started complaining that Santa Rosa was getting too big ? but I knew better. Fact was, Santa Rosa was getting too small.
Before you knew it, the orchards vanished. The little mountain near my home was filled with houses and those dirt trails became paved streets. There were no more vacant lots. Rarely would you see a ballgame in the street.
Over the decades, Santa Rosa just kept getting smaller and smaller. When I left town in 2001, it was one of the most crowded places I”d ever lived in.
I used to be able to ride my bike all the way across town in 15 minutes. Then it got so crowded, it took 45 minutes to drive across town, including 30 minutes at stop lights.
When I moved to Lake County, it felt the way Santa Rosa used to feel. There were mountains to climb. Streets where you could toss a ball around. There were big fields and tons of trees and one of the biggest lakes I”d ever seen.
I got the feeling there was plenty of room to roam ? and I liked it.
Driving around Lake County, you don”t have to stop at stop lights every minute, where you”d have to wait for three minutes before you crawled to the next light for another three-minute wait.
Lake County is still big ?and I enjoy driving the highways and byways. There”s a lot to look at.
One thing is, I don”t see a lot of kids taking advantage of the wide open spaces. I think they”re probably too busy playing video games or watching TV. They”re missing out on a lot of fun. Lake County is big. And for kids of all ages, big is beautiful.
Rich Mellott is a staff reporter for Lake County Publishing. You can reach him at 263-5636, ext. 14, or rmellott@record-bee.com.
