Cobb >> The Black Rock Golf Course was filled with peals of laughter and excited screams as kids — some as young as a year and a half — toddled and tore across the expanse of grassy green lawn under the warm rays of sunlight Saturday afternoon. It was the Cobb Mountain Lion’s Club annual Easter Egg hunt, and the event was nothing short of a hit. Though Lion’s Club members had hoped for a larger turnout, every one of the 300-plus neon and pastel candy-filled eggs were swept up within five minutes.
“They vacuumed them up in no time flat,” said Lion’s Club member Robert Stark with a laugh.
For decades the Cobb Mountain Lion’s Club has been hosting the egg hunt, but never was the event more necessary than this year, in light of the Valley Fire. “We’re all doing our best to try to put on as many events as possible in order to keep people in touch with the community,” Stark said. “Remind them why they lived here, how tight-knit this group can be when it’s necessary.”
The egg hunt is one in a line of events, which began with a Halloween celebration back in October. That get-together, just over a month after the blaze ravaged Cobb, was one of the first times many residents had seen each other since the fire. And since, the golf course has hosted a food tuck event and car show, plus the exceedingly popular Winter Wonderland in Cobb, which saw upwards of 1,000 skaters gliding across a temporary outdoor ice rink.
“I was really looking forward to this,” said Jules Stout of the egg hunt. Stout is the woman behind Cobb’s new morning preschool program, serving 32 families and 14 children daily. SugarPine, the Cobb preschool prior to the events of last September, burnt in the historic fire. The owner felt she couldn’t rebuild, so Stout took up the reins.
In her role as child care provider, she knows the Cobb community well. Half of the families she serves lost their homes in the fire, but the rebuilding process has begun. “There’s a lot of positive energy with people getting the rebuilding going,” Stout said.
Adding to the good vibes are the plethora events hosted by the golf course. They give Stout a chance to talk with parents in a casual setting, outside drop-off and pick-up windows. They also allows residents to interact with members of the community they may not see as often. Children sometimes make new friends, too. “This kind of thing is really important for the families and the extended families to get together. The kids are playing with their cousins and everybody’s hugging,” said Stout. “It’s so good for us to have.”
So groups like the Lion’s Club have been ramping up the events, and they have no intention of slowing down. They tend to plan activities around school schedules, so the next one is still up in the air, but one thing is for certain: it will be happening. “The idea is to show the cohesiveness of this community and that kind of gives the people who lost their homes the ability and the remembrance of why we live here,” Stark said. “That’s our main focus.”
And it’s clear the Black Rock Gold Course, owned by Moore Family Winery, has been essential to helping the community regain it’s footing. Cobb is the only town in Lake County without a community park, Stout said. Though there are residents hoping to change that in the future, the golf course is the only meeting ground at the present. “Having something like this fills a little bit of that void and brings people together in that public way,” she said. “It’s kind of the heart of the town.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
