Some rain stories

Talk of heavy rains in Napa always remind me of a few stories from my Napa youth.  We lived east of town and were never really in any danger from the number of 'flood episodes'  Napa had had over the years. I saw a geologic map a couple of years ago and where we lived in Coombsville was/is about 126 feet above see level. It would take about the thousand year flood, or more, to cause problems.

My mother grew up in different parts of downtown Napa.  One of the neighborhoods was the area of St. John's Catholic Church.  As the crow flies that is just a couple of blocks from Napa River. She reveals in one of her writings that her father was so sick in the 1930's, he couldn't get out of bed and couldn't go see the water.  A neighbor has to back their car out of the garage basement before the water poured in.

I vividly recall going 'to town' to see the water was a big thing.  My Uncle George, in his 50's at the time, was slogging through the water up to his hips.  He was just under six feet tall.  He had friends who lived in the area of the current Wine Train station and was trying to help some of them. (He was like Will Rogers, he liked everyone.) We did our major weekly shop at Vallerga's Market, which was right on the river at First Street. We would view the river from that spot. Having no television station in or around Napa, we would listen to KVON for periodic reports, then hop in the car and go to town.

As we were so far out, (I still call the area 'semi-rural' to this day), we never had to worry.  When the floods of 1987 made the national news my friends in Sacramento, where I was then living, asked me if my moher was alright.  The news did show the flooding around St.John's Church, where my mother had grown up. Mt. George School never had to close.  (It did close the afternoon JFK was assasinated and the next Monday during his funeral.)

Tom Ontis is a Napa ex-patriate now living in Contra Costa County with wife Shelley, also from Napa and four darling and hilarious kitty cats. He grew on a two acre ranchette east of Silverado Junior High, now called middle school.