This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Springtime for...

It's finally spring in our hemisphere and even though the hills are still more brown, or less green than they should be, spring is nice.

As a kid growing up in Napa, spring meant we could quit wearing jackets to school.  My jackets and the lost and found were good buddies all through my years at Mt. George School out on Second Avenue. It meant that there was plenty of sunlight in which to play after we got home from school.  Living just 3/10 of a mile from school, it didn't take us very long to get home.  We had two acres on which to play, which became much more ironic, as on many weekends we would probably end up at the school, generally to play baseball on the sort of diamonds that the school had.

I moved away from Napa for good in late 1979.  At the time, the career possibilities were slim.  I knew more than a few kids whose parents worked at Kaiser, Basalt, the state hospital and in the wine industry, which was not the big deal like it is now.  None of those were for me, though I did work at the Napa schools for a time in the late 1970s. So I struck out and ended up here in Contra Costa County as a teacher, from which I am now retired. 

Find out what's happening in Napa Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

One little story though: My mother still lived out in Coombsville, (which the realtors now call 'East Napa,') as she had for nearly 50 years.  I still got back to Napa about every 6 weeks or so, sometimes to check on her, sometimes to get out of the rat race I was living in. I pulled in one May afternoon around 5 pm. Her front field had about a two foot high growth of grass and weeds. Flitting above the grass were about seemingly a million butterflies.  It was one of the most calming experiences in my now 60 year old lifetime.  The butterflies moved out when it got dark and went wherever they go when it gets dark, but were back the next day doing the same thing.

The area I now live in Contra Costa County, near the shores of the San Joaquin River, while not being as calm as Coombsville, are pretty calm. We hear an occasional siren on 'old' Highway 4, more than a few cars drive by on our adjacent 'big' road, but it is generally pretty calm out here. It will never approximate living in Coombsville, but...

Find out what's happening in Napa Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Tom Ontis is a Napa native and ex-patriate now living in eastern Contra Costa County, with wife Shelley, also from Napa and four darling and hilarious kitty cats; Daisy, Lucy, Cookie and Buster Bright Eyes III

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?