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December 2012 Holidays in the Valley
Serving Danville Do You Have an Old Bike Needing a New Home?
By Jody Morgan
Holiday happenings at both Forest Home Farms Historic Park (FHF) in San Ramon and the Museum of the San Ramon Valley (the Museum) in Danville showcase the Valley’s historical traditions with displays and activities geared to delighting 21st century visitors of all ages. Travel back in time to a Victorian family parlor authentically decorated for the season, or step into a 1950s ranch kitchen stocked with kitchenware used in the Valley. Volunteers at each venue have carefully planned the connections between present and past to ensure a fun-filled journey for the entire family. Holidays on the Farm offers free admission to activities and entertainment as well as modestly priced tours from 10am to 2pm on Saturday, December 1st and Saturday, December 8th on the Forest Home Farms property at 19953 San Ramon Valley Boulevard. Live reindeer and Santa will welcome children both days. Until his supply is ex- Pat Boom stocks the Gift Shoppe with hausted, Santa will give each young visitor a baskets of Forest Home Farms mixes and novelty teapots. small handcrafted stuffed toy. Handmade gifts were traditional until retailers began pitching purchased presents in the late nineteenth century. An advertisement for Jones Bazar [sic] run in the Oakland Enquirer on December 12, 1891 features Santa talking on the telephone: “Yes, this is Santa Claus. No, I haven’t all the articles you speak of. You don’t expect me to carry a complete stock like Jones, do you?” Making wooden ornaments, decorating cookies, or completing a toy at the Stuffa-Bear booth will engage visKimberly Schilling and Michele Lasagena help Alice Reynolds unpack itors in generather Pooh collection for the Museum’s Christmas Memories Exhibit. ing their own connections to the past. For those less inclined to hands on experiences, the Gift Shoppe offers baskets of baking mixes made for Forest Home Farms, books, toys, holiday mugs, and more. Vendors will sell handcrafted items on December 8th. Like many members of the San Ramon Historic Foundation that works in partnership with the City of San Ramon to fund and maintain FHF, Pat Boom knew Ruth Boone personally. Ruth gifted the FHF property to the City of San Ramon to preserve the memory of her husband Travis, whose parents purchased the farm in 1900. Pat interviewed Ruth for the video shown in the Visitors Center and subsequently donated to the FHF archives the postcard
See Holidays continued on page 21 Local Postal Customer
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Over ten years ago parishioners at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Danville found that Adopt a Family holiday wish lists from Monument Crisis Center clients often included a request for bikes as a means of transportation. Out of those simple requests the Adopt a Family Bikes group was born. For a couple years used bikes were donated and tires repaired by a woman who spent time during her teens working in a bike shop. Later, David Struck, a father from John Baldwin Elementary school responded to a school flyer and offered up a couple bikes. When he reached Tania H. De Young the Adopt a Family Coordinator at St. Timothy’s he asked a simple question that catapulted the program to the next level. “Who fixes the bikes when you get them?” he asked. The Adopt a Family Bikes program kept growing when David stepped in and spent countless hours cleaning, repairing, and safety checking donated bikes.
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Welcome Aboard the Diablo Valley Lines! By Fran Miller The mention of a model railway likely evokes the mental image of a parent and child gathered ‘round the Christmas tree as their electric toy train chugs along on its circuitous route. However, a trip to the Diablo Valley Lines Railroad layout of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society (WCMRS) in Walnut Creek’s Larkey Park will quickly terminate that image. “We are not playing with toys here; we are operating a model railroad,” says member Ted Moreland with a wink. A survey of the Society’s approximately eighteen hundred square foot layout in their own building, specially designed and constructed by WCMRS members, confirms that this past time is indeed more than child’s play. Featuring nostalgic steam locomotives, modern diesels, a narrow gauge logging road, and electric traction lines on 4,300 feet of hand laid track with 175,000 individual ties over 54 x 32 feet, 400 working switches or turnouts, and several miles Volume IV - Number 2 of electrical wire, the WCMRS layout operation 3000F Danville Blvd. #117, Alamo, CA 94507 requires a dispatcher to communicate with several (925) 405-6397 engineers who are provided a high-above-the-track Fax (925) 406-0547 bird’s eye view. The WCMRS layout is believed to be the most mountainous model railroad of its kind Alisa Corstorphine ~ Publisher editor@ anywhere. The highest peak is about 1,350 yourmonthlypaper.com scale feet above the floor (measured in HO 1/87 scale) and the highest trackage is some The opinions expressed herein belong and do not necessarily 400 scale feet above the base table. A train’s torefltheectwriters, that of Danville Today News. Danville Today News is not complete single circuit of the mainline takes responsible for the content of any of 45 minutes. the advertising herein, nor does
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publication imply endorsement.