![]() Sidewalks were no longer rolled up at sundown downtown was transformed with electric signs up and down Fourth street, including marquees of several vaudeville and movie theaters. By the end of the following year automobiles were everywhere. Santa Rosa Republican: April 27, 1912)Ĭonsider the rate of progress of those days it’s astonishing how quickly Santa Rosa seemed to bolt forward starting in 1910. (RIGHT: By 1912 clothing ads were aimed at fashionable young urban adults. (It also makes Jack a dull boy never ask me about the 1905 hops market at a party.) Reading all those the newspapers leading to that single 1912 event provided rich context – and when it comes to history, context is everything. Point being, when I wrote that article I probably knew as much about Ben Noonan as the average Santa Rosan at the time. Noonan’s family owned the slaughterhouse at the corner of College and Cleveland Avenues where the airplanes were stored, and just a few months before they were sold there was great commotion because sausage maker Otto Ulrich caught fire thanks to all the grease on his clothes and had to be extinguished with a hose because his enormous boots kept him from fitting in a tub of water. Wiseman, who made his historic flight a year earlier with Noonan driving the chase car, which was the same auto he used in a 1909 California Grand Prize Race to win $500 by beating Wiseman. ![]() The airplane was sold in 1912 by Ben Noonan, whom I knew was a boyhood friend of pilot Fred J. museum may not be the famous aircraft after all. For instance, the previous item here revealed the first-airmail biplane in a Washington, D.C. Yet all of it is valuable – no event is simply an isolated pin stuck on an historic timeline. Santa Rosa’s past flows through the library microfilm readers like a boring, torpid river. Endless complaining and shaming over whatnot on the editorial pages. My process to create this journal is simple I read every issue of both Santa Rosa newspapers cover-to-cover, just as people did when the ink was fresh. ![]() This time, at milepost #550, I’d like to muse a bit about what this project’s taught me about misinterpreting history. The last occasion was this blog’s 500th entry, where I put together a “ Best of the Blog” index of the stories most popular, important or odd. Summer’s nearly over, so following a long tradition (which started last year) let’s pause to gaze navelward and ponder What It All Means. ![]()
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