Our Vintage Festival, California’s oldest festival, is a most-precious treasure. I am grateful every year that a dedicated group of local volunteers manages to keep it going. It always brings back pleasant memories from my childhood. But it goes even further back than that.
Once upon a time in the Valley of the Moon, before there was a Golden Gate Bridge and highways with cars on them, a group of families – Gundlach, Bundschu and Dresel – started the first celebration of the wine grape harvest. The year was 1897.
My first memories of those revived festivals go back only to the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. I recall my mother and father and grandaunt Celie Murphy dressed up in old-fashioned costumes gathered around the mission bell for a blessing of the grapes.
Our community was smaller then. What passed for entertainment was not as slickly packaged as it is today. Everybody in town got involved. Businesses decorated their windows. My Boy Scout troop got to “camp out” in the Plaza Friday and Saturday night to assist our one-man town police patrol to keep an eye on the booths and their contents.
It was a time when the Vintage Festival Ball was an affair that everyone in town attended in costume, and the parade participants were mostly local folks dressed up like historical characters and kids who decorated their bicycles or dressed up their dogs.
There were game booths, food booths and lots of socializing among local townsfolk. It was truly a community party.
I recently found an original program for the 1950 Vintage Festival. In it was a listing of the cast for “The Golden Vine,” a historical pageant staged in front of the mission during the festival.
Among the many local family members and business leaders in the cast were: Ralph Hotz (of Hotz’s Department store) as Padre Junipero Serra, R.R. “Dal” Emparan as Gen. M.G. Vallejo (he was actually Vallejo’s grandson), James McTaggart as Salvadore Vallejo, Sabina McTaggart (daughter of Samuele Sebastiani) as Maria Carillo, Rosalie Clerici as Maria Vallejo, Sylvia Sebastiani as Natillia Vallejo and Sylvia’s sister, Rose Millerick, as Jovita Vallejo. The musical director was Dan Ruggles. Mel Larson was in charge of sound and Allen Martinson in charge of lighting.
Many other well-known local residents filled out the cast. Dave and Don Eraldi were in charge of booth construction. Otto Teller, wine exhibits; Harold Hotz, costumes; Mrs. Dewey Donnell, publicity; Stan Mohr, props; Sol Argento, transportation; Noni Price, catering; Roland Kruger, parade; Newton Dal Pogetto, paid labor; Mrs. Towle Bundschu, children’s concessions; Mrs. Frank Bartholomew, decorations. The leaders and workers of this Vintage Festival were a virtual “Who’s Who” of Sonoma. Their festival was a big deal and an important way for Sonomans to celebrate their community’s rich history.
Today, the Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival survives as a charming anachronism kept alive by a dedicated few. While many out-of-town visitors come to enjoy it, the festival remains a truly small-town event. Fortunately, no serious attempts have been made to compete with the Harvest Fair in Santa Rosa or to enlarge it to the scale of something like the Gilroy Garlic Festival. For those of us who grew up here, it triggers many fond memories. For folks new to the community, it is a way to hear the faint echoes of a time when Sonoma really was a small town. It is a treasure we all should cherish.
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