Petaluma’s History Hound Adair Lara

Acclaimed Chronicle columnist re-releases groundbreaking book|

Adair Lara says that her definitive book, “History of Petaluma: A California River Town,” can be partially credited to the ruts in the sidewalk.

“We were living in a house on B Street that was so small we had to edge around the grand piano,” she recalls. “As I pushed my babies around town in a rusty old stroller, the wheels would get stuck in the cobblestones. This forced me to stop and look, really look, at the old buildings - and I began to wonder about the people who used to live and work in them.”

This was 1980, and when Adair went to the local bookstore and library, books about Petaluma were -to use an obvious comparison - “scarce as hen’s teeth.” Her initial idea was to “dash off a newspaper article, perhaps even a pamphlet.”

Then she met Ed Mannion.

Recalls Adair, “I read copies of the “Rear View Mirror” column he wrote for the Argus Courier in the early 60’s, and when I visited his home, it was like being in a museum - filled with artifacts from Petaluma’s past. I could hold and feel tools, farm implements and items from parlor-rooms touched by people who lived decades earlier.”

Ed’s enthusiasm, and his over-stuffed house, had a transformative effect on Adair Lara.

“I came to appreciate that the magic of old Petaluma is due to a combination of changing fortunes, civic pride and exuberant sense of self,” she says. “Buildings still stand because people couldn’t afford to tear them down. Prosperity can be the death of a town, and fortunately, Petaluma became aware of itself as an historic town that needs to be preserved.”

Adair freely admits that she wrote Petaluma’s history with a sense of freedom coming from her belief that no one was going to bother to do it again.

Using a history about Peter the Great as her guide, she sat down at her little Royal typewriter and began what she describes as “arranging facts like pieces of a puzzle to tell the story I wanted to tell.” As she worked, Adair held the view that whatever she wrote would become the future’s vision of how Petaluma used to be. “That’s why I left out the 20th Century,” she says. “Because it was too recent.”

One thing that repeatedly struck Adair as she read old newspaper and magazine articles, was that 19th Century journalism was often shockingly frank, unashamedly representative of the views of the time.

“A story about local Native Americans included the line that ‘the Indians were killed for their own good,’” she recalls. “But most of the articles were so full of bombast they were fun to read. Everyone was influenced by the American spirit of being the biggest and the tallest. Petaluma officially proclaimed itself the World’s Egg Basket and boasted that our hens laid ten-million eggs a year.”

Adair eventually moved to a tall, yellow, 1892 Victorian in San Francisco’s Lower Haight, where she wrote a twice-weekly humor column for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her “Adair Lara” columns earned her numerous accolades including the Best Columnist in California, from the Associated Press. Then Mayor Willie Brown even once declared an Adair Lara Day in San Francisco.

Adair has written ten books, and is currently working on one she calls, “Make Your Memoirs Suck Less.” She has recently re-released her “History of Petaluma: A California River Town,” and will discuss its creation and content at the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum (20 4th Street) from 2-3:30 p.m. on Sunday June 25.

(Contact Gil at gilmansergh@comcast.net)

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