March 31, 1999

Bulls and bears and California banknotes

Linda Mar teacher Nora Chikhale is doing something pretty wonderful. She wants to pass on Pacifica's history to the next generation. She's put a lot of her own time and energy into a soon-to-be published book that explains what life was like for the Sanchezes of San Pedro Valley and Don Francisco Sanchez, the man who owned most of what is now Pacifica and another thousand acres of the coast besides.

Sanchez and his large, hard working family were headquartered at, where else, the Sanchez Adobe in San Pedro Valley.

Chikhale's book, intended for third and fourth graders, takes the children back to a day when Grizzly bears and Spanish cattle roamed the hills and valleys of what became Pacifica. She does her best to show the children of Laguna Salada how those good folk of 150 years ago lived. They were known for their singing and their fiestas. They didn't have TV, or Academy Awards, or CDs, or rock radio stations, but they did enjoy life. They lived in a time of rapid change. The year Sanchez's adobe was completed, a group of immigrants from the United States staged the short-lived Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma. Francisco himself was born a subject of Spain. By 1822 he became a citizen of Mexico. Before his accidental death from a fall at age 57, he had been an American county supervisor. All this without leaving the San Francisco Bay Area where he was born and grew up. Schools are the training ground which pass on the common fund of knowledge, customs and traditions, the matrix, the thread of continuity that holds us together in a common culture. That's why spelling is important. It doesn't matter which way a word is spelled, but it's important we all spell it the same way. It isn't which words we use, but it's important we communicate in a common language. Our children need to learn the history we have in common, so they in turn can pass it on.

Even our myths, like George Washington and the cherry tree, and Santa Claus and his reindeer are important.

Our children need to know what happened before they came on the scene. Life is a passing parade. When I was in the fourth grade, most veterans of World War I were in their forties. The American Legion, which they had founded, was a potent political force in many communities. A few of the last survivors of the Civil War, men in their nineties, still hung on. Today the WWI vets are almost gone. The youngest World War II veterans are in their seventies. Korean Vets are in their retirement years. When today's fourth graders are raising their families, not that many years from now, they'll be able to tell their own children they knew veterans from WWII, that they remember stories of the very last WWI veterans, and, thanks to Nora Chikhale and other dedicated teachers in the Laguna Salada system, they'll also know what Pacifica was like when it was one vast ranch where the hides of the cattle were "California Banknotes" and Grizzlies roamed the hills.

Some recent Reactor columns may be found at Paul Azevedo's new website, http://www.wenet.net/~reactor/