IN MEMORY OF JOANNE MacDONNELL 1937-2004

You Really Shouldn't Go Home Again Library, courthouse, church...all made way for 'progress'

Your beloved hometown becomes sadly unfamiliar

By JOANNE MacDONNELL
of TheColumnists.com

EDITOR'S NOTE: Though she didn't mention it by name in this column, Joanne was writing about her real hometown, her beloved Santa Rosa, Calif. Many of the buildings she laments were seen in Alfred Hitchcock's favorite of all his films, "Shadow of A Doubt," which he filmed there when Joanne was a child in Santa Rosa.

When Thomas Wolfe wrote "You Can't Go Home Again," he must have had a place like my hometown in mind.

I was born and reared in a small Northern California town that never seemed to change much and, I thought, never would.

Boy, was I wrong.

I have a life-long friend who still lives there and if our conversations were taped, they'd go something like this:

Me: "Oh, no, they didn't!"

I was talking with her about the quaint stone and ivy-covered library that I remembered so fondly from childhood, when she interjected: "Oh, that isn't there anymore."

"What do you mean 'that isn't there anymore?"' I asked

She then told me that the city had torn it down.

Oh.

I was devastated.

I knew that the city had torn down the courthouse that was the centerpiece of the entire town ever since I could remember. It was a beautiful historic building that had been there for years and even had a street circling it.

When I first heard it had been torn down, I cried.

I asked my friend what had replaced it.

"Nothing," she said, very matter-of-factly.

For a moment there, I was afraid she was going to say "a parking lot."

Why is it some cities have no reverence for things past? Or, if they do, they keep moving them around, as if they were playing a giant game of checkers?

I mean, this town was once home to the Robert L. Ripley ("Believe It or Not!") Museum which was downtown right across the street from (sob!)--that wonderful ivy-covered library.

It is still the place where Luther Burbank, the world-renowned horticulturist, sowed his first seeds. Burbank Gardens is priceless, but I'm afraid to ask my friend what they've done with it.

Then there was the Church Built from One Tree, a landmark I remember as being across the street from the California Theater, which held many Saturday-afternoon memories, and is, naturally, no longer there.

According to my friend, the Church Built from One Tree isn't here anymore either.

"They moved it to the park across town," she told me.

Why?

I was afraid to ask.

And the Ripley Museum?

Not there anymore either, she said.

"They put it in the Church Built from One Tree," she informed me, "over in the park."

OK.

I agree with Thomas Wolfe. You can't go home again.

What's more, I don't think I'd want to.

©2000 by Joanne MacDonnell. The illustration is from IMSI's Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.

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