Willows 1947-66

Hot summer days, long dusty roads and a passing pickup truck were the familiar scene in the country side surrounding Willows.    It was usually a farmer going to town to buy parts for a broken down piece of farm equipment or more fuel for the tractor and probably a cold beer too.    Summers here were hot and usually in the triple digits by afternoon.   The foot hills west of town were brown and susceptible to wild fires.   In the summer of 1960, with the north wind blowing a power line failure ignited a range fire burning up livestock, miles of fences and ranch buildings in the hills all the way to the south county line.  As kids we either stayed in the air conditioned house, outside under the sprinklers or at the community pool during the summer.   It was so hot the flies didn’t even fly during the day.  At night when it cooled down into the 90’s the bugs were out in full force.  The only creatures that gained weight were the spiders, some as big as our hand.   My mother was not fond of living here and would say, “the next stop after Willows is Hell”.    After leaving the University of California at Davis in 1947, my dad took a job in Willows with the Production Credit Association, a farm loan company.    There was just the three of us then, including myself at the age of three.  All my other five siblings were born in Willows.   We originally lived in a small two bedroom house on Villa Street, just on the west side of town.    With a growing family dad built a large adobe house on 10 acres out of town in 1952, along County Road H.  Over time dad became a field representative for the California Rice Grower’s Cooperative and eventually got into rice farming himself.  During my teenage years my summers were spent working for my dad and another farmer, when my dad did not have enough for me to do.  The work consisted of irrigating crops, operating farm equipment, and maintaining it.    Much of what I learned was by the trial and error method. 

By late fall the rain would arrive and for the rice farmers who had not harvested all their crop they were in for a muddy ordeal whenever the weather permitted them to return to their fields.   Soon thereafter the ducks and geese would arrive from the North Country, darkening the skies as they settled on the unharvested rice fields of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge purposely planted to keep them from eating the farmers’ rice.   When duck season opened the hunters would gather along the railroad tracts adjacent to the refuge or in nearby fields to shot their limit as the birds would leave the Refuge.  It sounded like a war zone at times and would continue into the winter.  My dad had an equipment shop and 150 acres of rice just northwest of the refuge.  He had constructed a couple of blinds made out of redwood lumber and placed them in some levies where hunters could conceal themselves while hunting.   Every year we would look forward to the arrival of Great Uncle Dan from San Francisco and going hunting with him.  There were more ducks and geese in our home freezer than I care to remember. 

Winters were wet and foggy.  The Sacramento Valley was famous for the Tule fog, so dense at times the geese would land in the streets of Willows unable to navigate the skies.   Highway 99, a two lane highway was known as Blood Alley for all the head on collisions during this time and even when the weather was clear.  People drove like there was no tomorrow.     

In the spring time the hills were green, farmers were plowing their fields in preparation for planting and the weather was pleasant with occasional showers.   A few of us kids from grammar school would ride our bikes six miles out to the hills and fish in Willow Creek on a sheep ranch, where the rancher caught us trespassing as he spotted our camp fire used to cook the fish.    He let us stay, but told us to ask for permission next time at his house down the highway.  About five miles east of town were the gravel pits, where the county road department had extracted gravel for paving roads leaving many large pits that filled with water over time.   Some of the pits were used as the county dump where we would make the monthly garbage run.   Everything you could imagine was thrown in there and burned.   Some of the gravel pit ponds were a popular fishing hole for us kids.    

The business section of Willows, along Highway 99, consisted of auto dealerships, farm equipment companies, part stores, and fuel and fertilizer distributers.   Willows had a Sears, J.C. Penny’s and a Southern Pacific passenger train depot, which all disappeared by the late 1950’s.    The town had a couple of grocery stores, schools, a movie theater, bowling alley and its fair share of drinking establishments.  One that remains is a stand up bar that was called “Rabbitt’s” where people could drive up, park their vehicle, order a beer or soda and drink at a standup bar.   As a kid working with my dad I can remember him stopping there for a beer and buying me a soda.  In all my travels since I have never seen anything like it.   It has relocated off Highway 99 and is now called “The Last Stand Bar and Grill”. 

In 1966 Uncle Sam drafted me into the Army.  A few years later Interstate 5 was constructed west of town and the businesses along old Highway 99 faded away as motels, gas stations, fast food joints and restaurants sprang up west of town to serve the Interstate traffic.   The freeway is less than a quarter of a mile west of our old adobe house.  While I was in the service my dad got out of the farming business due to financial problems, sold the 10 acres with the house and moved to Stockton.    After the Army I could have returned to Willows and worked for a friend of my dad who was a rice farmer, but my interest was in forestry.   Looking back it was a good decision not to return to Willows.   

Today the adobe house is still there, surrounded by a housing subdivision on what is now called Humboldt Avenue.  All you can see of the place from the freeway is all the green trees around the house, just like in the early days when pioneers on horses could see the willow trees adjacent to a pond that was an oasis in the arid valley plains that is now called Willows.