Community Guide 2017
Idyllic Childhood Years by Petra Toriumi My parents, Howard and Irene Martin, were both raised in Montana and came to San Francisco during WWII shortly after marrying. They bought a two-room hunting cabin on three acres of redwoods at the very top of Conifer Road in Woodacre in 1941. They would work on it over the sum- mer weekends and moved in December of that year. The floors were cement and were covered with Navajo rugs from Montana. They later built a corner fireplace; Dad did the outside in cinder blocks, and Mom the inside with flag- stone. I was born in February, 1948. I spent the first eight years of my life on top of Conifer Road. There was one other family on top of Carson Road, the Dorais, with five kids. We all played together and are close to this day, even though everyone is spread afar. The older boy, Mike, used to ride his bike to Drake High School in the early ’50s through the old railroad tunnel.
We had a 170 pound great blue dane named Caesar. Cae- sar had the run of the hills (which was probably the cause of his demise in 1953, strychnine poison). One night my parents had company for dinner, and Caesar came scratching at the door. Dad opened it for him, and he came prancing in proud as pie and dropped a bloody deer head in the middle of the floor in front of the company. During hunting season (and after) lots of hunters came up and shot illegal deer and cut the heads off and left them—a trophy for Caesar. Every Christmas, my mom would bundle us up and Dad and my uncle Jim (who moved from Montana to a cabin on Conifer and Fir in 1951) would hike up in the hills and cut down our Christmas trees. Trucks would come up from Dick- son Ranch for their trees, also. It was very much fun! During the winter, very few people lived up in the hills; they were mostly summer homes and were vacant. I went to Lagunitas School from kindergarten through second grade. My two biggest memories were the Mayday dances that each class did (first grade was a marching dance to “Anchors Away” in sailors’ outfits), and then we all had a partner for dancing around a maypole. I also remember crawling under our desks with our hands over the tops of our heads during bomb drills. It took years for me to get over being terrified of a war.
Cabin 1948 last house on Conifer toward ridge (Photo courtesy of Petra Toriumi)
My father was the Dean of Business Administration at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He drove to Fairfax every day and connected on the Greyhound bus. My mother shopped at Alpine Market, Fairfax, on the cor- ner of Broadway and Bolinas. I always thought that it was rather bohemian of them to move up into the middle of nowhere under the redwoods with hardly anyone around. But it was oh—so wonderful! Dean de la Montanya was our milkman (Lucas Valley Milk), and during the summer, since we were last on his route, he would dump his ice bags out, and we had huge chunks of ice to play with. He also, on many occasions during the winter, would pull my mother’s car out of the mud. Lloyd de la Montanya kept his cattle up on the hill just beyond our house. The road was blocked by a cattle gate (we called it the “bull fence”) that we were forbidden to go beyond because of the bulls he kept up there. Lloyd would drive by our house in his jeep once a week to check on his cattle and would wave to my mother with his left arm, his only arm. He lost his right arm in a hunting acci- dent when he was a kid.
We moved from Woodacre to San Anselmo in 1956. Dad was unhappy with the constant bickering with the School Board, and also the family was growing and two rooms were becoming too small. They had started logging Bates Canyon, and trucks would also go by on their way up to the new Kent Lake Reservoir that was in progress. Those were idyllic childhood years (just touched upon) which I was fortunate enough to give to my three daugh- ters. Right after my husband Gerry and I were married in 1972, we were lucky enough to be able to purchase a home out here in Woodacre and raise our girls. We’ve been here ever since, and I delight in hiking the hills and going by our “forts” in the redwoods where I grew up. Mrs. Guthrie’s Kindergarten Class, 1953 (Photo courtesy of Petra Toriumi)
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