Our alarm rang at 6:30am on Friday July 27, 2018 in the place we had rented from Charles Ballinger near Mill Valley, California. For the first time since our arrival in the Golden State, we didn’t plan on going into San Francisco. Instead, we headed northeast to Sacramento; the state capital of California. We got a later start than usual that morning, mainly because there were only two cities that we had planned on spending time at – Sacramento and Petaluma. My photographer’s wife wanted a relaxing day to see the scenery from behind the wheel of our Mustang. She talked about a visit to Sonoma Raceway; perhaps she could admire a little of Napa Valley; and maybe enjoy a laid-back uneventful day in California. But, Tom had other ideas. There were several Presidential sites in Sacramento that he wanted me at; and Petaluma was the city where most of the movie ‘American Graffiti‘ was filmed. My camera guy wanted to spend the majority of our time in those two places.
We were about a half-hour into the trip when my companions saw the entrance signs for Sonoma Raceway. But on that Friday morning, dozens of vehicles with campers had already arrived at the racetrack for what appeared to be a drag racing weekend. Both Vicki and Tom made the decision to by-pass the racetrack altogether and they continued their journey towards the state capital; although they stopped several times to fuel her Rae Dunn habit. The three of us were very surprised by the temperature change as we headed east. While the thermometer read in the mid-60s when we left Mill Valley; the mercury was hitting the 90s after we had driven just 30 miles towards Sacramento.
At roughly 11:30am, Vicki found a place to park the Mustang about a block from the California State Capitol Building and I was carried in the camera bag to the Capitol grounds for our first Presidential site of the day. On the northeast side of the Capitol, we found a paved walkway that led from the public sidewalk to the eastern entrance of the State House. It was on that walkway, on September 4, 1975, when Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempted to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford. After the President had spent the night at the Senator Hotel located across L Street from the Capitol, Ford was escorted by Secret Service on foot towards the eastern entrance where he was scheduled to meet with Governor Jerry Brown. At 10:02am and roughly 150-feet onto the grounds, Ford had stopped to shake hands and meet onlookers. During that moment, he noticed a “woman in a bright colored dress”. Out of nowhere, Ford saw a hand with a gun appear in between the first row of people. There was a metallic “click” sound and Fromme shouted “It wouldn’t go off”. Fromme, a Charles Manson follower, had a full clip of ammo in her Colt .45 pistol, but she didn’t load the first bullet into the chamber – which likely saved Ford’s life. After all, she was only two feet from the President when the attempt was made. President Ford was quickly whisked towards the Capitol Building by the Secret Service where he kept his scheduled meeting with the Governor; only mentioning the assassination attempt after their talk.
As I stood on or close to the spot where President Ford was greeting people when “Squeaky” tried to shoot him, it was almost as though I could see her standing there with the Colt .45 in her hand as she aimed between his waist and knees. Lynette Fromme resembled a homely version of Little Red Riding Hood – she had the red flowing dress and a matching head cover; but unlike the story book girl, this one had a loaded gun strapped to her thigh. She wasn’t afraid of the Big Bad Wolf!
From the assassination site, I was carried into the State Capitol Building where Tom wanted to photograph me outside of the Governor’s office. After all, that room was Ronald Reagan’s office from January 1967 through January 1975 when he served as California’s 33rd governor. When we made our way through the bowels of the Capitol and to the office of the Governor, I was surprised to see a giant bronze bear standing near the entrance. It turned out that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had purchased the statue while vacationing in Aspen, Colorado and had it placed outside of his office in 2009. During our photo-shoot, Tom placed me onto the back of the bronze bear while the sheriff’s officer stayed alongside of the Governor’s door. At one point, the officer had asked my photographer about me and Tom gave him a brief synopsis of what we do at Presidential sites. He thought our quest was cool; and in one instance he kept tourists away so that we could capture our photos without others in the way.
My photographer and I spent about 30 minutes inside the Capitol Building while Vicki sat in a shaded outdoor lounge area. Because of the heat, she sat there as the two of us walked around to the front of the building for additional exterior photos of the Capitol. The California State Capitol Building was completed in 1874 and its design was based on the United States Capitol; although the dome was only 210-feet high compared to the 288-foot dome in Washington D.C.
In 1975, it took about 15-minutes for “Squeaky” Fromme to make the one-mile walk from her P Street apartment to the State Capitol Building where she waited for President Ford to appear. Just when I had wondered if we would walk or take the Mustang to Fromme’s former digs, I heard my photographer say: “She was 26 years old when she made that walk in 1975. I’m nearly 62 and we’re going to drive; plus, it’s a million degrees in the shade – it’s way too hot to walk.” Once Vicki had parked the Mustang near the Victorian-style house, my photographer carried me to the front of the historic home where I posed for a couple of pictures. Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme had moved into the attic apartment of that house in 1973 with Sandra Good, her friend and longtime member of the Manson family. The two women wanted to be closer to Charles Manson who was incarcerated in Folsom Prison at the time. As I stood in front of the house, I envisioned “Little Red Riding Hood” with a pistol strapped to her thigh as she walked from that house to the State Capitol – never to return home again.
It was roughly 1:00pm when we left the “Squeaky” attic and headed for a Gipper’s mansion that was a shade over one mile to the north. Vicki parked the Mustang a short distance from the thirty-room, three story mansion that has been the home to thirteen governors and their families. Built in 1877, the Reagan’s moved into the historic mansion after Ronald took the oath of office as California’s governor on January 2, 1967. But after just three months of occupancy, Nancy demanded that they move out as she deemed the place was “not safe and more suitable as a museum.” Mrs. Reagan thought the place was a fire-trap. There was a time after the Reagan’s had left the house that it was opened to the public as a museum. In 2015, Governor Jerry Brown and his wife moved back into the mansion during Brown’s fourth term as governor. As I posed for a handful of photos outside of the gated property to the Governor’s Mansion, I had a hard time believing that Nancy Reagan thought the place wasn’t safe.
Following the path of the Reagan’s, we left Nancy’s fire-trap and headed for East Sacramento and the “Fabulous 40s” neighborhood where they had moved in the spring of 1967. After a two-and-a half mile drive, Vicki parked the Mustang across 45th Street from a very nice six bedroom, four bath, two-story home where Governor Reagan and his family lived for the rest of his two terms. When we arrived, I was carried across the street where my photographer saw a woman working in the flower garden of the home. At first Tom thought it was the owner, and perhaps she would give us a quick tour of her historic Reagan home. Instead, the friendly lady mentioned that she worked for the owner and took care of their garden, flowers, bushes, and trees. So much for our tour!
After we visited a few stores and a small sandwich shop in Sacramento, we began our drive westward and back into time. Although my photographer and his wife have never been wine drinkers, they both thought a scenic drive through the backroads of California wine country would be a perfect segue to their day’s final destination – the American Graffiti film locations in Petaluma. The vineyards throughout the rolling hills of Napa Valley were what postcards were designed for; and even though we didn’t stop anywhere, Tom and Vicki were mesmerized by the beauty of the tranquil countryside.
When we finally arrived in Petaluma at 5:30pm, Tom was excited to find the film locations of one of his favorite movies – the 1973 film classic American Graffiti. Not only did that movie feature classic music by some of the legends of early Rock and Roll, such as Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, and Bill Haley and the Comets; it also was the launching pad for talented, but fairly unknown, young stars. Perhaps the biggest name of all was Ronny Howard who played Steve Bolander, a senior who had just graduated from high school. Howard gained national fame in the early 60s for his role as Opie Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show. One year after the release of American Graffiti, Howard landed the lead role as Richie Cunningham in TV’s Happy Days. Other up-and-coming actors in the cruisin’ and rock ‘n’ roll movie were Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, and Suzanne Somers. Even the great Wolfman Jack made an appearance in the film, spinning the hits as only the great Wolfman could do.
As we cruised the streets of Petaluma and saw the film locations for a handful of scenes from the 1973 movie American Graffiti, the early evening atmosphere took my photographer and his wife back to a more innocent time. The George Lucas film was set in the late summer of 1962, which was before Viet Nam; before the JFK assassination; and before the radical counterculture movement that the late 60s were known for. American Graffiti was about the adventures of a handful of older teenagers cruising the streets of Modesto as they listened and danced to rock and roll all throughout one single night. At each location that we visited, Tom tried to match up the scene from the movie with the current cityscape. One of the biggest highlights for the three of us was our stop at the liquor store where Terry “The Toad” Fields tried to buy a bottle of Old Harper to impress the girl he had picked up. Tom also got a kick out of watching Vicki as she drove the Mustang where John Milner and Bob Falfa had drag-raced on Paradise Road.
Before we cruised the nighttime main drag of Petaluma, we had dinner at Pinky’s Pizza Parlor. That pizza place was not shown in the movie, but it was the site of a prank phone call made by disc jockey Wolfman Jack during his late-night radio show. As nostalgic as Pinky’s was, their food was terrible – at least to the taste buds of my photographer. I heard him tell his wife that it was the worst pizza he’s ever eaten, and the garlic bread was even worse. When we choked down the rest of our food and then killed the rancid taste with a cold beverage, we walked out of Pinky’s and were treated to an unexpected celestial spectacle. A reddish-orange full moon had risen directly over Petaluma Boulevard as we looked east from Pinky’s. It turned out that roughly eight hours earlier, over Africa, there was a total eclipse of the moon; but that lunar eclipse was not visible in the United States.
It was around 9:30pm when we began to cruise the downtown “strip” of Petaluma. As we made several runs up and down Petaluma Boulevard from Washington Street past the Mystic Theater and back again, it was as though we were in the movie – minus the classic late 50s and early 60s cars. It was a shame that we couldn’t hear Wolfman Jack spinning Buddy Holly songs over the radio waves. I laughed to myself when we were stopped at the red traffic light in front of the Old Shanghai building. I popped my head out of the camera case in the back seat and looked out of the window – I had hoped to see Suzanne Somers in the right-hand turn lane as she mouthed the words “I love you” to me from her white ’56 T-bird.
When I woke up and returned to reality, the three of us were headed back towards our apartment near Mill Valley – a 28-mile journey that was only supposed to take a half-hour. But less than five miles out of downtown Petaluma, we ran into a police blockade that blocked the entire three lanes of California Highway 101. Although we were tired from a long day of sightseeing, the bright lights of the blockade and the thoughts of going to prison woke all of us up in a hurry. We didn’t know if the cops were searching for illegal immigrants; or whether they were looking for escaped criminals. For me, I was hoping I wouldn’t see a rubber glove on anyone’s right hand. Once we made it to the actual checkpoint, we discovered that the police were checking driver’s licenses and looking for drivers under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. After the officer handed the license back to Vicki, I heard her say to the cop: “It’s a good thing I only drank a Diet Coke at the pizza place tonight. Usually I have a beer or two with my pizza, but not tonight – it was only Diet Coke because I had to drive at night.”
After we had dodged the bullet at the Petaluma Police DUI checkpoint, we arrived at the apartment around 11:00pm. Once I was placed onto the table for the night, my thoughts were centered on cruising the strip all night long in John Milner’s yellow hot rod. That thought lasted about a minute as my thoughts quickly changed to cruising the strip all night long with the blonde in the T-bird. And in the words of Curt Henderson: “I’ve just seen a vision! She was a goddess. This was the most perfect, dazzling creature I’ve ever seen.”
