Interviewee: Christina Kreiden

Interviewers: Reagan Dunnington, Piper Pike

May 8th, 2024

Reagan Dunnington: This is Reagan Dunnington and Piper Pike. We are pleased to welcome Christina Kreiden. Can you please tell us about where you were born, and when you first came to the Saint Helena area?

Christina Krieden: Sure, I was born in San Francisco, raised in Marin county, Mill Valley. I came to Saint Helena when I started at the Saint Helena Library in 1989.

RD: Alright, and what were some of your earliest memories just visiting either Saint Helena or the Napa Valley in general?

CK: As a kid, I came up to Calistoga quite a bit. My dad bought a small little cottage in Calistoga for his parents, and they passed away when I was quite young. But we would come up on the weekends and spend time there. A number of relatives passed through that house, so I can remember Calistoga before there was tourists. I can remember coming in the middle of the week, in the wintertime, and there being absolutely no cars on Main Street, or just one or two, which never happens anymore.

RD: Yeah, the tourism. Were there any specific stores or places that you visited in Calistoga?

CK: I remember when there was a movie theater in Calistoga. So that's been long gone. I just remember going there as a kid. And before the current public pool, there was another pool called the Roman Pool, that was taken over by the hotel on Washington Street, and I just remember, as a kid, playing there and going swimming.

RD: Okay. And then now, we're switching to family. Do you know why you were named what you were? Was there a specific story to your name?

CK: No. My mom, when I asked her how she picked the name Christina, she just said that’s what she always wanted to name a girl—wich is also the same thing she said about my brother.

RD: Yeah, sometimes there doesn't need to be a story. Where did your family originate from?

CK: My father is from Ukraine, he came to the United States with his family in 1950.

They left Ukraine in the late 1930s. They lived in Poland before they went to Austria, and they were in a refugee camp until they came to the United States. They started in New York, and then they went to Cleveland, and then they came to San Francisco. And it was San Francisco, where my dad met my mom. She came to visit her sister, who was living in San Francisco, and she was going to stay a year. She was in her mid-twenties, and they met in San Francisco, and she never went back. [chuckles]

RD: Do you know any driving reasons for why your family left Ukraine?

CK: Yes, in the 1930s there was a famine, and so when the war started, my dad and his family decided to move west.

I remember once asking him, or what he said was, Ukraine under Stalin and communism, it was bad for his family, and so they had the opportunity to move west so they did. I remember he said he was in Poland, and the Germans were retreating, and the Russians were coming, and they decided that Germany was a better direction to go, so that's where they went.

RD: Alright, and you said you mentioned had a brother, but who else is in your immediate family, and can you tell us a little bit about them?

CK: I just had my brother. He passed away about five years ago. Otherwise it was just my dad, my mom. My dad had originally six siblings. He was one of six. He lost his brother in the war, and also his sister. But he came to this country with his older sister, my Aunt Lucy, my Aunt Lamilla, and two younger brothers, so I grew up knowing family. My mom just had her sister, Frida, here and the rest of her family was still in Germany.

RD: Alright, and what were the names of your mother, father, and brother?

CK: My brother's name was Andreas, my mom was Hannelore, and my father’s name was Wsewolod. [chuckles]

RD: Might need to get those written down. [chuckles]

CK: Yeah, that's one you don't hear too often--common in Ukraine but not here. That's why he went by the nickname Steve!

CK: And actually, even my cousins called him Steve, and there's a story about that one because I once asked him, “How did you get the nickname Steve?” Because Steve is not close to Wsewolod. And he said when he was in New York, and he was an apprentice as a metal man, he was apprenticing under a guy named Steve. And so everybody at that work called [him] Big Steve and my dad became Little Steve. And when he started a new job, the employer looked at his name, “So what did they call you at your old job?” and he said, “Well they call me Steve,” and so it stuck with him for the rest of his life.

CK: It was always good when I was growing up and people would call, telemarketers and they would ask, and they would try to say his name over the phone, and I was like “You don't know my dad, OK”

RD: Hang up.

CK: Yeah.

RD: Did your parents or grandparents speak a foreign language, and did they speak it around you growing up?

CK: My dad spoke Russian and Ukrainian, I never learned either.

He spoke that with his brothers and sister. My mom is from Germany, so of course she spoke German. She tried to teach me and my brother, but because my dad didn't speak it, it did not go well. She did, when were kids, take us to Germany, and what was funny is, all my cousins were learning English, so they were practicing their English on me and my brother, so we would kind of understand what people were asking us, and by the end of the summer we could answer pretty good, but we were always answering in English.

RD: Alright, and did your family have any traditions? Or still have any traditions? Like around the holidays.

CK: Yeah, we did Christmas, Thanksgiving. My dad was big on celebrating Orthodox Easter and that's when he would invite all my cousins and relatives over. So we would do Orthodox Easter, and some years it's the same as the “regular” Easter and sometimes its six weeks out-

And sometimes it's two weeks out, so it's a weird holiday. And another thing that my mom and I still held onto is, their Christmas is actually January 7th. So we would always try to keep our Christmas trees up until after January 7th. And my dad would tell a story about going to the Christmas tree lot on Christmas Eve to get a really cheap Christmas tree.

RD: I mean I always keep my Christmas trees like two months later, you know?

CK: Yeah. Well, my mom and I have been good about, since then, usually beginning of December we will.

RD: Yeah. And for Orthodox Easter, did you guys- how did you celebrate it? Like was it just family coming over? Did you have a dinner, breakfast?

CK: My dad would make paskha. It's the Easter bread.

That was always his thing and he would usually make two or three batches the first batch and then there would be another batch. And in later years, he got more health conscious, cause there's a lot of butter in that. He would try different recipes, so he was- we would play with that, so we’d wind up having bread for like two months.

Both of my uncles would come. My aunt would come. My Uncle Fred had four boys. My Uncle Nick had four girls, so at times there would be fourteen-fifteen people, and there would be family friends that would come over too.

RD: Yeah, that sounds really fun.

CK: Yeah.

RD: Did you and your family travel at all? As a kid? And if so, where did you guys go?

CK: When my aunt moved to Idaho in the mid ‘80s, we would go to Idaho. I even spent a few summers there for two or three weeks when I was still in school. And then, vacations were usually Clear Lake or Lake Berryessa, and we would do a week there. My dad wasn't really big into traveling to foreign countries or whatever, but we did do some road trips.

RD: When you were at Lake Berryessa, did you guys camp?

We kind of had the whole campground to ourselves

CK: We would camp. And what's funny is that my dad didn't like to do the weekends, so we would stay Monday through Friday, and there were a few times when I was really small, that we were like the only tent in the campground. And we had a boat so we’d tie the boat up to the dock, you know, I think you were supposed to pay extra or something for that, so my dad would tie it up in the deck.

CK: And we would go boating and water skiing, so those were kind of the trips. And now and then, we would go to Lake Tahoe or Truckee, and do some skiing on ski week.

RD: Do you remember the Zodiac Killer when you were younger?

RD: I just heard Lake Berryessa, Zodiac Killer!

RD: What did your parents do as a job?

CK: My dad worked for Greyhound, for about thirty seven years. He was a metal man, so he would take care of the body of the bus, and they also cleaned the buses. At one point, Greyhound was restoring some of their old buses, so my dad actually restored a bus from 1920, so that was kind of cool.

My mom worked in various grocery stores

When I would call sometimes and ask for her, and I would call her by her full name Hannelore, they’d go, “Who?” and I would say, “Honey the cheese lady,” and they would know who she was [chuckles]. So she usually worked in delis and cheese. She was a stay-at-home mom for a while, but she usually worked in a deli.

RD: You said your dad fixed up cars, did any cars that he fixed up stay in your family?

CK: Well he did buses. He didn't have a car.

RD: Oh, buses-

CK: Yeah. It was the Greyhound buses that he worked on. He did have a car for a number of years.

RD: Yeah, it's helpful to have people that can do that stuff.

CK: He and his brothers actually built a wooden boat in their garage in San Francisco.

RD: Did they ever take it out on the lake?

CK: Oh yeah. There are pictures of my dad in his swim trunks, his brothers and my aunt and the women in bathing suits. My Grandmother would be in a dress, literally a dress. My Grandfather would be in slacks and a shirt.

RD: We're going to switch to childhood, which we’ve kind of talked about but, in our questionnaire, you said that “Saint Helena has definitely gotten busier over the years,” can you expand on how you think Saint Helena has changed? Especially from your childhood, visiting Calistoga and seeing how it is around now?

CK: I think it's a lot busier. You know there's always a lot of people.

And tourism. There's less- like when I was first starting at the library, there was a Ben Franklin, where you could go for crafts and other small things and there's not, I don't think really a store like that anymore. There's a lot more wine tasting rooms around, more local serving businesses, you wind up driving out of town to go do your shopping.

RD: Was there a distinct moment where you kind of realized that or was it just gradual, over the years?

CK: I think it was gradual. I honestly don't remember. Looking back it's like, boy, you know, there were no cars on main street-

CK: That's the one thing that kind of stuck with me, is just remembering, coming visiting on the weekend and, you know, there were no cars and just thinking- [unintelligible] - you know it's the middle of Christmas- and you know, there's no parking in town.

RD: You moved to Calistoga later on in your life, right?

CK: Yeah, I came here full time in 1989, I had just graduated high school.

RD: And being from Mill Valley, why did you want to come to Calistoga? Was it the environment? Or was it your grandparents having a house?

CK: I think that was it. I was eighteen, I had graduated high school. I don't know if I really exactly knew what I wanted to do. I went to Santa Rosa Junior College. And so that was- instead of going straight into a four year school, I went to Santa Rosa Junior College, and Calistoga was close by, and it was kind of- nobody was living in the house at the moment, and so it kind of gave me space, and enough opportunity to my parents to keep an eye on me, too.

RD: Yeah, yeah-

RD: You said in our questionnaire that you weren't a Calistoga native, as we just discussed, but have you noticed any differences in the way of living here, compared to places such as Mill Valley? Like is it just- because it's more agriculture based here, have you noticed anything different?

CK: I think- I guess you could say it's more rural. Here you can walk, like Calistoga and Saint Helena, you can walk everywhere. At the library, I would drop my car off and I could walk, you know, downtown to get lunch or if you had some other errand to do, you could usually walk it, which was really nice. In Marin, I think, at least where my parents were living, you had to drive everywhere to get somewhere, and I think sometimes, that it's even, maybe, more relaxed here too, than it is there.

RD: Do you think agriculture plays a significant role in people's way of life in the Napa Valley? Have you noticed- have you ever been involved in the wine industry, or have you talked to people, you know?

CK: I know it's a big part here, and at the library, we had people, you know, migrant workers who would use the library, our computers. But other than that, I didn't have that much to do with it.

RD: Alright. And as a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

CK: I originally wanted to be a teacher. I think that comes from wanting to help people and educate, and it goes into librarianship. But, when I was in high school, I changed my mind, and decided, no I didn't really want to be a teacher after all.

RD: And, did you know what subject you wanted to teach, if you were going to be a teacher? Or was it just broad?

CK: I had thought, maybe, younger kids or English. I was an English major.

RD: Tell us about your education in high school and college. Maybe describe your high school?

CK: Ok. I went to Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley.

RD: Was it super divided? Because in high school now, you can see divisions, especially among different groups of people. Would you say grades were kind of together?

CK: It was cliquey in high school. I don't think that has changed much anywhere. And, we had the kids that did drugs in the corner. They had a spot in the parking lot--so yeah, I think there's still cliques. Then I went to Santa Rosa Junior College and after that I went to San Jose State. I graduated from there with a Masters degree in English in 1994. I had thought I was basically done with school, I was tired [chuckles] of school. But, I was working at the library and I got encouraged- San Jose was offering- or sorry, I graduated from Sonoma State with an English major, I think I said that. In San Jose I did my Master of Library Sciences. And, the state, at that point, was requiring schools to have librarians on staff, so the program opened up and they were offering extension classes through Santa Rosa. I got encouraged by people at the library, “You should apply,” and I thought, “Should I apply?”-

CK: I made myself a deal. If I didn't get into the program, I was going to buy myself a new car. I got in the program!-

Piper Pike: That's a pretty good deal.

CK: I got in the program! and at that point they were just starting to do distance education, so you’d have the old TV, and they would do the video, but now, San Jose's program is totally online. I was just at the time where they were kind of transitioning to that.

RD: Yeah. And growing up in school, did you have any influential teachers? Like being a teacher I think that- wanting to be a teacher- I think you would have to really have a teacher that, maybe influenced you or you admired-

CK: I had a few. I had a really great teacher that I enjoyed in middle school, Mrs. Anderson-

RD: What subject did she teach?

CK: She actually taught English. And I had a science teacher when I was in high school.

RD: Alright. And can you describe your Calistoga house for us? Did you have your own room? Just kind of like the layout.

CK: No, Calistoga was a little cottage. Probably about the size of this classroom, if not, a little smaller. It was a one bedroom, little cottage. No foundation. Actually, it was one room and, at some point, somebody had tacked on the bathroom and the kitchen. And the kitchen actually had the siding from the house on it. So it was built in the 1920s. It's not there anymore. They tore it down, and my mom now lives there in a new house, because there was no foundation, so it was pretty much falling apart by the time we were doing that. If you sat on the toilet you could rock. But it was a cute house from the outside, and you know, family members going through. There was a huge 6-foot tub with the claw feet.

CK: People get older. But, at that point, it was perfect.

RD: Where would you sleep when you visited them as a kid? Or when you later moved on there?

CK: Well, when we were there as a kid, my parents had the bedroom and there were two couches in the living room, which was a pretty good size. So either one couch got pulled over when we were really small, and we would share it, or each person had a couch.

RD: Alright, and have you noticed as tourism has increased, do you think the community in Calistoga has been more divided? Do you think it was closer in the past than it is now? Or do you think it's been the same?

CK: At this point, I think Calistoga, and I think Saint Helena kind of has the same thing, Saint Helena might have it a bit more, is that there's people who are against tourists. Keeping it the old way. I think Calistoga is a little more open, and has been. But, then, I think, part of that is because Calistoga had Doctor Wilkinsons, and it had a lot more hotels going further back than Saint Helena did.

RD: Alright, and growing up, what did you spend most of your time doing outside of school? Did you have any specific hobbies or stuff you were interested in?

CK: I loved reading. I was a bookworm, always. I was probably the small kid in the corner that, you know, didn't say much in class.

RD: Do you know what was your favorite childhood book?

CK: I think I read most of the Nancy Drews and the Hardy Boys-

RD: My mom loved those.

CK: Those were my favorite ones. And we didn't live near a library in Mill Valley, where we lived, but there was a bookstore. My parents lived, kind of outside of Mill Valley, in Strawberry. And, there was a shopping center down below, so I could go down to the shopping center. I’d go with my allowance and buy a book, so that- [chuckles]- but, in the summertime I loved swimming, and you know, we did biking too.

RD: Who do you think is the most impactful person you looked up to growing up? Was it someone in your family? Was it, maybe someone at school?

CK: Growing up… I loved spending time with my Aunt Lamilla. She always had time for me and loved spending time, so we would do crafty things with her. My mom was an important influence too. Looking back I think my dad influenced me a lot more than I had thought when I was a kid, because he was my dad and, you know, but I think, looking back, a lot of who I am, is because of who he was.

RD: When did you first start working at the library? And what was your position? It could be, I guess any library, but I think specifically, we want to hear more about the Saint Helena Library.

CK: Well, I spent my whole career at the St. Helena Library. I was there for thirty four years. I had graduated high school, moved to Calistoga, and a family friend said, “By the way, they have an open position at the library for shelver.'' So, I applied for that job. I had already been a TA at the library at my high school, and that had gotten me a job, working in Corte Madera, as a person who shelves books there. I applied for the job, and they put me to work the same day I got there-

CK: And then it went from there. And about a year later, I was asked if I wanted to take on other duties, which I did, and it kind of morphed into other things. Well, I started as a shelver, and then I went onto what they called a “library aid,’ and then a library associate, and then, when I retired I was the library director. And I was a librarian in there too, after I got my degree-

RD: Yeah. What was it like being co-worker to librarian director, boss, kind of life? Was it different? Do you think your relationships kind of changed with people?

CK: It did. When I was- before that, I actually kind of jumped over my supervisor, because the library director before me had gotten fired- but I had a really good crew at the library, and I had worked well with them for a number of years, there isn't a turnaround there, that you get sometimes in other jobs. But, yeah. It did make it different, because all of the sudden, I was working with City Hall. So the library can be considered one little world and then there's the rest of city government.

RD: Alright. And do you remember what types of books people chose to read? Like any particular author? Or something that was popular at any time? Like recently, when you first left, or maybe when you first started working there?

CK: Well, when I first started working there, they were just getting in VHS tapes and before DVD-

CK: So, Stephen King, you know, was really popular, then he wasn't so much as popular. Things are always changing and rearranging, but yeah. Recently there was- or for about a year and a half, the bestseller was Where the Crawdads Sing-

CK: And James Patterson always seems to have a book on the bestsellers list. I think he comes out with one with his name on the cover at least twice a month.

RD: Yeah. Did you ever think of the Stephen King books and- would you say that you like those? What would you think about the most popular option? Would you agree? Would you understand why they were popular? Or would you prefer something else? What was your preferred genre, kind of?

CK: You know, for myself, it was kind of just what mood I was in. I loved nonfiction. Right now, I'm going through mysteries, you know. I love fiction, I don't think I ever judged anybody for what they were reading. Everyone has their own taste. There were some, I would wonder, “Why is that on the bestseller list,” you know?-

CK: But I think, you know, that's kind of what's true for most of those books, and other things.

RD: Yeah. Did you ever meet any authors as you were a librarian director?

CK: Quite a few, yeah. There was the person who did, Three Cups of Tea. That was- he had gave a really interesting interview at a library conference I went to. His last name was Mortenson. And it was a really big book at that point.

RD: Yeah. How do you think the library sphere has changed in the past two decades? Would you say it’s lost some of its importance with the digital age?

CK: That's something that librarians struggle with, but I think that there's still a need for libraries. I mean, I was just thinking as I was driving here, “Boy, you know, if you ask me a question like that.” When I started at libraries, they were just getting public computers, so I can remember when the library got their first public computer for staff to come- or, for the public to come.

And I can remember that we were just getting our online catalogs

So that everybody could do it themselves, instead of just staff looking for things. I think there's still a need for libraries. In the digital age, there's people, you know- what I should say is that, when I started in the library field, they wondered if, you know, “If books are going away, you know, what are you going to do when that's done?” but there's still books around. So I think there will always be a need for books, and a library. It just, you know, may not always be that stuff, it might be more the information, if somebody has a question, a medical thing-

RD: Do you think that online books, like audible-would you say those types of things are good or bad? Do you think it's more effective reading the book? Or, honestly, reading it online-

CK: To be honest, for a while there, I didn't have much time to read books, so I was doing a lot more listening, and I could do it in the car, or I would take a walk somewhere. I would have my headphones on and I could listen to a book that way. I think it's great for people, and any way you get information is good.

RD: Yeah. And this one is like- if you can't recall anything off the top of your head it's fine, but, what is the craziest situation that you witnessed in the library while working? Is there anything?

CK: LeLet’s see, I dealt with snakes. Frogs . . .  

There was one time, I was plunging a toilet, a men's room toilet. You know, there was a snake in our courtyard once, so on a Saturday, there were two of us that were snake hunters with a bat net. The snake did eventually go in its hole, but, yeah-

RD: Was there like bad people, maybe, you know?

CK: At certain times, we had one gentleman who was going through mental health issues, so the police had to be called-

CK: Yeah. Saint Helena, I will say, other libraries, I'd hear horror stories about needing security guards. Saint Helena, the problem, people were known by the police department. So, you know, you thought you could go to them. And you see them in the police log… [unintelligible]

RD: Did the crowd of people attending the library change? Like maybe the age groups? Do you think- now, would you say it's more older people? Or younger people?

CK: There are fewer families in St. Helena now, so in the past, there were more kids coming to the library. But, I think now, we get grandparents bringing their grandkids, and their parents coming to visit their parents, who are still here, in town, so you see another generation coming-

RD: And, in the library, how are the books organized? Did you ever organize the books? Or how did it work?

CK: We used the Dewey decimal system- CK: It's a library classification. I've pretty much, I think in my career, touched every book in the library. At one point, when we got ourselves check machines, we used to put the barcodes that you would read to scan the items on the inside, and for the self check machine, they had to be on the cover, so that was a project that there were two of us doing. We rebarcoded everything in the library so it would be on the top.

RD: Ok. and is there any book that you think you could read over and over again?

CK: There's a few. I mean, one of them I've always enjoyed is Jane Austin. I think reading classics is good, just because I get to see the past.

CK: Yeah. But there's also authors writing now who have a good window on the past too, so that's kind of fun. I mean there's so many.

CK: Yeah. I admit I like the conflict ones. I think I sometimes go towards British more. Class conflict there.

RD: Did you learn any lessons from being a librarian? Like, maybe, interacting with other people?

CK: Customer service. Patience. Understanding. Kind of knowing to ask questions and to not make assumptions.

RD: Did you always dream of being a librarian? Like after you decided you didn't want to be a teacher, was it like “Oh, I'd rather be a librarian.”

CK: I always enjoyed the library. I think I was talking to my mom once, and I said “I don't know what I want to do.” And she said, “Well you like the library, what's wrong with being a

 

librarian?” And it kind of dawned on me, “I couldn't do that.” So, I looked at it, I think more, after that, when I was still in high school and thought, “Yeah, maybe I would do that.” And it gave me a little bit of time, going to junior college, to think about it, and jumping into that. And then it's a Masters program, so I would have needed to get the bachelor's degree, anyways.

RD: Thinking back on it, are you happy that you were at the Saint Helena Library? Was there any other library that you would have liked to, maybe work at? Or visit, and just see how they did it?

CK: I visited other libraries and saw, but I always loved Saint Helena. One of the things that was always great about Saint Helena, is because it is a small library, you got to do more things. You weren't pigeonholed and only able to do one thing. So, I got to do technical services in the back, which you got to see all the new books, and order the new books. But, I also got to help people at the desk, and answer questions. So, I wasn't always doing one thing. Every day was different, and Saint Helena has a really supportive community at the library, and I worked with a great group of people.

RD: Was there any specific device or invention, but it didn't have to be invented in your time, that really helped you with your library work? Like maybe- do you think computers benefited?

CK: It definitely made it easier. They were just phasing out the card catalog, and those cards always had to be moved. There weren't advantages to them, but you always had to have, if you were doing nonfiction, you needed to know what the subject was. So, an example in library school was always, they didn't use pigs. If a kid asked for pigs, you needed to know that the word used in the catalog was swine. But with computers, you can do, what they call a keyword search, and you can throw any word in there, and that will tell you. You will get some kind of results, and then, there was always, at the bottom of the record, the authorized headings, and you could see, “Oh there's swine,” and take you there. But with a computer, you could throw out pigs and you'd get an answer right away.

RD: Living in the Napa Valley, and working in a public place, would you say that learning another language is important, or did you, personally pick up on some Spanish, or maybe another language that, maybe, helps you a little through your work?

CK: I wish I knew more Spanish. I think in this valley especially, Spanish is really important.

RD: Yeah. And is there one- it doesn't have to be one, but a significant memory or a major news event, whether it is political or a natural disaster, any of that sphere, and can you describe it for us?

CK: I remember, what popped into my head was 9/11. I think that's one that a whole generation of people remembers.

CK: Just hearing on the news, a plane ran into the towers, and in the back of my mind, thinking, “How do you do that?”

RD: Yeah. Do you remember watching it at school? Or where were you?

CK: I was working at the library at the point. So, I remember hearing about it on the radio on the news, and turning on the TV and seeing it. And, the other one I remember is, when we had the earthquake in 2016?

CK: No, well, there was one earlier. I think it was in the early 1990s [1989 Loma Prieta earthquake]. Being at the library, and they still had the globes from the ceiling, and their going back and forth. Nothing fell but I just remember-

CK: I was at the library when that happened and after that, you know, calling to make sure, my parents, who were in Marin, were okay and, you know, that everything was ok, and turning on the TV and seeing the Bay Bridge, that was down and other things-

RD: Oh yeah, I've heard about that. Do you remember what time of day it was?

RD: At the time were there a lot of people- it wasn't just the workers in there, right?

CK: No, no. There were other people in the library at that point too, and staff all checking in with everyone and, you know, “Did you feel that?”

RD: What did you guys do? Did you just duck and cover, you know, like at school, we go under our desks.

CK: Yeah, sometimes I think we weren't always the best prepared for disasters.

CK: There was one time that we got a bomb scare at the library. Somebody called the front desk and said there's a bomb in the library. We weren’t sure who it was. We had a guess that we had some problems with some kids in high school, or something, and they called in the threat.

The person at the front desk took the call and went, “Okay, we’ve just had a bomb threat.” and all of us are going, “Oh, yeah.” So, the director did call the police and heard, “You have to get out of the building.” and we all left and were like, “Can we go back for our purses?”

CK: They didn't find anything, but it was just one of those things and, you know, there was a little blurb, in the Saint Helena Star that there was a bomb threat.

RD: Do you remember anything about fires? Do you think,

CK: I can remember as a kid, hearing and seeing the smoke coming from fires in Lake County, but there wasn’t really anything in Calistoga or in this area. And then, I guess in the last five years, there was the Tubbs Fire and the LNU fires, and everything else.

I felt kind of more involved in that, because I was at the library at that point, and people were asking us information. I do remember, once talking to my dad, and his parents actually were in Calistoga, and the only time they were ever evacuated, was the fire that they had, that was the big one that they had at that point.

RD: Yeah. Well alright. It was really nice to have you, thank you Chris.

CK: I hope I could help you, and give you some good information.

RD: Thank you.