Sutter Creek: 21 Songs for Tenor and Piano (2007).
As children we would count the days until our next visit to Sutter Creek and then, once there, would try our hardest not to think about when we would have to leave. Not that our own home was a terrible place you understand, but any place called “home” is naturally “every-day” and “business as usual” to a kid. But the prospect of going to our “home away from home” at Grandma and Grandpa’s was a thrilling idea; it meant that school was not in session, that a mysterious house built by an equally mysterious Grandfather lay waiting to be explored, and that television and “junk cereal” were not off-limits like they were in our everyday lives.
Bob and Mabel Fry, our grandparents, were involved with every facet of the town’s operations, from assisting with the congregational worship at the Methodist Church, to serving in the local Masonic Lodge, to helping with the Amador County Fair (Grandpa’s animated human figures belied his creative genius; when not displayed in the fair, their heads were stored just far enough back in the basement to give that place an aura of thrill mixed with terror). At least, in our naive minds, the town belonged to the Fry family: the clerk behind the counter at the drugstore knew and revered Bob and Mabel Fry; the best parties in town were held at the Fry house; any Fry grandchildren caught trespassing in a neighbor’s yard would be instantly absolved of punishment and guilt at the mere mention of their prominent family correlation.
It was John Sutter who in 1846 laid claim to this creek-side area to tap its lumber resources. However, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 quickly altered these humble aspirations, and Sutter Creek, along with a host of other Gold Rush towns, was born. Much mining took place just on the outskirts of town (the Emerson Mine, or “Wildman,” is just in back of the Sutter Creek Grammar School). In addition, prospectors in the nearby mountains treated the town as a base camp from which to stage their operations. Mining ran strong in the town’s blood until 1942 when local operations were shut down. The evidence of their activity is prevalent throughout Gold Country; it is not uncommon to come across abandoned mining equipment, caved in mine shafts, ore carts, strip mining water canons, makeshift jails, sluices dug into the sides of mountains, and rock-piles raised by miners or their hired hands, so hungry to strike it rich that they would scour to the very bedrock of any river, creek, or stream.
For us, the experience of Sutter Creek always began with a two-hour drive, an eternity for a young boy or girl, but still short enough to leave us awake to appreciate the gradual phase-shift from busy commercial freeways to country highways to the small historic towns of California’s “Mother Lode.” The moment of greatest anticipation would come when we would finally find ourselves entering the Sierra foothills, and then turning left to make our descent into the small valley containing the “Jewel of the Mother Lode,” the town of Sutter Creek. The first order of business would be to crane our necks to see the sign that still greets tourists to this day:
You knew your intelligence surpassed that of your brothers and sisters if you could read the entire sign aloud as the family car drove past it; I could never read more than half of it… Just beyond the sign, the ages-old Methodist Church with its white paneled sides, green shutters, and tall steeple (added to the structure in 1976 after an intense lobbying effort by Bob Fry) greeted you. Alongside of the church, Main Street continued with its old-fashioned hotels sporting their Western-movie-style false fronts and tin roofs. Turning left onto Spanish Street, you would pass other historic areas such as the beautiful Downs Mansion and the town’s quiet hillside cemetery, before finally reaching the house at the top of Spanish Street, dubbed by the mischievous members of its building crew as “Dominorum Fry 1946-47.”
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