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Jackson:--Jackson Wood-- Devin:--Devin Collins-- Alex:--Alex Wakeman-- Neil:--and Neil Vaine from the Anderson Valley High School's Voices of the Valley project. Lia: We are here today with Don and Sally Schmitt. Thank you very much for coming to talk with us. Mrs. Schmitt: It's nice to be here. Thank you for asking us. Jackson: Where were the two of you raised? Mrs. Schmitt: Well, I'll go first. I was raised in a very modest household near Sacramento, out in the country on a small farm which was, you know, a good rural background, but in a big interior valley. Don-- Mr. Schmitt:--and I was raised in Visalia in Tulare County which is between Fresno and Bakersfield. My father and grandfather were both in the meat packing business from day one; I guess that's how we started to be entrepreneurs. Our families--my family is basically that way and I found myself working in a store very early on. I found myself doing a lot of projects around town for people for twenty-five cents an hour so I could go to the movies on Saturday. Basically then went into the service--moved to Berkeley to Cal, left Cal, went into the service, and then back to Fresno where Sally and I first started up our household after the service.
Devin: Where did the two of you meet? Mr. Schmitt: We met at my brother's wedding; Sally's roommate married my brother and somehow we spotted each other and somehow I figured out how to get a date with her and she figured out how to get a date with me and we ended up together that night. Alex: Love at first sight, love at first sight. Can you tell us about Fresno? Mrs. Schmitt: Oh, dear, Fresno was OK (everyone laughs). We probably wouldn't have chosen to live there, I wouldn't have anyway. Don was more used to it, but when he first did his first job interview after he got out of the Air Force and told me that it might be in Fresno and I was feeling a little gloomy. My only sight of Fresno had been driving through on the way to Los Angeles and all I could think of was hot, hot, hot. It was always in the summertime. Strangely enough after living down there as long as we did, I began to see some of the beautiful aspects of the big San Joaquin Valley as I got to know it better, it's still is a fond time in our memories because that's where--our children--we spent the first fifteen years of our marriage in and around Fresno, Bakersfield, back to Fresno. So lots of good memories from then. Devin: Back to where the two of you meet--can you tell us about the Korean War suitcase story? Mr. Schmitt: Well, what happened was, I started out in B-26 airplanes, which were low-level reconnaissance planes. And then after that point when the war ended, I ended up in B-36's. But prior to that we were at a base which was strictly where you were assigned until you were shipped out; so we were waiting--Sally first thought she could go, but they wouldn't let any of the wives--so I put everything off; I didn't buy my so-called B-4 bag which you haul all of your stuff in and we spent all of our money going out to eat and having fun and then the war ended. One thing about the service, you could always collect your pay ahead of time if you needed money to live on. That's kinda' my Air Force story. Alex: Can you tell us about your first job interview in Fresno? Mr. Schmitt : Well, basically, from Sally's side of it, the first interview was in July and it was scheduled at two in the afternoon in the San Joaquin Valley at 112 º and so she got her first introduction to my so-called new job, if I was hired, by driving in at two o'clock it the afternoon in the heat. We had one thought--she had a great aunt who had a place in Santa Cruz so we knew as soon as we left that interview we could head to Santa Cruz, and sure enough, when we went over the hill, before we got to Santa Cruz, it was fogged in so we went from 112 º to fog (everyone laughs). Alex W.: You have five children, can you- Mrs. Schmitt:--we do. Actually, the first two were born while Don was still in the Air Force. There was the threat of his going off to war and I wanted to have a baby. So, we didn't waste any time in starting our family (everyone laughs). And, actually, they were such a bargain those days. We had the first baby at the Air Force hospital in Travis and I believe she cost us something like $7.40. Alex W.: Wow! Mrs. Schmitt: And we thought well, hmmm... this is a good deal maybe we should have another one before he gets out of the service (everyone laughs). So, when I came back the doctor said, 'What is your hurry?' I said, 'Well, the price is just too good.' So Karen was born also at Travis Air Force Base, and then from there we went back to Davis, actually, because Don had not actually graduated from college; he had one more year, a few more units to pick up. So, we went back to school, where I had gone for three years originally and lived in a really wonderful little run-down house right outside campus, with two babies. And, Don put on his...they weren't white bucks, what were they--saddle shoes, or whatever-- Mr. Schmitt:--my old khakis-- Mrs. Schmitt:--and pretended that he was a young student. In those days you didn't have so many people of all ages going to college. I mean it was kind of unusual to have someone who was older and had a couple of kids. That was fun....that was a nice time. We had the time of our lives. Mr. Schmitt: My ego was deflated because I had to take an undergraduate course, here I was in all my old rig left from what I had on when I attended college originally, and some kid said, 'Sir, would you help me with this?' Or, 'Would you do that?' And I thought, oh God! (Everyone laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: So after that year was over and he graduated, then he was ready for he for his first job interview, and that happened to put us in Fresno. So, then the other three children were born in Fresno and they cost a lot more than seven dollars (laughter). Neil: So, what did you guys like to do when you were in Fresno, to live? Mr. Schmitt: Well, basically our job was such that we didn't have a lot of money, but fortunately we didn't ever look ahead to the point of "signing over" like a lot of our friends did. They didn't have any money, and when their enlistment was up, they all signed over for another twenty years, or whatever. We didn't do that. So, we made double car payments, did everything we could; while we were in the Air Force we had a car free and clear, but Sally had one problem, that she was stuck home with all the kids and no car, 'cause I had to take the car to work. So, then, my first job, we wanted to buy a house. We were always real estate oriented, we always liked to get involved. I always got involved in building from day one; I was a frustrated architectural student once at Cal. So, we bought our first house and I was a trainee at the bank, but I got the opportunity to sit on the loan committee, for educational purposes, and my loan came up for review and I didn't qualify for buying this little two-bedroom house for $6,500, and my boss said, 'You know there's something wrong with the system here. Here we have a young aspiring person that we're putting through the leadership school, and we can't qualify him for a loan.' So they figured out a way that they better start qualifying some of the younger people coming in the bank to buy modest homes. So that was our first home. And then, from there, we dug a lot of Bermuda grass to create a garden, we remodeled the place to make it a little more livable and bigger. So, you'll find that everything we've ever done, we've bought and then remodeled, or done something, and that's kinda how our whole life started together. Neil: Did you just buy that one house, or did you buy other houses? Mr. Schmitt: We bought that house, and then we bought another house in Fresno, and that was when I'd moved up in the bank a little farther. That was kind of an interesting story, because I was in Los Angles going through training--I was basically an agriculturist, but they decided that I would be more valuable in what they call a trust department, which is a place where you manage property and help people after people die, and that sort of thing. So I sent Sally up to Fresno to one of my good broker friends, to look for a house, and she called back the first day and found it. And my boss in L.A. said, 'My God! You can't find a house in one day!' and I said, 'Well, you don't know my wife; she knows what she's doing.' We always look ahead. We are fantasizers at heart, and so when an opportunity presents itself, we're ready to jump on it, rather than say gee, what do I do now? We always look ahead, so we can take advantage of opportunities. Neil: That's the way to be. Jackson: Earlier you said you had five children; you only named three. Can you tell us the two youngest children's names? Mrs. Schmitt: Yes, Eric is number four. That's right, you haven't met our oldest probably, who's Kathy--she lives in Napa Valley--and then Karen here, she is number two, and is partners with us in the Apple Farm, and number three is John, who owns the Boonville Hotel, number four is Eric, who is a contractor in Napa Valley, and number five, our youngest, is Terry who is a carpenter, remodeler, and furniture-builder in San Francisco. She and her partner make Arts and Crafts furniture. Actually, her partner is a very fine woodworker who has been doing this for thirty years, and now Terry has learned to do the carving on these wonderful pieces. So, in the last few years she's turned into a woodcarver as well. Mr. Schmitt: Then, in addition to that, she represents us at the San Francisco Farmers Market for the Apple Farm, so every two weeks she is on duty at the Farmers Market with our various products. So that's a tie-in. Alex W.: Can you tell us about the Willy story? Mrs. Schmitt: Uncle Willy keeps coming back and back, doesn't he? Well, Uncle Willy's a very big person in our lives. Unfortunately, he is not alive. He died just a few years ago at 93, something like that, I should remember but that's pretty close. But he was my mother's brother, and--youngest brother--and always at bit of a rebel in his lifetime. He joined the Navy at the end of--or sometime during War World II. He always laughs that his older brothers went in as commissioned officers, and he went in, just joined the Navy and went in as an enlisted man. So he was like Don, going back to school. Uncle Willy was the older guy in the sailor suit along with a bunch of kids. Somehow he had the foresight, and I don't know exactly how this came about, but while he was still in the service, he was able to find 200 acres of virgin redwood timber in Sonoma County, just in from the Sea Ranch, now, actually, as a crow flies, about five miles in from the coast--from the Sea Ranch Lodge, a little town called Annapolis, which nobody used to know, but they are beginning to. There is a winery there I think. Anyway, after the war, he went up there to live, and he did log some timber which enabled him to live there. He didn't have any money. And then he did things like drive the school bus. He got his emergency credential and taught school for awhile. He just did anything he could to remain. He was a postman, yeah, but he inspired us because--he always inspired us because he went on to do what he wanted to do and live the way he wanted to live. And his older brother kept luring him back to Los Angeles to help him with a business there and he'll go because he really needed the money and he just couldn't stand it. He'd be in civilization a few months, and back he'd have to go to the woods again. But we always admired him for that, and aside from the fact that he was just a delightful person, very intelligent and funny, and he teased us unmercifully as children. We always had fun when we went to see him. Mr. Schmitt: The girls would never dare bend over or they'd get a pinch on the behind! (Laughter). Mrs. Schmitt: So anyway, Uncle Willy was a kind of inspiration and--and really one of the reasons that we're here in this Valley, in this country, is because it reminds us a lot of the country around his area. He's in a little thicker--he was in a thicker redwood--and not quite as much open area as we have here, but very reminiscent. And when we first bought the property and he came to see us, he looked around, and he said, 'Oh, I don't know, Sal, looks like an awful lot of work to me.' Mr. Schmitt: We fantasized with him because we'd go up there for a couple of weeks with the kids. They had this little one-room schoolhouse and at one time they were looking for a principal and a school teacher and we almost wrote our resignation to the bank and said you be the principal and I'll be the school teacher or vice versa. And we'll build a house on Willy's property and that's where we will live, raising kids. Mrs. Schmitt: Every time on the way to Fresno we would try and think how can we make this work, how can we make the break and get up there and live. Mr. Schmitt: You guys would enjoy it. He loved riding motorcycles. At eighty years old, he was still riding his BMW. He also had an airplane which he flew 'til his eighties. Lia: Wow! Mr. Schmitt: He was one of those favorite uncles! (Laughs). Lia: Um, hmm. Lia: Is Johnny's younger son Willy named after Uncle Willy? Mrs. Schmitt: Well, at least in part. Lia: (Laughs). Neil: Well, when you were living in Napa Valley, Mr. Schmitt--can I call you Bob? Mr. Schmitt: You can call me Don! Neil: (Everyone laughs). Don, oh, Don. Oh, I was thinking of Bob Parker and Don Parker. Mrs. Schmitt: We have a good joke-- Mr. Schmitt:--kind of a cute story-- Mrs. Schmitt:--yeah, it is cute. Once, when we were in Yountville, there was a newspaper article written that mentioned Sally and her handy husband, Frank (laughter). And so our younger daughter has a good friend who never calls Don anything but Frank (laughter). So he answers to anything! Neil: Well, anyway, I was going to say that weren't you mayor when you lived in Yountville? Mr. Schmitt: Well, I guess the politics in Yountville at that time--there really wasn't a city in itself until just about the time we came. I was, of course, very interested in the community. The community was a run-down community, but a beautiful community, geographically and all that sort of thing--referred to by Lawrence Halprin, who was a landscape architect who happened to do Sea Ranch, referred to as a refuge. If you do nothing, you'd be way ahead. Anyway I used to go to all the meetings because I was very interested in what was happening and finally decided, well, I'm going to every meeting, I might as well be a part of it. So one time they asked me if I would take an appointment as a city councilman. There were only two people really available so it wasn't a big deal, but they decided to appoint me. And a couple of the old-timers decided that, since I took quite a positive position on the planning of the community and trying to preserve the community as it was, other than cleaning it up, said I would never be able to get elected. I was too controversial. To make a long story short, that really made me get on my soapbox, and so when they had the election I ran on the basis like I do everything else, with full intensity. And I won the popular vote. I got more votes than anyone else, so that started my career of thirteen years on the city council. Students: Wow! Mr. Schmitt: In those days the mayor was appointed by your fellow council people and I held the office for four years as mayor. So it's kinda interesting showing how involvement in a small community--I never wanted to go beyond that--I had offers to go beyond that, but I don't like what happens other than what I can control, so-- Alex:--what kind of offers? Mr. Schmitt: Well, be supervisor and the assemblyman, that sort of thing. Sally always said she would divorce me if I did that (everyone laughs). Neil: So, wasn't Yountville a very small town like Boonville? Mr. Schmitt: A very small town like Boonville--more like Philo at that time, I guess, a town that had a lot of interesting people including a major part of the whole community which was a 2,000-member veterans' home up on the hill which was part of the town at that time, which was brought in because for every person you can count, it counted as 2.3 people in a family even though the veterans were only one. It had to do with your taxes, your state funds, your cigarette taxes, that sort of thing. The town was very interesting because it was a real mixture of people. Nobody ever asked you whether you'd been to college. Nobody ever asked you who you were. If you had something to offer, you were part of it. The mix was very good for Yountville and it was very interesting to work within. So we had everyone come to meetings from old timers, eighty or ninety, to 4H kids, you name it. The whole town plan evolved that way. In fact the town plan evolved in such a way that we had full input from the community because we had these workshops. The guy who led it, who was Lawrence Halprin, basically let us say what we liked about it, what we wanted it to be in the future. One old-timer there, who owned the lumberyard and was always concerned about what we were spending, said, "I don't get this. We did all the damn work and we had to pay this guy $20,000!' But he had this way about him. So the community was a community much like this one at this point. This area is probably Yountville, you know, thirty years ago. A little more progressive, but not that much. Neil: Is that the town where you set up the French Laundry restaurant? Mr. Schmitt: Right. Neil: Right. And that's a real famous restaurant now. Mr. Schmitt: When we first got there we started with what is Vintage 1870. So I don't know how that kinda ties into the process. Mrs. Schmitt: We didn't actually start it, remember it was--we were lucky enough when we were still living in Fresno--Don happened to have lunch with a lawyer who started talking about his Yountville project. And when he asked him what it was, he and some other friends had purchased the Vintage 1870 property, which was an old historic group of brick buildings and it had been vacant for years and years and years and they purchased it with the idea of filling it with shops and restaurants, a kind of Ghirardelli Square, if you're familiar with that, it had just gotten off--it really had just begun just a few years prior, so the idea of having a lot of shops under one roof was an interesting one at that time. So every time Don would come home and mention that he'd seen Jim for lunch again, I'd say, 'Any news about Yountville? What's happening? What's happening?' And you know, our antenna kind of went up and at one point he said--we were on our way up to see Uncle Willy for Easter vacation--he said, 'Why don't you go that way and check out our project?' And we did, and just fell smack dab in love with Yountville and Vintage 1870. So then it was a matter of a little finagling to decide before we actually got together and found out that Jim actually wanted us to come manage it. And he didn't know whether to ask us, and we didn't know whether to ask him, but we finally got together and decided that it was to our mutual satisfaction to--for us to make the move. It was a little frightening; we had five children. I thought Don's mother would probably have a heart attack when he announced that he was leaving the bank and leaving his gold watch behind and striking off into the wild blue yonder with five children and nothing, no really--we were given a part of the ownership, the project, in exchange for a very, very small salary and throwing our work in, too. Mr. Schmitt: But we got a house and all we could eat. Alex and Lia: (Laugh). Mrs. Schmitt: But we got a place to live and we had the café too, that was there so that we could eat from what was left over, and so I think our salary was $325 a month, and a roof over our heads. But it was the most exciting thing we'd ever done, and we were terribly excited about it. Mr. Schmitt: I guess our most happy moments--we always liked to work together, so that kinda' ended up why we--even though we do argue once in awhile, but we do like to work together, and the Vintage was the perfect thing to fill this fantasy that we always had of doing something together. Mrs. Schmitt: Well, it also offered an opportunity, you know--when you live in town and you have five children--after you've got the lawn mowed and the garbage taken out, and the baby-sitting, what do they do? And by moving to Yountville, we were ensured that they would have work as soon they were able to hold down a job. And that's what happened. Terry and Eric, because they were younger, as soon as they got old enough, they started emptying garbage cans for the tenants. And then one of them--the man in the shoe store would ask Terry to would come in, would she mind watching the store while he went to get lunch, and then pretty soon it was, well, would you mind coming in the morning and vacuuming for me. And their jobs grew in intensity as they proved themselves capable, and it was a very nice way to learn to work. And I think that it's one of the reasons that it was such a good move for us because I think it was very, very good for our kids. Alex W.: You had the first espresso machine. Mrs. Schmitt: We did. Alex W.: Must have been huge! (Everyone laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: Yes, and I wouldn't have thought of it; you know, when I think of espresso machine, I still think huge. Mr. Schmitt: Espresso. Mrs. Schmitt: And of course, they don't come that way any more. It was big! Neil: Tremendous! Mrs. Schmitt: It was big! That was 1967, and it was the first espresso machine in Napa Valley. It had been the--the café had been planned by a very interesting guy from Fresno who really knew what he was doing. He had an espresso machine; it was a--he had a café out by the college. And it was very sophisticated in Fresno. And very good; he was a good cook, he served good food; it was very simple. And he was the one who set up this café. And I had never worked in a restaurant before, except the school cafeteria. But I'd been cooking for years and years. But he did such a good job of setting it up, and really-- Mr. Schmitt:--keeping it simple--
Mrs. Schmitt:--now it would be called the business plan; he didn't call it that, but...when we went up, I--we went over to his café one night, and I took a yellow pad, a legal pad, and after he got the last hamburger off the grill, he sat down and just told me everything he could think of about running a café. And I referred to those notes for years afterwards because they were very good. So we were very lucky to have been off to a really good start; all we had to do was, really, to maintain it, and to be a little bit patient and wait for customers. There weren't many people in those days. If we had--I remember there were days that we didn't take in--if we took in $35.00 we really thought we had a big day (everyone laughs). But that was bound to change. Mr. Schmitt: But we had a philosophy that every bun, every piece of meat, everything was fresh every day. Alex W: Yep. Lia: Mmmmm. Mr. Schmitt: And that's why we ate well; we just took it all home. So if you walked in and had never been there before, we wanted to leave you with the impression it was the best burger in town, the best salad, the best everything. Lia: Mmm. Mr. Schmitt: Sally might just, well--a story; a story about how you took over the cafe and started running it yourself, which I thought was an interesting story. Mrs. Schmitt: Well, it was pretty scary (Mr. Schmitt and Lia laugh), because we arrived and we were supposedly the bosses, and--because we were managing partners. And the man who planned the café had also hired someone to run it, and trained him. And after he'd been in Yountville for a couple of months he decided it was just too much out in the boonies for him, and he went back to San Francisco and they were left without anyone to run it. And it was about six months before we came on the scene. So they had gone out to Silverado Country Club in Napa and hired someone off the line there. And he was an entirely different kind of cook. Mr. Schmitt: Chef. Lia: (Laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: Yeah, very pompous. He immediately began to ruin the menu--the things that he did. And I could see what was happening, but.... and technically I was his boss, but as far as he was concerned, I didn't know anything about anything, because I did not have any kind of experience. So I washed dishes, and watched what was going on for quite some time. And kept thinking, you know, gosh, can't we buy romaine, and treat it well? And so we have a nice, crispy salad instead of that awful head lettuce that he throws into a bucket of ice water to crisp up, and... Lia: Mmm! Mrs. Schmitt: Yeah, there were things like that. And if I would suggest anything, he would snap back at me! He didn't want any suggestions from me. Mr. Schmitt: From a woman! Ha, ha, ha! Lia: Oh! Mrs. Schmitt: Yeah. So we finally had a little showdown. And one day when he asked me to make--we were frantic, by then there was a line out the door--he asked me to make somemore hamburger patties, because we were out. And he always smashed them with a big olive oil can (everyone laughs) and made them very compact. And it was the one thing that bothered me about our hamburgers that I felt that they should be shaped by hand, and looser, so that they wouldn't be tough. So I went back and made a bunch my way-- Lia:--Hmm!-- Mrs. Schmitt:--and presented them to him. And it was just like, he says, you--he started to take off his apron and said, 'Well, Missy, if you want to step in here and do this, why you just--I'll just take off my apron and leave.' (Laughter). But it wasn't long after--yes--that I got up enough nerve to just fire him and do it myself. Lia: So, speaking of food, you would presume that you served French food at this restaurant; but what other kinds of food do--did you serve--was on the menu? Mrs. Schmitt: Well, you're referring to the French Laundry, which was then our second, actually third restaurant. But--and that's what most customers assumed, and of course they should, because of the name. But actually, the French Laundry was a place. When we purchased the property, the whole community referred to this particular building and the land that it sat on as the French Laundry. And the reason they did that is because it had been a French laundry for thirty years in the history of the property. And a French laundry means fine hand finishing. It would be where all the ladies took their beautiful tablecloths to be ironed by hand rather than being run through the mangle. And so there still are French laundries that exist. There's one in San Francisco. I know there's one in Sacramento. So I think it was just simply that the name was so catchy that long after it wasn't the laundry they did that. For years and years after that the whole community still referred to the property as the French laundry. So when we bought it and then moved from Vintage 1870, to open the restaurant, and then I said, 'OK, what are we going to call this restaurant?' And our whole family again said, 'Well, it's the French Laundry.' And it was a good choice. I didn't answer your question. It was a little getting away from the subject. I'm not a classically-trained French chef, but probably my cooking is more like French country more than anything else, which means simple foods--braised meats, fresh salads and vegetables. Neil: Does your whole family work there or did they? Mrs. Schmitt: Yes, at one time or another they all worked at Vintage 1870 in the two restaurants we had there. And although Terry and Eric were a little bit young, I guess they didn't really start working in the restaurant per se until we moved to the French Laundry. But at one time--I don't think, I'm not sure that all five of them ever worked in the restaurant at the same time 'cause they were leaving home, going to school and off to Europe and getting married, and whatever. But all five of them did work with us. Mr. Schmitt: We basically let them hire all the people we had because they knew who we could get along with, and who were good workers, and our kids were pretty tough to work for. So anyway I think-- Mrs. Schmitt: That was at the Vintage more-- Mr. Schmitt:--yeah, but even at the French Laundry, but probably the thing that was most exciting in our lives was Sally and I were always around young people, and we still tend to do that, we like young people 'cause it keeps you up to date on what's going on, and it had a lot to do with our lives, and a lot to do with the raising of our kids because when we went through the hippie years and all those different years, we saw it all happening around us and it gave us a much better understanding of what our kids were going through. Devin: Um, it happens that I've been to the French Laundry restaurant--pretty amazing you started that--and I had one other question. You're talking about how you lived in the Napa area--I think you had a connection with my grandfather--I thought you knew him. Mr. Schmitt: I met your grandfather from day one, he did every floor. Every time we needed a new floor your grandfather, Don, did it, so that's the connection. Mrs. Schmitt: He was the floor man, probably still is. He would put his hand in. Devin: It is mainly his son now, my Uncle Jerry. Mrs. Schmitt: Uh, huh. Mr. Schmitt: And our son, Eric, is a contractor, he uses your uncle all the time for floors, so it's a tie-in. Mrs. Schmitt: And they're still doing business together. Lia: So how did you guys come to Anderson Valley? Mrs. Schmitt: Well, actually, our children Johnny and Karen were looking--they wanted to buy a piece of property and they found out they couldn't afford Napa Valley, so they looked a little further north, they explored Sonoma County a little bit and found out that they really couldn't afford anything there either. And somehow--they kept going out on these forays every once in awhile, exploring. On one of them, they managed to arrive in Anderson Valley. When they came back, they told us about how much they loved it and how much they knew we would love it. And I remembered my mother saying--one of the times when I was in high school when we came up to see Uncle Willy again--I told you he was going to come back and forth here. (Everyone chuckles). She said, 'Now on our way home, I know it's out of the way, but let's go up and drive that Apple Road, the Boonville Road, the one with all the apples.' I had seen it then and I had vague recollections of that, how it went right through all of the apple orchards, which was very beautiful. So when Don and I came to explore, we actually came to have lunch at the New Boonville Hotel, in its first incarnation. We knew immediately that this was it. We were staying at the Sea Ranch. On the way back, I made Don slow down so I could copy down a real estate number. We went back, called, had them send us everything, all the listings they had, and made an appointment, came back and looked at property one afternoon. We were looking for something much more modest that we might be able to do a B&B and eventually retire to. And we looked at everything that fit into our category in the afternoon. We were on our way back to the real estate agent's office, Tim Mathias, and he said, 'You don't want to be apple farmers do you?' And we said, 'No, why?' And he said, 'I happen to have a really beautiful piece for sale. I know it's above your budget, but I have time if you have time.' So we swung by and looked at it, and that was it as far as we were concerned. Jackson: Who owned the farm before you got it? Mrs. Schmitt: Archie Schoenahl. And way before that--in the old days it was called River's Rest. The Bennett family owned it. There were cottages there. Mrs. Bennett used to cook for people. People would come to fish and hunt in the summers especially. It was not exactly a resort, but an encampment of sorts. Mr. Schmitt: In the old days, all around this area, before the day of the airplane, families out of the Bay Area especially came up here and stayed two, three weeks and a month in a lot of these little places like River's Rest. Dad would go home and work during the week and come back up on weekends. So that was a way of family recreation, which wasn't too bad! I think the only thing about the property, and I quote Sally's sister, she came up to look at it and she said, 'Well, when you get it cleaned up and finished, call me.' She knows how to do things, but she doesn't know how to execute them. The property was in pretty bad shape. It was a labor camp. There were about fifty guys living there and about thirty old wrecked cars to go with them. We've always bought kind of old, run-down properties. We kind of refer to them--if they have good bones, we buy them. What you see on the surface isn't always what you get. There are some beautiful properties out there; they just need a little time and attention. That's where Karen and Tim came in. They had to muck it out! (Laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: Well, the French Laundry was a total mess when we bought it. We also bought the rooming house that was next to it so we'd have someplace to live. We literally had to gut them, sandblast, and almost tear them apart and rebuild. Alex W.: A lot of work! Mrs. Schmitt: Yeah, so we were kind of used to doing that. Mr. Schmitt: We've kind of always done our own design, with some guidance--our own design and contracting and our own building. So that's where our kids really got into all this furniture making, this and that, and whatever. I always remember at home, when I first started with the kids, I was always missing my hammer or my saw. I used to look around to see if I had left it up on a rafter or something, but nine times out of ten, I heard something pounding, building a rabbit hutch or something, and my kids had my hammer. I got so that I would ask them where all my tools were. So they kind of started out that way. Alex W: Yeah, back to the Apple Farm, what's the future of the Apple Farm? What's goin' on with the Apple Farm right now? Mrs. Schmitt: Well...that's a good question, a very good question. We are all struggling with that in a way, because as you probably know, farming apples is not a brilliant thing to do if you want to be financially successful. But we're pretty stubborn about it. We really believe in the history of apples in this Valley and we want very much to be able to hold onto them. And so we're struggling with it and in order to, really to afford to be able to hold on to it, we've had to diversify and do things. It's why we have cooking classes. It's why we have four rooms. It's why we make what they call value-added products which almost any small farmer really needs to do this day and age to survive. We make vinegar, and juice, and cider syrup, and dried fruit and so forth. We do a mail-order business. We do anything we can possibly do to add to the income of the farm. And what we're really hoping--is that it will go beyond us. It will be wonderful if it were able to stay in the family. The very nice--the very bright light on the horizon right now is Sophia because--who most of you know. She seems very interested in the farm and interested in--in sticking around to make this dream happen, and whether or not we will be able to do it, we don't know, but we're gonna work as hard as we can. Neil: What do you guys mail order? You guys said you mail order. Mrs. Schmitt: Mail order? Our jams, jellies, and--we make a line of five jams and jellies, and five chutneys, and we have two kinds of vinegar and a cider syrup; all of those things are included in our mail-order business. Alex: How do you--how do you make things like that? Like vinegar--do you have to send your things away--your products away to be--? Mrs. Schmitt: No, the only thing we send away is the juice that is pasteurized-- Alex: Oh, and then they make vinegar? Mrs. Schmitt: No, our vinegar is not pasteurized, it's a natural process. And in fact we--it's not too terribly seldom that--quite often that I get phone calls saying, 'I bought a bottle of your vinegar and it has this stuff in the bottom of it... Alex: (Laughs). Mrs. Schmitt:--and I'm not quite sure, is that all right.' Is it all right to use? What is that? What--you know, and I say, 'Well that's the 'mother'--that's the--you know, it is not pasteurized.' That if you want to make some more vinegar, pour it out and use it and start your own batch; otherwise just strain it out and don't worry about it. Alex: (Laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: It's unusual. Alex: What type of lifestyle goes on at the farm? Mrs. Schmitt: Lot's of hard work. But it's so rewarding and wonderful to be able to live here--every time we have to go--now it's getting to the point where, it's like, we have to go to the city, or we have to go to Santa Rosa. Even if we have to go to Ukiah, we love it here. And though travel is interesting, Don and I personally don't do a lot of it. Because I think we're--as we get older we're more content to stay in one place. Our lifestyle is very fine, because we live in a beautiful--a beautiful place, our own property is beautiful because we have done a lot of gardening and our buildings are nice and are furnished nicely. We certainly eat well, we drink well, and we have family around us. And we really--we cannot think of a better way to live. So--and it's interesting the people that we bring here who come to visit us, to take our classes, many of them who come out of the cities especially are very envious about are lifestyle, and yet they are not able to give up what they have in order to have it. But they are very envious of what they see here. Alex: Everybody is! Mr. Schmitt: Well, you have to make choices, and we made a choice of day- to-day lifestyle versus other things. And that's so important to us; you just have to be in the right place where you can have the right surroundings. And even with the kids, as the grandkids are growing up they travel, they go places like, Sophia, a straight A student, she could get into any college she wanted; and she traveled in Europe, and she traveled in Mexico, but here she is writing us e-mails saying she's in such and such a place in Europe and it's just like home, the small businesses and the scale of things. And so after she's done that and went to a university for awhile; she's come home and she just wants to--she likes that lifestyle. How long she'll like it I don't know, but she's very naturally fit for it, so... Jackson: I know your son, Johnny, he owns the hotel or-- Mrs. Schmitt: The Boonville Hotel? Jackson: Yeah, the Boonville--did you buy it or build it? Mrs. Schmitt: We're part investors--we're minor investors. When he wanted to do that--you know at first he had the little Floodgate Store--remember that, years ago? That was right after--we've owned the property now for--our property for eighteen years and it was just a couple of years after that Jerry Cox--Jerry and Kathy owned Floodgate and it--they were trying to figure out how to make it work and it wasn't really working as a little store. And someone suggested to them that they turn it into a little café. And then at the same time Karen heard about it and maybe talked to them. And Johnny was looking for something to do--really wanted to be up here. As it evolved, Johnny ended up being partners with Jerry and Kathy and they gutted the place and turned it into a café. It was great fun; it was wonderful. But it was limited in possibilities--the problems with it, just not being able to expand. So the Boonville Hotel kept coming up over and over again, because it was empty after Vern and Charlene took off in the middle of the night. The property sat here for two-and-a-half years and people kept saying to Johnny, 'Why don't you take over the Boonville Hotel?' He would call us and talk with us. Our counsel was--'Oh, my gosh, don't take over anyone's failed project.' That always scared me. So we never encouraged him until finally the last time, it came around again, the price had gone down again and he had some other friends who were interested in helping him. My sister was interested in helping him. And it just seemed too good to pass up. And even Kathy and Jerry were in on it at the beginning. So he made the move and went in and I'm so glad that he did. Neil: Why had the previous owners left in the middle of the night? What's goin' on there? Mrs. Schmitt: (Laughs). Well, we could spend hours, and hours, and hours on that one! (More laughter). Alex W.: Expose the mystery! Mrs. Schmitt: The stories are abundant. They, I believe--in a nutshell--I always called them the Berkeley intellectuals who had wonderful ideas and Charlene was one of the best cooks that I've ever known. She really is excellent! But they really didn't know how to run a business. They were under financed, under capitalized. And I don't think they ingratiated themselves into the community. They were really looking for people outside the community to support them, which is one thing we hadn't said before, but it's one thing we used to preach to our tenants when we were first starting in Yountville. Mr. Schmitt: We had thirty tenants at Vintage 1870. Mrs. Schmitt: Yeah, shopkeepers. We had to interview these people and decide which ones we wanted and so forth. Our big thing was to always say to them, 'Don't forget that you need to play to the locals first.' And in Napa Valley at that time, even though it was quite rural, there were some very sophisticated people living there. We said, 'If you can please them, the rest of the world will fall into line.' We always have believed that. With a restaurant especially, you just simply need to put out the best food you can possibly put out and if you can't please the people in your own community, you're really doing something wrong. And if you do, you're probably good enough so that other people will like what you're doing as well. Mr. Schmitt: I have kind of an interesting story. We were trying to figure out where our business was going to come from; we were never bus-oriented people, so I talked with an old gray-haired bus driver that worked for Greylines in Sausalito, and I said, 'What do you think about buses in general and tourists and this sort of thing?' And he said, 'Well, even if you bring a great bunch of people to a business, the first thing you want to do is hide the bus. You never want the bus sitting in front of your building.' It's because of its connotation. You've probably been reading the Advertiser; Bruce would have no greater joy than to see a great big elongated bus sitting in front of the Boonville Hotel. He could then elaborate for hours! (Everyone laughs). So we never were interested in the tourists per se. We were just interested in people that were similar to the local people who liked what we were doing. We worked off of that base. Neil: Well, back to this mysterious (students laugh) time at night when these people left. Is there any dark mystery behind that? Mrs. Schmitt: Oh, lots of dark mysteries, yes, as to why they had to leave. They had gotten themselves deeply into financial trouble. The only place where their employees could cash their paychecks was right there at the restaurant. They were behind in some sort of taxes and I don't know exactly what. It must have been state, because I believe they're still not welcome in the State of California. They just didn't have enough money to pay their debts and so they chose to flee in the middle of the night. Neil: Nice! Mr. Schmitt: We always said they just had--somehow they had a different agenda than everyone else. As a result of that-- Mrs. Schmitt:--they're very interesting people, very talented, but-- Mr. Schmitt: --we're always talking about them (laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: Yeah, and they certainly put Boonville on the map-- Mr. Schmitt:--God-- Mrs. Schmitt:--you know, as far as restaurant circles certainly. It's amazing how many people travel for food. Mr. Schmitt: That's during the yuppie stage so there were a lot of people that had no children, they were young, had a lot of money, had airplanes, they had all kinds--they had the "Boonville International Airport." You know all those things, which really they capitalized on and capitalized on the fact that they grew everything, which they really didn't, but anyway the press liked it. That's the funny thing about the press. The press grabs onto something you're doing, even if it's not what you're doing--they grab it and run with it, so Vern and Charlene they just let them run. Fresh lamb, fresh duck--they had two ducks, fresh chickens--they had two chickens. (Everyone laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: Right, two ducks, one lamb. Mr. Schmitt: But the press loved it. Jackson: Do you have any memorable stories that you would like to share with us? Mrs. Schmitt: Oh golly, I'm sure you would have to catch--you'd have to come to a family party sometime and then wait until everybody's gotten--worked themselves up into a good state, and you'd hear some family stories, that's for sure. It's very hard to reach back and grab one. Mr. Schmitt: The women in our family are very strong so you can't be--as a result of that they don't let me or Tim or my other son-in-law, Bill, get together in the same room or let us go off-- Mrs. Schmitt:--not too long. (Everyone laughs). Mr. Schmitt: They don't let us go off in any direction because we may get lost somewhere. So as a result of that-- Mrs. Schmitt:--my uncles used to do that, when they would come to our house as I was growing up, for Thanksgiving especially, and they would come--actually we lived in the town in which they all grew up, so they always wanted to go out and visit old haunts and old friends. Mr. Schmitt: Old bartenders especially. Mrs. Schmitt: Whether they would ever get back by the time dinner was served was always a question. So my mother would always say, 'Send one of the children with them.' (Much laughter). As young as possible. That would insure that they would get back. I just was thinking of--one kind of favorite story about kids growing up, was Karen and Johnny's trip across the United States. When Johnny was not old enough to drive, but Karen was, so it must have been--Karen must have been eighteen, graduated from high school. And then she went off to Europe with her backpack on her back. Her grandmother had promoted the idea, but what her grandmother, my mother, had in mind was a little tour with you know, a chaperone or two. What it evolved into was Karen with her backpack on her back going off all by herself. Mr. Mendosa: Like Sophia. Mrs. Schmitt: Yes. Mr. Schmitt: That was before e-mail. Mrs. Schmitt: Yes, but unlike Sophia, we did not have any contacts. I believe Karen knew one girl in England and that was about it. And so no ATM machines, no e-mail, no contacts. So we would get a letter from her that would just tell us that two weeks ago she was in Brussels and that was about all we knew. Anyway, Johnny was chompin' at the bit, still in school. He must had been sixteen and had his driver's permit, but not a driver's--not a license. He wasn't sixteen, because he couldn't drive without an adult and or without somebody with a license. Anyway my sister lived in Connecticut and she promised the kids that she would give them their old VW van if they would drive it back to California. So Johnny sent for a VW mechanic's manual and studied it and with that in hand flew back to Connecticut, and met Karen when she came from Europe, and the two of them drove across country. Now you have to bear in mind that for probably the last two years they were hardly speaking on most occasions, often anyway. I'm exaggerating a little bit. Like a lot of teenagers, they didn't always see eye-to-eye. And the trip back--the trip across country with Johnny needing Karen because he couldn't drive and Karen needing Johnny because he could fix the car, was a very good--it was a little bonding experience that really did work and I think they had a good time. They managed to get here safe and sound. Mr. Schmitt: Plus they were sharing ownership of the car so that was a big deal. Mrs. Schmitt: That's a whole other story! (Everyone laughs). Jackson: Can you compare Napa to Anderson Valley? Mrs. Schmitt: Well, darn, Don and I have been discussing this just recently, and we always discuss it, everybody does this day and age. It's a little scary. I hope--we probably wouldn't be here if we were really worried that this Valley would ever going to be quite so overrun as Napa Valley. I hope not, and there are a few things we probably--the absence of a lot of water helps. The fact that we are two-and-a-half hours from the city rather than an hour, you know, Napa Valley is just a mere hour's drive from the Bay Area. It's close enough so people can do a day trip. They could say, 'Oh, let's just go wine-tasting.' Mr. Schmitt: Our kids would come home at three and drive to Berkeley and say they would be back by five. Mrs. Schmitt: Yeah, it's a little more effort to get here, but the scary thing is we are seeing real values zoom upwards and commercial values, like downtown have not kept up with that, so there is still a lot of opportunity here for that, but the scary thing is to see real estate values go up so high because that will mean the modest families won't be able to afford to buy property here, and the people already here can hold on, but as the taxes go up and it becomes more costly to live in the valley, they'll have a hard time holding on to them when they can see what they can sell the property for it's just, I don't know whether it is just inevitable--it happened to Carmel, it happened to Sausalito, it's certainly happening to Napa Valley. I hope Anderson Valley doesn't have that to look forward to. Hopefully not. Mr. Schmitt: The big thing that we found in both Yountville and here is that, one sense you need more business, but it's the kind of business, so you need more business, the kind of business, you need more people, again it's the kind of people, so you have this thing of trying to survive. We kind of have a philosophy in the family, again, what--lifestyle day-to-day, pay our bills, we do OK, you'll gain by the property values going up, but we are always cash poor. And in Yountville, we found--I didn't see it, I can see it up here--in Yountville when we were doing the general plan, that had Lawrence Halprin to help us, it was great. We did a good job zoning. We did a good job doing a lot of things, but we never zoned for scale. If we had gone back and zoned for scale, that only allowed individual businesses, and individual entrepreneurs, rather than corporations. So we find if you have a beautiful, gorgeous area, you could run--some people decide they could run a one-room inn and be successful because that is their lifestyle, they could run a three; but running a 220 is a whole different thing. So if I had anything to do over again, having been involved in the planning in Yountville, I would have pressed to zone for scale so we kept things--you could only have a bed and breakfast, not over twenty units. You could only have a restaurant not over forty seats and that sort of thing. And that does help, but that requires your people that are involved in politics, the board of supervisors and those people, to take the initiative to do that, and it's not always too popular, to get elected. We had some people in Napa Valley that we, at one time, had actually practically pushed out of business because they took strong positions on the acreage preserve, things like that. And people said, 'If you are going to do that, I'm not going to buy any gas from you.' It takes simply a lot of guts in politics. It also takes a lot of people like yourselves to be there and push for it to get the point across that you're concerned about where it's going and you just don't want to let it happen. And that's where this Valley could get in trouble; it could just happen because nobody is doing anything to control it. I love to be free and I don't like people to control me, but I also realize that we have something that is a very valuable asset, something worth a lot of money, which is a way of life, and somebody has to do something about it. I'm too old to get in politics or I would get on my soapbox. (Everyone laughs). Mrs. Schmitt: But one way to always make your opinion heard--the statement has been used a lot in the organic movement--is vote with your dollar. That means to me that I don't go off to Costco or over the hill to Wal-Mart just to save a little bit on paper towels or whatever. We buy everything we possibly can at Lemons because I need them to be there and they aren't going to be able to be there unless we shop there. We feel that way about small businesses and organic produce; if you shop and vote with your dollar, that is a good way to say it--your way of doing something. It may seem like a little, but it isn't--it grows and grows. Mr. Schmitt: A lot of people just don't get the connection between those two things. We used to have at the French Laundry people who wanted to bring their own wine and we would charge them corkage. And a lot of them just couldn't see why we would to do that. Mrs. Schmitt: My reply to them--it was why do you want to bring your own wine? Do you want to save money? That was often what it was. Often it was a vintner who wanted to serve their own wine or someone who had very fine wines in their cellar and wanted to drink them or have their guests enjoy them. My response was, well, so you have some wonderful peppers from your own garden and you make a wonderful pepper soup. Would you feel comfortable bringing a thermos and asking me to warm it because you would like to share it with your guests and not buy mine? There really isn't any difference. In the old days not many restaurants had good wine lists and they encouraged people to bring their own and it grew out of proportion. It's a very real problem in restaurants. The point is people don't think about the other side and I feel that if you are going to dine you either buy their wine or don't have any or don't go there. If it's too expensive and if you can't afford it, ask for a glass of water and have your glass of wine at home. Mr. Schmitt: In contrast, Robert Mondavi, whom you've probably heard of-- he's Mr. Wine in California--he was in business of selling wine and if he wasn't selling wine to us, he wasn't making any money, and if people brought their own then we couldn't buy his. So he would ask us, '...which wines do you have on your list that are mine...' and he would bring us some different ones. 'You buy them from me wholesale and sell them back at full price.' It was his philosophy; he was a great mentor to follow. That's the way he built his business over the years and you have to be concerned about what the business really is and you have to be broad in scope when you do that. Somehow for me, it's out of place to bring your own. Alex: Well, it's been great having you. We have really learned a lot and we had a lot of fun. Thank you for coming. Mrs. Schmitt: Thank you for inviting us. |
