The Old Gabrielli Place
Above: May 1947. Paolo Gabrielli, now a widower who has closed his small dairy and moved into town to live with his son, sells his farm to my aunt and uncle, Hazel and George Waldner, then the publishers of Ferndale’s (now 145-year-old) weekly newspaper, the Enterprise. I am the three-year-old standing between my aunt and Mr. Gabrielli. My uncle took the photo.
Even though my aunt and uncle never farmed anything (although my uncle was a hobby orchardist), they named the property Waldner Farm—and called it “the ranch.” It’s a magical location that has been a gathering place for generations of Ferndalers since 1914, when Paolo Gabrielli bought the 80-acre parcel from the Brown family, built his house, and established his seven-cow dairy.
He came alone. The plan was for his wife Felicita and their three children to join him as soon as the house was finished. But before they were able to leave Italy, in August 1914, World War I erupted. The Gabriellis’ village was on the Italian-Austrian border. It was invaded by the Axis troops, and Felicita and the children, along with the rest of their neighbors, were relocated to an internment camp in Austria. By the time the war was over and they were able to join Paolo in America, five years had passed, and their little daughter had died.
When I inherited the ranch and returned to Ferndale, in 1993, I began hearing stories about the property from the “old-timers” I was interviewing for the Ferndale Museum. “I hear you live on the old Gabrielli place,” the conversation would begin. “You know all the Italian families used to go out there every Sunday after mass for polenta and music. We kids played in the creek, ran all over… Boy, I sure would like to see that place again.”
One day, in October 2013, I woke up and said, “John, we have to have a big lunch out here and invite everyone who came here as a child ….” And so we did. I put it in the paper and e-mailed people. Fourteen people came and sat around the table and went outside and sat under the grape arbor—the same one that Paolo had planted with slips he’d brought from Italy in his coat pocket. They shared photographs and letters and old newspaper clippings. They laughed and argued and corrected each other and laughed again.
“Every Sunday,” said Hank Megazzi. “We’d come out and eat polenta and stew. Deer meat stew. Or robins, if we didn’t have deer. Or, just cheese. All the adults all stood in the kitchen and talked while Felicita stirred that big polenta pot and stirred and stirred…”
“This was the only place I can remember my parents visiting,” Art Perra said. The Perras had dairied on a ranch between Poole Road and Fleener’s Gulch, on a long-gone dairy off a long-abandoned road. “We walked to the Centerville school,” Art said. “Over those hills and a mile down the road.”
“Up on that hill was the chicken house,” said Jim Pegolotti, pointing west of the driveway. Jim, who now lives in South Carolina, had come to Humboldt to celebrate the 90th birthday of his brother, Antone, a Fortuna resident. Antone nodded and smiled, and Lino Mogni said there’d been a still under the chicken house. Everyone nodded. “You’ve never found the copper pipes?” Lino asked me.
Paolo’s younger son, Virgil, became the first Ferndale boy to be ordained as a Catholic priest; he celebrated his first mass at the Assumption Church in town, and then his parents gave a valley-wide party at their farm. Everyone parked on Centerville Road and were shuttled down the narrow unpaved lane to the house. Everyone except Peter Mossi, who refused the ride and walked in. On the day of the luncheon, Pete’s daughter, Irene, asked Art Perra to drop her off at the end of the lane, and in memory of her father, she walked in.
“What year was that big party for Virgil?” someone asked. There was a brief debate—“Just before the war,” “Had to be ’38,” “I think I was only five”—that ended with Floyd Bettiga producing two mass cards he’d found in his parents’ Bible, printed in commemoration of Fr. Gabrielli’s first mass. It was April 1939.
“It had to be ’38,” someone repeated, but I ended the discussion.
“Can’t argue with a mass card,” I said, although I’m a Methodist, and Dorothy Scalvini agreed.
“It’s official.”
