everyday is halloween: the stanford mansion 'the curse of the gold miner's necklace'

anna & i are determined to get out of our beloved casa de bronson/lopez & do more things.  like walk to the nearby taphouse for a couple of beers.  or day trips to cute little towns like murphys.  or long weekends in mendicino, monterey, & most recently at a wonderful inn called nick's cove on tomales bay.  it is the spooky season so anna got us a pair of tickets to a haunted tour of the stanford mansion.

leland stanford was a robber baron, california governor, & founder of the university that shares his name.  the stanford mansion, located on 8th & N streets, is now a state park but it was for much of the 20th C an orphanage that closed its doors as recently as 1987.  it is a grand house that carries much history.  indeed, the great flood of 1862 saw about 6 ft of mud in the mansion.  you can still see the water line in one of the rooms.  stanford had to crawl out of a window & paddle his way to the capital for his inaugaration.  this flood was so severe, so biblical in its destruction, that it changed the city.  all buildings were required to raise to 12 ft.  there are still places in Old Sac & other downtown areas that have underground tunnels of the original building elevations.

& but so, we decided to walk to the stanford mansion.  around 2 1/2 miles.  it was a lovely evening.  the weather decided to cool down.  it was raining yestereday & the day before.  it is also saturday night.  midtown is gonna be alive!  so it was.  not crazy wild but people were out enjoying a night on the town.  but downtown is somewhere else.  quieter.  less action.  even if the buildings were taller with more lights on them like every skyline in every mid to large city.  still, we made it to the stanford mansion for our haunted tour in plenty of time.

the mansion was decorated for the spooky season.  the docent was decent.  the haunted tour was an interactive play based on a few deaths & a missing necklace.  the story made little sense.  it was maore of a macguffin to get us thru the mansion in a way befitting the spooky season.  was any of it historically factual.  i don't know & really don't care for when things go bump in the night you go, as frank o'hara said, on your nerve.  it was cheesy but the players were game & the decor of the rooms provided just the kind of halloween ambience this dude enjoys.

i've lived here for all my 59 years & i had not, until tonight, stepped foot inside the stanford mansion.  sure, i've walked past it thousands of times.  i remember now when it was an orphanage.  it was fun, if  very brief haunted tour.  the decorations were terrific.  i wanted to take a few pics of the layout of the decorations but i didn't want to disturb the flow of the story as it was told to us in real time.  i mean i was standing right next to gov. stanford's butler, mr. platter.  taking out my phone would've seemed rude!  

when the tour was done anna & i meandered thru downtown & midtown.  we walked down the R st corridor & stopped into a gallery showcasing the paintings of several local artists.  there was one painting by jian wang that i thought was extraordinary.  so was its price.  $14500.  fuck me!  then we found our way back to our own place in the great swirl of life, casa de bronson/lopez.  but the evening wasn't done with me quite yet.  i needed to go to Safeway to get a few items like breakfast stuff etc etc.  because that's how our world works.  first there are 19th C ghosts looking for a lost necklace & then there are the immediate needs of the magic of ordinary living in the 21st C.

boo!