Raquel and I visited Fowler on Wednesday, 12/8. The drive took us about 3.5 hours.
We had scheduled a few interviews with individual residents and plans to attend the school board meeting.
Connie K met us at Starbucks. This coffee shop is a badge of honor for some in the community because neighboring town of Selma doesn’t have one. Many Hwy 99 travelers utilize the drive through and it seems that some folks in the community spend a lot of money there.
Connie and her husband own the Ace Hardware in town, bought it about 5 years ago. They have 5 sons. Connie also works with the Chamber of Commerce, is a member of the Mothers Club and works at a day care center called Kids Break. She grew up in Los Angeles. She met her husband when he was going to college in Los Angeles too. When they married 26 years ago they moved to his hometown, Fowler. She cried the whole drive when she left Los Angeles. She would never want to live in Los Angeles again. She loves living in Fowler. There are “RJ Hill” real estate signs around the area proclaiming “Fowler: The Best Kept Secret.” Connie agrees and says Fowler is a uniquely ideal place to live.
The schools are a big part of what works here. They have 4 schools in Fowler: Grades K-2 at Marshall Elementary, grades 3-5 at Fremont Elementary, grades 6-8 at Sutter Middle School and Fowler High School. There are 2 other schools in the Fowler School District—2 elementary schools in Malaga, 5 ½ miles up the road. The kids from Malaga join Fowler kids at Sutter Middle and FHS.
The Mothers Club has been around for 50 years or more. Currently its about 30-32 mothers. They meet second Thursday of the month. They’re a social club and they fundraise for projects that benefit Fowler youth. Connie is going to arrange to get us on the agenda for Mothers Club meeting on Thursday, February 10, starting at 6 or 7pm. We probably will alone have time to introduce our project and then can talk with individuals follow up with people. I’ll talk to Connie about setting up a separate story circle date and we can invite them to that as part of our presentation, too. There’s a Mothers Club publication about Fowler (from many years ago probably) at the library, Connie says. One of their traditional fundraising things is selling beerocks (a traditional German? meat-in-dough pocket).
Connie is the troup leader for Cub Scouts (1st thru 5th graders) and her husband leads Boy Scouts (6th through 12th graders). Both groups meet on Tuesday nights at Sutter Middle School.
Connie and her husband had to do an environmental study on an open lot where they are thinking of maybe building a bigger hardware store. During that process bricks were found deep in the ground on the lot and no one knew what they might be since records indicated no building had ever been there. However long time resident, D Simonian (brother of former-as-of-last-night Mayor Jim and uncle of school board member Jimmy) knew the story. A tunnel was built between somewhere on Main Street (someone’s house maybe?) and ran for 6 blocks to this location where there was an underground hiding place. This was built for local Japanese people to hide from internment officials.
R. Gauroian, Fowler resident, photographer, organic grape farmer, knows lots of local history. His wife, a local teacher, passed away 1 year ago quickly after a dire, unexpected diagnosis. This is one of many accounts of how everybody pulls together to help when someone is in crisis. “Fowler is very good at taking care of Fowler.” Everyone took good care of this family. Later we heard how the ambulance driver taking her to the hospital did a slow pass by the school so all the kids could stand and wave at her as she passed by.
M. Hurst is the swim coach.
Andy at the barber shop knows everyone/everything.
Fowler Packing (on Cedar St) is a huge employer, family-owned for many generations.
Other packing houses are employers. Bee Sweet, is one. Lion Raisin. National Raisin (main competitor of Sun Maid Raisin in nearby Selma) is owned by Bedrosian family.
Local businesses hire local employees.
Vernon & Marie Gonzalez offer a Food Bank (available 24 hours) for Fowler residents in need. They provide food and a few other items out of their garage/food pantry. The schools have canned good and coat drives to contribute to the food bank. There is a raffle during Spring Fest and you trade canned goods for raffle tickets.
In February there is a Chamber of Commerce sponsored event: Citizen of the Year Banquet. Happens at Vineyard Church Worship Center, Manning & Golden State Blvd.
[ In the 90s the controversial Vineyard Casino was approved and built but the business didn’t survive beyond 10 months. The building stood vacant for many years, but now it is this church. Pastor Rod is a community leader.] This is a big building that could potentially be a venue but it’s not particularly accessible for the community and not really neutral ground.
There’s an annual Easter Sunrise Service at Fowler Park at which all or most local churches are represented.
Farmers Market happens May through October from 5-8pm. It’s wonderful, says Connie, and you get a real sense of Fowler, lots of participation.
Second Saturday in October is the Fall Festival which includes a crowned queen, floats, high school bands, a parade and other festivities.
Folks wear red on Fridays in support of Fowler High School Redcats.
We met with Sandi M. She is retired, extremely energetic and enthusiastic about Fowler, where she’s lived since 1978. She knows lots of folks and had done a number of theatrical projects in town, mostly through Recreation Commission and through the Baptist Church. Strangely there are another woman in Fowler with her name (though it's spelled differently). Sandy M-Fever is the other one, a relative of Sandi’s ex-husband. Sandi says a play about Fowler should include raisins, anything that is supportive of local kids, the fine education system, the town’s public Christmas tree which gets set up in the middle of a main downtown intersection, and the close-knit neighborly nature. Sandi described the neighborhoods of Fowler: North of Merced Street and around Starbucks is mostly republican, downtown core and south is more democrat, west of the highway is mostly the less established households. She says there are 13 churches and 15 liquor licenses- though to visit the town you wouldn’t guess there are as many as 15 liquor licenses. Sandi also mentioned the Easters- a longtime-resident African American family that established the neighborhood just behind/north of the Merced Street truckstop (hotel, starbucks etc). They founded the Rose of Sharon Church there a long time ago.
We spent an hour with Mrs. J Schrader, the English/Drama teacher at Fowler High School. I invited Sandie to join us for this meeting, too. Originally from Los Angeles and currently living in/commuting from Visalia, Mrs. Schrader worked as a professional actress for many years, primarily in Washington DC. Mrs. Schrader also gave us names of folks to talk with, mostly at the school. She was the first person to talk with us about the growing Punjabi community in Fowler. About one-fifth of her students are Punjabi and while these students participate in school activities, they don’t seem socially integrated in the school. The Punjabi families seem to represent both higher and lower castes. There are very few African American or Asian students.
She expressed doubt that there would be summer school this year. Pre-football camp happens in summer. Swim team ends in July. Faculty starts back for 2011-12 school year on August 15, students on August 18.
Discussing the possibilities of leading workshops with her students over the next few months, she proposed we lead a one week workshop in first or second week of February where we’d have 2 different classes- a beginning drama and an advanced class (one hour each) followed by 2 hours with both groups. I told her that if she could get us confirmed permission for us to live at the high school we could make that happen, but generally that is a large commitment of time and personnel that we likely cannot otherwise afford.
Mrs. Schrader showed us the high school auditorium that we’d heard so much about. It is a cafetorium. The stage is decent, though there’s not much support space backstage. They do have a little shop room off SL. They have some lighting positions onstage but the front lighting positions are lame track instruments. The acoustics are not great, not terrible. She says that Sutter Middle School has a newer, higher stage. Mrs. Schrader’s husband, a former production manager, now works as the general manager for an event lighting company in Hanford.
Mrs. Schrader will be out of town during the summer residency. She’s performing a teaching artists project at the Globe Theater.
Wednesday evening we went to the school board meeting. There were the 5 Board members present, plus the Superintendent, the Director of Instruction and a clerk.
I had an email exchange with the Superintendent that morning, so he was expecting us and welcomed us to the meeting. Public comments were at the top of the agenda, so I introduced our project and made a formal request for use of school facilities. I offered that we would love to come back to make a visual presentation at the next meeting if they saw fit. Most board members seemed interested and a few questions were asked. We did not stay for the full meeting after our presentation since that is what it seemed to encourage. The next meeting is January 19.
Thursday we met with Rosalie Georg who teaches ballet to preschoolers and other kids at the Fowler Library. Sara Brown introduced us. Rosalie lives in Kingsburg, 11 miles south of Fowler. She told us about the beautiful traditional auditorium space at Fremont Elementary School. Her group will perform there on at 2pm on Sunday, December 19. I might be able to attend this.
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