Photograph by Robert Scheer
This stretch of Saratoga Avenue is preserved as Heritage Lane.
People who are both chronologically and geographically challenged--in other words, old-timers--get used to the conversational gambit that goes: "My, you must have seen a lot of changes around here."
I have to stifle an impulse to let go with a witty riposte on the order of "You ain't just pickin' your teeth, buster," but I usually agree with the statement, invoking some bland platitude. It would be more intellectually stimulating, though, if I were to be asked, "Is there anything around here that hasn't changed all that much?" Now there is a question to chew on. What, if anything, hasn't changed in Saratoga?
I suppose you could start with the hills; they're what you might call permanent. However, even that could change. Some of these entrepreneurial characters bear watching. Give a developer an inch, and he'll put a house on it. Or try to. That, of course, could mean eliminating a bothersome hill or two.
Closely related to topography are the entrances to town, and a couple of these have managed to retain their visual integrity. Thanks largely to the efforts of Larry Fine, who undertook a petition campaign, there is a mile of Saratoga Avenue out of the Village that is designated a Heritage Lane. In addition to certain setback and height restrictions regarding walls, this status would play merry hell with any misguided efforts--and there have been some--to widen what has to be one of the loveliest approaches to this or any other town. Limiting speed to 35 miles an hour on this one stretch shouldn't warp anyone's personality, but you'd never guess it from some of the frustrated Laguna Seca types peeling off from Highway 85.
Highway 9 between Saratoga and Los Gatos, although built up residentially, has rightfully been recognized by the state as a scenic highway--marked by little poppy signs--with no intervening commercial development except La Hacienda Inn. Since that establishment traces its antecedents to 1903 and the Nippon Mura resort, one might say it has been grandfathered inn (pun intended).
On the subject of streets, it can probably be said that Saratoga's are, on the whole, safe streets. I think back to 1929 when my mother started conducting adult education night classes in San Jose. She commuted on the Peninsular Railway interurban cars, returning at 10 p.m. on the last car and getting off at the Saratoga station, which was where the Village Post Office is today. It was almost a half-mile walk from there to our house at the end of Marion Avenue, along roads that were something less than the Great White Way. No problem.
I catch something of that sense of security when I see girls and women jogging, often singly, along Saratoga Avenue and Saratoga-Los Gatos Road. I'd like to think this will always be so.
I credit Frank Butera, at the Buy & Save Market, with demonstrating an added dimension to this sense of security. I was at the Bank of America branch one morning when Frank was there getting the day's supply of currency for cash-register change. Now, this is an operation that, in some places, would call for a padlocked canvas cash bag, if not an armed guard. Frank merely rolled up the bills, clutched them in his left hand and stepped out onto a moderately busy sidewalk. Even though he had only a couple of hundred feet to walk, there was something about seeing a guy nonchalantly carrying a roll of bills that could choke the proverbial horse that somehow got to me.
"Only in Saratoga, Frankie," I said as I caught up with him. "Only in Saratoga."
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, April 2, 1997.
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