The Ripon Almond Blossom Festival can best be described as a “family” in the reunion sense of the word – not just blood kin – but with neighbors, community members coming together from near and far.
You almost have to have lived in the area to feel the connection – the Americana if you will – that is so prevalent at Almond Blossom Time.
There’s a strong element of people helping people organize, often going out of their way for others. They go the extra mile and think nothing of it.
The rain hitting Friday was described as a monsoon that wasn’t expected to be so severe by chamber of commerce director Dorothy Booth. She said the identifying numbers for all the vendor booths had been put onto the bricks at the boot sites only to be washed out by the rain. She added they had been redrawn, but where no match for Mother Nature. The wind that followed kept many vendors at bay from setting up their tents.
Two outstanding incidents are worthy of note, however, at this year’s event.
One involved the city police department’s budget that has been strapped like many others with the economy. A large budgetary item in February is staffing enough officers to provide security for the parade and for the entire four days of the event including the large carnival and crafts fair along with other exhibitors at Mistlin Park.
Police departments in the area have been working together to ease the pain. For the festival Oakdale PD stepped up and sent their equestrian officer and his quarter horse “Lobo” to work the carnival and booth area to keep tabs of the crowd.
One horse trained in crowd control can equal four or five uniformed officers in the effectiveness it provides – giving the officer a higher vantage point to look over the crowd.
The second story to come out of the day involved a longtime Ripon resident who had moved to Washington, D.C., for a job assignment with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an investigator.
Will Gillingwater had lived in the 900 block of Fourth Street for over 15 years where he cooked a pig for Almond Blossom in his front yard for his LDS Church family. Gillingwater flew out to San Francisco for the festival and flew back Saturday night.
Joyce – a bubbly neonatal nurse at St. Agnes Hospital in Fresno – said her niece had found her cousin in D.C. on Facebook and led her to him. She explained that a link between them existed from the “Famous Gillingwater Line” that had originated with a famous uncle descending to the rest of the family.
That uncle had been an actor in the Shirley Temple movies playing dual parts – that of a kindly old grandfather or a very stern judge. She said her dad was a great nephew who tells of sitting on his lap at the dinner table in his Hollywood mansion watching him push a button that brought servants running.
In the other element in the equation that involved the Oakdale Police Department’s equestrian officer Joe Cruz, he didn’t give volunteering to serve in the Ripon festival a second thought when he heard of the officer shortage.
Talking with him Friday night as he sat on his mount patrolling the festival, he gave me an insight to his horse and to his passion to work as an equestrian officer in Oakdale and wherever the need might arise.
Cruz told of rescuing “Lobo” when he found him underweight by some 300 pounds. He said that in bringing him back to health he had ridden him some 1,000 hours before sending him through the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s Mounted Patrol School in Rancho Murrieta.
He also voiced his appreciation to the involvement of the Modesto Police Department for transporting “Lobo” to the Sacramento area for him and his department. Cruz said it was not his original intent to transform the horse into a police horse. However, a Modesto Police sergeant named Tim Helton recognized the temperament of the quarter horse and was instrumental into his learning the ins and outs of crowd control and being calm around children.
Cruz and his Red Roan are often seen patrolling the river bottom in Oakdale and into the parks there. “Lobo” is also recognized in the city’s downtown as well as in its residential neighborhoods. The Oakdale City Council officially welcomed their equestrian unit into service last October.
Manteca Equestrian Sergeant Jody Estarziau was graciously recognized by the Oakdale officer as an accomplished rider who had taught him so much about police horsemanship. “Jodi taught me all I know,” he said, adding that he hopes to pattern his unit after the successful Manteca program he has witnessed.
Cruz said the Sacramento County Mounted Patrol School is very structured to ensure that a horse is well qualified to engage with members of the public with its officer handler creating all kinds of distractions that the horse might have to be prepared for in police activities.
Don Vang is now a successful entrepreneur with his wife Jane and five children who have found the American dream through a lot of work on their part. He was operating the Boba Drinks Hut at the carnival, standing out in the walkway with a tray of tiny smoothie cups offering festival-goers free samples. Ripon is one of some 80 events he is doing a year up and down the state – being very well received in the Bay Area, he said.
Vang took to the road with his Boba Drinks after the economic crash took his job as a mechanical engineer, leaving him with a family to support. His success speaks for itself in his creation of tapioca balls or black pearls derived from the starch of the Casanova root.
He and his wife have all boys aged 16 to 19 years old. The oldest is in his second year of college headed for an engineering degree like his dad and the 18-year-old brother is hoping to manage a Boba Hut near their Fresno home. Vang said if the first is successful they hope to open a second location in Clovis.
You almost have to have lived in the area to feel the connection – the Americana if you will – that is so prevalent at Almond Blossom Time.
There’s a strong element of people helping people organize, often going out of their way for others. They go the extra mile and think nothing of it.
The rain hitting Friday was described as a monsoon that wasn’t expected to be so severe by chamber of commerce director Dorothy Booth. She said the identifying numbers for all the vendor booths had been put onto the bricks at the boot sites only to be washed out by the rain. She added they had been redrawn, but where no match for Mother Nature. The wind that followed kept many vendors at bay from setting up their tents.
Two outstanding incidents are worthy of note, however, at this year’s event.
One involved the city police department’s budget that has been strapped like many others with the economy. A large budgetary item in February is staffing enough officers to provide security for the parade and for the entire four days of the event including the large carnival and crafts fair along with other exhibitors at Mistlin Park.
Police departments in the area have been working together to ease the pain. For the festival Oakdale PD stepped up and sent their equestrian officer and his quarter horse “Lobo” to work the carnival and booth area to keep tabs of the crowd.
One horse trained in crowd control can equal four or five uniformed officers in the effectiveness it provides – giving the officer a higher vantage point to look over the crowd.
The second story to come out of the day involved a longtime Ripon resident who had moved to Washington, D.C., for a job assignment with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an investigator.
Will Gillingwater had lived in the 900 block of Fourth Street for over 15 years where he cooked a pig for Almond Blossom in his front yard for his LDS Church family. Gillingwater flew out to San Francisco for the festival and flew back Saturday night.
Surprise find: A ‘new’ cousin
The surprise came when he met a cousin he didn’t know he had from Clovis farther down in the Central Valley. Joyce Gillingwater Ray and her husband Mike had breakfast with him and his brother David and two sisters Hallie Cottrell and Amelia Johnson at The Garden Café in Ripon.Joyce – a bubbly neonatal nurse at St. Agnes Hospital in Fresno – said her niece had found her cousin in D.C. on Facebook and led her to him. She explained that a link between them existed from the “Famous Gillingwater Line” that had originated with a famous uncle descending to the rest of the family.
That uncle had been an actor in the Shirley Temple movies playing dual parts – that of a kindly old grandfather or a very stern judge. She said her dad was a great nephew who tells of sitting on his lap at the dinner table in his Hollywood mansion watching him push a button that brought servants running.
In the other element in the equation that involved the Oakdale Police Department’s equestrian officer Joe Cruz, he didn’t give volunteering to serve in the Ripon festival a second thought when he heard of the officer shortage.
Talking with him Friday night as he sat on his mount patrolling the festival, he gave me an insight to his horse and to his passion to work as an equestrian officer in Oakdale and wherever the need might arise.
Cruz told of rescuing “Lobo” when he found him underweight by some 300 pounds. He said that in bringing him back to health he had ridden him some 1,000 hours before sending him through the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s Mounted Patrol School in Rancho Murrieta.
He also voiced his appreciation to the involvement of the Modesto Police Department for transporting “Lobo” to the Sacramento area for him and his department. Cruz said it was not his original intent to transform the horse into a police horse. However, a Modesto Police sergeant named Tim Helton recognized the temperament of the quarter horse and was instrumental into his learning the ins and outs of crowd control and being calm around children.
Cruz and his Red Roan are often seen patrolling the river bottom in Oakdale and into the parks there. “Lobo” is also recognized in the city’s downtown as well as in its residential neighborhoods. The Oakdale City Council officially welcomed their equestrian unit into service last October.
Manteca Equestrian Sergeant Jody Estarziau was graciously recognized by the Oakdale officer as an accomplished rider who had taught him so much about police horsemanship. “Jodi taught me all I know,” he said, adding that he hopes to pattern his unit after the successful Manteca program he has witnessed.
Cruz said the Sacramento County Mounted Patrol School is very structured to ensure that a horse is well qualified to engage with members of the public with its officer handler creating all kinds of distractions that the horse might have to be prepared for in police activities.
From war-torn Laos to part of Americana
Yet another interesting story that came out of the festival surrounded a family where the father had been brought to the U.S. from war-torn Laos as a 7-year-old with some frightful memories.Don Vang is now a successful entrepreneur with his wife Jane and five children who have found the American dream through a lot of work on their part. He was operating the Boba Drinks Hut at the carnival, standing out in the walkway with a tray of tiny smoothie cups offering festival-goers free samples. Ripon is one of some 80 events he is doing a year up and down the state – being very well received in the Bay Area, he said.
Vang took to the road with his Boba Drinks after the economic crash took his job as a mechanical engineer, leaving him with a family to support. His success speaks for itself in his creation of tapioca balls or black pearls derived from the starch of the Casanova root.
He and his wife have all boys aged 16 to 19 years old. The oldest is in his second year of college headed for an engineering degree like his dad and the 18-year-old brother is hoping to manage a Boba Hut near their Fresno home. Vang said if the first is successful they hope to open a second location in Clovis.
