I See by the Papers...

She was funny, she was annoying, she was quirky and she terrorized a generation of kids. Her name was Pepper.

Everyone who lived in Santa Rosa between (roughly) 1955 and 1985 knew her, if not through a personal encounter then from Gaye LeBaron's columns where her antics were often chronicled. And although she passed away in 1992 Pepper has achieved a kind of immortality via social media, particularly in the FaceBook nostalgia groups where stories about her pop up regularly.

Pepper was called the "town character" but that doesn't ring quite true, as that usually describes someone genuinely eccentric. In Pepper's day Santa Rosa did have those sort of people too, such as the woman who burned off nervous energy by walking miles every day wearing ballet tights, a scarf and floppy hat. Or the Russian man who handed out malt balls wrapped in handwritten prayers and liked to perform scenes from Othello.

No, Pepper was better described as the town jester - it was as if she thought the Marx Brothers' movies were instructional films. She did things she hoped people would think funny. She would yodel in the Exchange Bank or into the microphone at a store's checkout register. She would stand next to the Post Office and ask people where the Post Office was. She would pretend to direct traffic at the corner of Mendocino and Fourth. She would plop herself in the backseat of cars waiting for a stoplight to change and expect the driver to take her somewhere. Once she pulled that stunt with a convertible and when they drove down the street she royally waved at pedestrians. They waved back.

Another of her hallmarks were the cornball jokes that would only tickle the funnybone of a very young child. "Squirrels are looking for you. They think you're nuts!" Instead of saying goodbye she might make the lame quip, "If I don't see you in the mattress, I'll see you in the spring." And then there was her perpetual favorite: "Hey, you dropped something. Your footsteps."

She would be considered a little person today, about the height of a smallish 12 year-old girl. It's not cruel to say she dressed clownish (but not always) and her usual attire was so garish she appeared to glow radioactive. She wore neon-bright Hawaiian blouses and shirts, muumuus so baggy she could have shoplifted half a store underneath, and invariably had children's moccasins on her feet with plastic flowers poking out of her hair. After she had gall bladder surgery in 1970 she carried her 45 gallstones in a jar to show people.

Gaye LeBaron wrote a further description in a 2005 column: "She was a sight to behold -- built like a fireplug, heavy on the makeup, including glitter and those gold stick-um stars the teacher puts on very good tests; heavier yet on the perfume, which she applied from test bottles on the counters at Rosenberg's and the several drugstores on Fourth Street."

LeBaron knew Pepper better than anyone else, and that column is a wonderful tribute which I urge you to read straightaway. "People have always had mixed feelings about Pepper," she wrote in an earlier profile. "Some people, sad to say, hate her. I have mail to attest to that. But mostly people grin at her, shake their heads in wonder, and pass by amused because that's just Pepper and everybody knows Pepper."

Judging by comments on social media over the years the jury's still out. Folks (like me) who weren't around in her heyday fifty years ago only know her through anecdotes, so it's easy for us to view her as a goofball who made downtown Santa Rosa a fun place to be. But to those growing up here a common complaint was "she scared me to death." To kids Pepper could seem crazy and acted like a police-sanctioned bully.

The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.

- Jeff Elliott