Hello and welcome back to Senior Perspectives, a show by and about elders living here on
our beautiful Northern California coast. Senior Perspectives is brought to you by Redwood Coast
Senior Center just around the corner and up the block from the studios here. Be sure and drop by,
have lunch, visit us. If you need support or help for anything, if you're just looking to make a
good connection and want to have a good time, come on up to the Senior Center and keep company with
us. And of course we're here in the studios of Mendocino Coast Television who is our sponsor and
benefactor and makes this whole show possible, which leads me to a really interesting, interesting
show because our guest today is Barbara Foote who works here at Mendocino Coast Television,
is a volunteer and part of the crew that produces this show and isn't it interesting being over
here on this side of the camera? You better believe it. What do you think? Well in fact,
I'm normally camera number one, which happens to be that one over there, that happens to be
the one that I'm behind, so now I'm in front of it. It is fascinating. And look at this,
I even got dressed for the part today. It's just wonderful to have you here and obviously I think
the place I want to start off is two-sided. How did you end up on the North Coast and how did you
end up doing TV? Well, do you want to hear a really romantic story? Oh, my favorite kind, my favorite
kind. Way back when I had a friend named Barbara Chapman and she said, let's go up and visit my
friend Beth in Mendocino. Okay. And this you were living? Down in San Francisco. Okay. And so she
and I came up and we stayed over the Memorial Day weekend that year and we're having this drunken
party at Beth's house. Some other friends have come over. A North Coast tradition. And Beth says,
oh, I hear a car in the driveway. That must be Bill, my landlord. I'd better invite him up,
you know, if we're having this party. We're going to have a party. The least you can do is admit the
landlord. So Bill comes up and that was the first time I met him. Now this is Bill Foote. Love it
first sight. Not quite because, you know, he got a little more interested in me than I did in him at
the moment. We stayed during the week and he had to go down into the city. But on the following
weekend, he comes up and he invites us downstairs for an Irish coffee. And he says, can I see you
back in the city? And I kind of go, well, I really want to do this. Yeah. So I gave him my work phone
number, not my home phone number. And we did get around to seeing each other. And you've heard the
way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It works the other way around. He would show up at
my place with chicken in one hand and Grand Marnier in the other or steak in one hand and
Drambudi in the other. And to give you a time frame here, we met on Memorial Day weekend. He proposed on
Fourth of July weekend. We got married on Labor Day weekend. Wow, I thought you were going to say
that. That's amazing. Yeah. A whirlwind summer romance. Yeah. And we came up for 30 years from
the city. He eventually retired up here. He was older than I was. Yeah. And then I got a job farther
north in Petaluma. So the commute on the weekends wasn't quite so bad. And I eventually came up to
take care of him. And he passed away about five years ago. Okay. And then a new phase of life. And
as a part of that new phase of life, television. Yeah, that was kind of a surprise to me. Isn't
that interesting? So here we are making TV together. That's right. That's right. And I do their
scheduling. Right. So, you know, I know what's going to be going on on Wednesday, Thursday and
out into the week. And then run a camera and work on the crew here and produce our TV show. Yep.
Which is, gosh, we just passed the 35 shows mark. So we kind of feel like we had a meeting today.
We kind of felt like old professionals. Barbara, when did you come to the North Coast? And how and
why? Tell me a little bit about your story. I came up with a friend of mine for a vacation. And she
said, I have a friend named Beth who lives in Mendocino. Let's go visit her. Okay. So we came
up. That night we're having a drunken party at Beth's place. And she hears a car drive in and she
goes, uh-oh, that's the landlord. I'd better call him. He's going to be staying downstairs. It was
his cabin and she was renting the upstairs. And then he came on weekends and he was downstairs.
And warn him that there was some festivities about it. And why doesn't he come to the party? So she
invites him up. And this was Bill Foote. And the following week. Not at that time of relation.
Not at that time of relation. And the following week, we did this over Memorial Day weekend.
Okay. And we stayed for the week. At the end of the week, he invited us downstairs for Irish
coffees and said, gee, can I see you back in the city? Well, okay, sure. Fine. Maybe.
And what happened was, well, we kept on seeing each other. So that vacation friendship
blossomed. Well, to give you a clue of the timeframe, that was Memorial Day weekend. He
proposed on July 4th weekend. We got married on Labor Day weekend of that year, 1975. And we
continued to come up to Mendocino just on weekends. And for 30 years, he was older than I was. When I
married him, I was 26. He was 52. Exactly twice my age. He retired before I did. And
he stayed up here permanently. But I kept a job down in the city. So you were commuting. So I was
commuting. I got a little bit closer. I had a job finally. Not in San Francisco or South Bay, but
farther up. And could come more often. And unfortunately, five years ago, he passed away at Christmas time. So
that's kind of it. But I always thought that was kind of a romantic thing. What a wonderful romantic story.
What a delight. So it was maybe not love at first sight, but at second or third, it must have been
love blooming for sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's a wonderful tale. What were you, how were you, I mean,
you weren't supporting yourself making TV, obviously. So you must have some other incarnation
that we don't exactly know about. What was it? I was a computer programmer. Were you really? In the,
you know, the COBOL stuff with the big mainframes. Oh my gosh. And I worked for places like
AAA, ONC Trucking. You see their trucks. And those big old mainframes. Yeah. Right. And moved on to
Memorex. Yeah. Then Ampex. Oh my gosh. And now Ampex is what I find really interesting. Here I am
doing their general ledger, et cetera, et cetera. And they're the ones who made all this possible.
Like literally, they were the recording studio giant and produced much of the equipment that
we used. And they were the greatest tape manufacturer, I think, in the country. Isn't that intriguing?
Yeah. And at that time. I had no interest in it whatsoever. Right. Right. Yeah. Tell me about,
I'm always in awe of those early kind of machine language, root language programmers. It just
always seemed like such an ungodly esoteric thing to master. Difficult. I mean, really difficult.
I think. Well, COBOL is more English-like. Yeah. In school, I learned a little bit of the assembler,
which is what you're talking about. But mostly I stuck with things that were more, you know,
sentence-like. In that time, unusual for women to, or was that, by that time, were things opening up?
It was just opening up about then. Yeah. And getting more people into it. Sometimes I think
that computer programming was one of the wedges that began to really integrate the
technical workplace. And now it is, in fact, totally integrated. But that was one of the places.
Engineering was not a very friendly world, but programming was a way in, and things began to
change. And what's really interesting is you had to be more language-oriented than math-oriented.
Right. You know, people always used to say, oh, wow, you must be really good at math. I go, yeah,
I can add, I can subtract, I can multiply, and I can divide. It is interesting that it's rather
more like parsing a difficult sentence than it is solving an equation. Right. And you were usually
doing if, then, else to get, you know, if it's this, you want to do that. If it's something else,
you want to do that. It's always charming to me. And even still, although it's buried, I think,
more levels deeper now. But computer programming, computers don't actually do very much themselves
in a certain sense. You know what I mean? Like the way you address a computer is with very
rudimentary instructions. And they do them so fast that they're able to say, do you ever wonder
whether God's a computer programmer? And this is kind of a… That's what I, in my computer days,
that was something I thought about all the time, was, is this all a computer program? And we are
on some big screen. Do you ever think about those kind of things? I don't think it's quite my vision
of God. So you saw Mendocino as a kind of constant regular visitor, which is a different way to see
it than living here full time. Do you think in some ways you were maybe even more aware of the
changes that were going on because you came and went a lot? In some ways, yes. In some ways, no.
Because I never got really involved. It was kind of like… In the community. In the community.
And so therefore, I knew who Bill Zocca was, I knew who, you know, Hilda Pertha was, I knew who
all these people that were surrounding the area, but I may meet them and I may meet them only once.
Exactly. And I didn't really know them. Sure. Yeah. And I didn't really know the culture.
At the surface, could you see the changes in the phases and stages that they went through?
How would you describe what you saw happen over a period of 30 years?
Wow, that's hard to say. Because I don't think I ever saw it as a continuous thing.
Right. You know, once you look back on it, you can say, oh, I see that there was an era here of this,
and you know, oh, remember back when we did that, but going through it? Not at all.
I think if you came and went, you probably came to a certain specific house and a place and related
to that, and that didn't change. That's right. That was probably the great stability in a sense.
And I joined the Mendocino Presbyterian Church because I was going to be here every other week,
or at least. So I might as well, if I was going to join a church, why I could be here as often
as possible. And it's a magnificent church, isn't it? I mean, it's physically magnificent,
and it also has been a sustaining spiritual community here for decades and decades and decades.
And what I love about it now, before I couldn't sing in the choir because they had choir practice
on Thursday, and I wasn't here on Thursday, and so on and so forth. You know, there's a lot of stuff
that I just couldn't do. I had to give it up. You were kind of more a spectator than a full-on
participant. And now, are you fully engaged? Oh, yeah. Now I'm in the choir and I'm a docent
over the summer. I just came from putting their sermon on the web. I'm kind of into that thing.
So you're all engaged. Choir, singing in that choir, that's a little bit different than you go,
well, I sing in my church's choir. That's a serious choir, isn't it? Well, I mean, not serious,
like, but it's a pretty high-class musical ensemble, I think, don't you? I think it's
wonderful. A lot of people kind of turn up their noses at it. Oh, well, you know, whatever. It's
a church choir. It's just a church choir. But wow, you know, they will tackle anything. They will
just tackle anything. You hand them a piece of music and they will just read through it. They
won't do it well. We won't do it well. Why am I saying they? But when we really get it done,
and gradually master it and get there. Have you, has music always been a part of your life,
or is this a new thing? No, pretty much. In fact, one of, I used to teach guitar, because nobody
else was around to play with me, so I wanted to teach all my friends how to play so we could all
play together. I wound up teaching for Yamaha for a while. Oh my gosh, are you a pretty good,
you must be a pretty good guitar player. Well, folk guitar, you know. I haven't touched it for
so many years now. You're kidding, you stopped. I just kind of didn't do it while I was married,
and then I haven't picked it up again. But I have sung in choirs, lots of choirs, and I was in a
choir in, down the peninsula, Foothill College, for many, many years. And they did all kinds of
things. That's a pretty intense choir too. I lived down there for a while, and I know that
ensemble for sure, they're really something. Yeah, and I sang with their chamber singers,
and with their renaissance group, and we toured around the wine country. So you're a long time
pretty serious singer. Kind of. And yet I haven't gotten into really a lot up here,
outside of the Gloriana, well the Gloriana Carolers. We came here to the studio. Oh,
did you? And performed here, and recorded? No, no, no. Just performed? No, this was when they
had just moved in here, and we came at Christmas time and did a set for the folks here. Yeah.
Yeah. So you're doing TV, you're singing, are there secrets that we want to know? What else
is important in your life? Or what else has been important that you've left behind, and how did
that turn out? That's kind of an interesting question. I've always been interested in my
alternate resume. You know, the one that you, you don't go out and make a living with. Exactly.
And it kind of- Which maybe is where all the, or a lot of the real riches, not the money riches,
but the real riches are. So what's on your alternate resume? Well, one of the things,
I danced on the stage of the old Fox Theater in San Francisco. Is you really? I was about six or
seven years old, and they had some kind of a tap, I was taking tap dancing, and they had a show,
and that was where we did our thing. That's amazing. And so that was real history. Yeah.
Did your dance career unfold? No, I used to stare at my feet while I was, you know,
doing the tap dancing. It was never, I never looked up. Yeah, gotcha. What else? Oh, the teaching at
Yamaha. I found that to be, you know, kind of interesting. When you say teaching at Yamaha,
meaning- Yamaha does musical instruments, including guitars. And I had a guitar teacher
who needed a teacher to fill out for, I was like a substitute for someone else. And they had a
course. You followed the course, and you taught beginning guitar to people. Yeah. So that was fun.
I also sang on stage with Rosemary Clooney. No, how did that happen? That was because of the
Foothill College. Right, right. And we were the choir that backed her up, basically. Wow. So that
was fun. That's neat. Yeah. Where do you live now? I mean, what part of the, where do you live on the
coast here? In Mendocino, up Little Lake Road. Oh yeah, up in the woods? Up in the woods. Yay.
That's gotta be one of the most beautiful places in the world, isn't it? Yeah. Isn't that something?
Yeah. I just always thought that having a little house in the woods above Mendocino was just about
as charming as it could possibly get. I love it when it's spring and you have the rhododendron,
because they grow up to the height of the deck. Right. You know, and you can just sit out there
on your deck- Just that flood of glorious color. And you're kind of surrounded by it, you know.
Yeah. Tell me about, what has the process of aging been like for you? And what changes are
you experiencing? Have you experienced, do you relate more to people who are older now than you
did before? You know, I'm not sure I do. Yeah. Because when I was like three and four and five
years old, my grandmother was raising me basically. I mean, my mother was a single mom and she had to
go to work. And so I was with my grandmother a lot and she took me to the ladies' aid meetings at
the church. And they were all grandmother types. And so I was a grandmother at five years old.
They've always been platinum blondes in your- Platinum blondes, yes. Of course.
I like that you told me about that. I feel much better being a platinum blond now than a gray hair
old guy. Has church, it comes up, has that been one of the anchors of your life? Yes.
Started out Lutheran when my grandmother was not there. My mother kind of, she couldn't get to
a church that was far away, which was kind of where the Lutheran church was that we'd been going to.
So we went to whatever was close. So I've been to Methodist and Presbyterian and Episcopal and
who knows what else, you know, the whole gamut. And then I kind of went back into the Lutheran
church, became confirmed there. And that was like my home church for many, many years.
Got married, moved down the peninsula, wound up in a Presbyterian church down there that by chance
happened to be one that came up here to this one in Mendocino and helped them build the Christian
camp out in the woods somewhere. I never knew what they were quite doing. But that, yeah.
Yeah. I haven't had a chance to explore this territory very much and if it's okay,
I want to explore it a little bit. Do you think, do you see, for instance, at the Presbyterian
church here locally, are as many younger families, do you still see this being vital in the, in the
younger families? Do you think there's a change happening? Well, it's become an aging population
at the church. The whole community, yeah. Of course is aging. And what's happened really is that,
you know, most of the younger people grow up and have to make a living and they go out of the area.
Yeah. And that's happened in other churches I've been in as well. So right now, no, we're not
getting a whole lot of younger people in. Yeah. I read a fascinating thing just a couple nights
ago. There was one of the top, the lead news stories underneath the big news was that I think
the Pew Foundation, which does wonderful social science research, they did a bunch of research
and they did a questionnaire that had a whole lot of questions about just basic religious knowledge
of both Christianity and other traditions and so on. And what they found was that people who said
they were either atheistic or agnostic scored way higher in their religious knowledge than people
who said they were definitely connected with the church. And I was floored by that. I just went,
that's a puzzle. Now you're someone who has been connected with, with organized churches and
churches. What do you think about that? Isn't that a bizarre? I saw the beginning of that article. I
didn't read it all the way through. I had to put it down before I finished it. I'm going to go home
and finish it. What do you make of that? Yeah, I found that surprising and very strange. Definitely
strange. Yeah. Somebody I think, I shared that with somebody and they kind of laughed and they
said, well, maybe that's why they're agnostic and atheistic. And I thought, I don't think so. I think
there's a deeper thing going on than that. Well, I think I'd gotten to the part where it kind of
said that the Catholics didn't know certain things that were outside their own, that were within their
own. And then the Jewish community didn't know, you know, people didn't know things that were within
their own. They knew more, they had more outside. I don't know if they knew it had more outside,
but they just didn't know the stuff. I think you're too close to it. That could be. You take it just
as, oh, well, that's the way it is. Right. Why would I have to even think about it? And you don't need to,
you really don't need to be analytical about it or in that sense. Do you think as you get older,
does your religion become more important to you? And does it give you a perspective on growing
older, do you think? That's interesting because it's always just been with me. And it's always
been there. And it's like, I don't even question it. Right. And so it's like, it's kind of like
breathing. Yeah, you don't think about breathing. Yeah. Is it okay if we explore this a little bit?
Yeah, sure. This is such a fascinating territory. Most people don't talk very much to me about this,
and I love talking about it. As you grew up inside your church, did you learn to
pray as a natural approach to life and to be guided by a set of principles? Is it working and alive
in your life, I guess, is really the question I'm asking. Yeah. And it's interesting. I don't do,
I know that a lot of people, I set forth, you know, this much time for prayer and meditation.
Right. At this time of the day, blah, blah, blah. In a very formal way. In a very formal way. And
not with me. I just, it comes and it goes. And I'll see someone who is really looks like they're
in pain. And I don't know this person. Right. And I'll just say, Oh, Lord, take care of them. Do
something for them. So it's an automatic gesture. Yeah. Right. Right. But yeah, it's not, it's not
quite that formal. Do you think prayer helps healing? Amen. It does. Yeah. Okay. Amen. I
kind of think that too. It's interesting to me that I have that same, I have that spontaneous
desire to just say a little prayer or if I know somebody's not feeling well or going into surgery
or something like that, I always go, I'll say a prayer for you. And I do. I remember to actually
say a prayer. I don't know why or how, but it seems like it's a good thing to do. It seems like
it's a proper, you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't have any big, deep belief that
it works like this, but it just seems like a proper thing to do when somebody's having a hard time
to say a prayer for them. It's an interesting thing. Yeah. We have a formal thing during the
service, you know, where are there any people who, you know, who need prayer or concerns or whatever,
you know, and whatnot. And people will stand up and ask for prayers. And then, you know, three,
five, 10 weeks later, they'll stand up and say, wow, am I glad you were all praying for my brother
because, you know, he's doing great. He's, you know, turned around and so on and so forth. And
there are times when I go, yes, because I was really thinking of this person. And there are
times when I'm going, oh, I forgot all about that person. I'm sure glad someone else was there.
Someone else picked up the action when it was needed. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a different,
here's a different question for you. Do you have any big undone's in your life that you still want
to go, you know, before I finish up, I want to, any of those, any dreams that you still kind of
nourish and hold? Traveling, except I don't have a specific place that I absolutely have to go and
see now. But there are a lot of places in the United States I've never been. I grew up, my
mother did not have a car. We lived in San Francisco. You got around on the Muni bus service and that was
it for 26 years. Exactly. You know, and then I, all of a sudden, oh my goodness, I think I'm going to
need a car here, you know. And so I kind of felt like I got jipped out of going, all my friends,
you know, they had cars and they'd go down to Monterey or they'd go up to Mendocino. At least
travel a little ways. At least a little ways, you know, and I just never got any of it. So. That's
interesting. I've been, I've been. You were a real city person. Yeah. So I've been really
going out there. And so do you travel now? So yeah, I just got back from Clear Lake and earlier this
year I went up to Birch Bay, Washington, which is way up near the Canadian border. In fact,
the friend and I, who I went with, we went over into Canada to Vancouver. So. Are you an outdoors
person? Not really. Yeah. No, not really. I like, no, I like walking and that's, but not real hiking.
Yeah. And I've never done much camping. So. Do you, I like what you say about the traveling around
the United States. I'm, I'm in the same boat. I, you know, I, I live in the United States, but the
truth is I don't live in 49 of the other states. Right. Hardly at all. What, what would be your,
your two or three top trips? If you could make dream trips to places or around parts of the United
States, where would you go? Well, I'd go back to Boston in a cold minute. I really liked Boston.
And the next time I go say to England or France or wherever, I'm going to make sure that the
airplane stops in Boston. I can get off and spend a few days and then go on. Yeah. Yeah. So Boston
was magical. Magic, Boston was magical. I'm not sure I have any place that I specifically, you know,
I've always wanted to go to that I haven't been there yet. I always think that it would be fun
to visit, to, to travel through the South, which is of all the places in the United States, I think
just because of our, our history, the South is mysterious and exotic and, and strange and maybe
a little scary. Do you have that? Do you, you know, those of us who have grown up on the West coast
and as northerners, do you have those feelings? Yeah. Would you like to go check it out? I would
like to go. Yeah. And I'd like, if I was going to start, I would like to start with New Orleans.
Oh, that's the one place in the South I have been. And before, you know, before the hurricane,
that would be grand. It was a, we had a glorious few days in, in New Orleans. It was really wonderful.
Snakes and swamps. When I was a kid, I grew up with snakes and swamps in my mind. And, and always,
I always wanted to go and see real swamps and real snakes and alligators and all that kind of stuff.
And I got to, and it was really something. Yeah. So you have secrets like that, snakes and swamps up
on your list or anything like that? Definitely not snakes. You don't want to go around and talk to snakes and stuff.
Not really. Yeah. What, what do you see in, in your next five years here in this community? And what do you think
is going to happen to us here? What's going to change? You know, we're, we're coming out the other end of
timber and fish and all of that kind of stuff, which I believe will come back at some, at some stage.
But in the meantime, something else going to happen? Yeah. Well, obviously we're aging. Yeah. So something
As a community we are, aren't we? As a community. And so somewhere along the route, I think they're going to
address more, you know, senior, you expect to see a senior housing community or something. Yeah.
Sort of out on the old mill site. That's like a natural, doesn't it? It does. Yeah. Yeah, it does. I agree. Yeah.
And I wonder if something will happen that will make jobs for our children again. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Oh, that would be lovely. I think that's the hardest thing here. Well, you know, with the internet stuff, they really
ought to be able to make a living, you know, doing internet type programming and internet type stuff.
And somehow there's a lot of it out there, but there doesn't ever seem to be any, it's all individual.
Yeah. You know, nobody's really gotten it organized somehow. Yeah. Well, Barbara, we're just about out of time.
So we're going to have to kind of wrap it up. Thank you so much for climbing out from behind your camera
and crawling over here on this side. And that's it for tonight. Let's just say good night to
all of our friends out there in the North Coast and thanks for joining Senior Perspectives once again. Good night all.
Thank you.