(By Linda Blum) The Sonoma Valley has had its share of resident novelists, such as M.F.K. Fisher and Jack London, who brought alive the aura of the Valley of the Moon. But that was then, and now we have a budding author of mysteries and histories of Sonoma. The fact that he is 92 years old only enhances his newbie status.
Newton Dal Poggetto was born and raised in a Sonoma quite different from today. Back then, all the houses on Broadway were family residences. Vineyards were not yet a commercial commodity, and tourists didn’t flock in to sample wine and shop at boutiques. Industry then was mostly confined to dairy, poultry, and produce farms. A lovely and simpler time.
This is what Mr. Dal Poggettio writes about in his newest book, The Visit. While weaving in the story of his own family history he evokes the atmosphere of the older Sonoma.
Born in 1922, in the house at the corner of France and Broadway that still stands, he grew up hearing stories from his older relatives about his grandfather and great-grandfather, which he enjoyed relating to friends later in life.
The first Dal Poggetto, Charles, came to the Sonoma Valley in 1875, leaving his olive oil importing family in Tuscany, that traced itself back to the 1500’s. Charles was only 14, but by 1880, he had set himself up in Glen Ellen as the only barber/dentist in town. (Supposedly with the financial help of an older woman friend.) Charles’s somewhat lusty life ended at 59, when he scratched himself on the door latch of his brand-new Ford sedan, got blood poisoning, and died ten days later. His son, Newton’s father, married his fiancée only one day before to please his father, and Newton was born one year later.
Growing up in the Sonoma of the 20’s and 30’s would have been a rather bucolic existence. Very little was as it is today. Instead of tourists, farm and dairy workers shopped in the mom & pop stores on the Square. The narrow gauge train from San Francisco that used to stop at a depot on the Square had only recently stopped running, and there were stables and pastures throughout the town.
In high school, Newton confessed to his father that he wanted to become a lawyer. His father replied (jokingly, we hope), “I don’t know what else you’d be good for.”
But before he could get to law school, there was WWII to deal with. He served in the Pacific as an ensign on a Navy destroyer, the USS Canfield, where he was dubbed “Dal”, his shipmates asserting that “Newton Dal Poggetto” was too much of a mouthful. He remains Dal (or Newt) to his friends even now.
The GI Bill allowed him finally to get to college and law school. At the University Of Colorado, he met Helene, his wife of 68 years. Even though he had been accepted to Harvard Law, he got married instead, and finished his studies at Santa Clara College, because they had veteran’s housing, and Helene was pregnant. Newton says, without regret, that he was ”one pregnancy away from a Harvard degree”.
With a law degree, a wife and a new baby, the first of three children, he returned to Sonoma in 1950 and set up a law practice that has gone on for 64 years. Yes, he still practices law, just not the backbiting criminal law that he specialized in for many years as a defense attorney and as a judge.
It was from these many years in the courtrooms of Sonoma Valley that Newton gained the inspiration for his two murder mysteries, Vintage of a Murder and Sonoma: the Night of the Assassin.
Newton is dedicated to Sonoma, its past and present, and is a long–time member and past president of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society (http://www.depotparkmuseum.org) In any case, he would have found it hard to leave after Helene saw Sonoma for the first time, and said, “I don’t care if we stay married or not, but I’m going to live here forever.”
Note: Mr. Dal Poggetto’s books can be requested at Readers’ Books, Sonoma.
Linda Blum
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